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Herbert Diess, the current CEO of Volkswagen, will leave the company in a few weeks and Porsche CEO Oliver Blume (Oliver Blume) will take over from September 1st, Volkswagen announced on Friday local time.

The Volkswagen Group did not explain the reasons for Deiss's departure in the statement, but in the gradual improvement of the electrified transformation, the sudden departure of Deiss, which is still a full three years away from the expiration of his term of office, is obviously not a normal phenomenon. Foreign media generally believe that the contradiction between Deiss and the Volkswagen trade union is the core reason for its early departure.

According to the data, Deiss joined Bosch as a parts supplier in 1989, joined BMW Group in 1996 and became a strong competitor to BMW Group CEO in 2014, but was defeated by the then BMW Group CEO Kruger competitor. After BMW's frustration, Deiss left BMW in May 2015 to join Volkswagen Group, then mired in the diesel door scandal, as Volkswagen brand CEO. Through a series of control measures, Dis turned the corner of Volkswagen Group and won the trust of the Porsche family, a major shareholder. Deiss succeeded Mullen as CEO of Volkswagen Group in April 2018. It is worth mentioning that Mullen left in 2018, with two years to go before his contract expires, and suddenly left, and today, four years later, a similar story happened to Deiss.

Deiss became the head of Volkswagen and even helped Volkswagen complete the transformation, but he also seemed to forget how Winterkorn and Mullen were abandoned by the Volkswagen supervisory board, the Porsche family and the Piech family. Since Deiss took over Volkswagen, it has carried out a series of drastic reforms, not only cutting the loss-making and huge investment in the Pheaton business, but also promoting cost-cutting. Of course, the most direct and effective way to cut costs is to lay off staff. In order to make a rapid transition to electrification and digitization, Deiss has streamlined its non-core businesses and brands and tried to cut more jobs. In September 2021, Deiss warned that the group needed to cut 30, 000 jobs in order to improve the efficiency of the Wolfsburg plant, make the transition to the electric era faster and compete with carmakers such as Tesla.

"slimming down" means layoffs, and it is absolutely impossible for the union to guarantee the interests of employees to support Deiss's opinion. It is understood that the supervisory board of Volkswagen Group is composed of 19 members from the Porsche family, the Piech family, the government of Lower Saxony and the Labor Committee. The supervisory board of Volkswagen is composed of 20 people, which is responsible for appointing and supervising group management and approving major decisions of the company, in which union representatives not only control the nine seats on the supervisory board, but also have the right to decide whether to renew the contract with CEO. Therefore, there is often only one end to offend the trade union, that is, "dismissed". In the history of Volkswagen Group, more than one CEO was ousted for offending the trade union, such as Bernd Pischetsrieder, who served as the group CEO from 2002 to 2006, and Wolfgang Bernhard, which served as the Volkswagen brand CEO from 2005 to 2007.

On June 8, 2020, the Volkswagen supervisory board suddenly announced a major personnel change, with RalfBrandstaetter replacing the Volkswagen brand CEO and Herbert Diess retaining only the VW CEO position, which will take effect on July 1. Then, on June 9, Volkswagen issued a statement on its website entitled "the board of supervisors accepts Herbert Dis's apology." It is extremely rare to post a letter of apology from the group CEO directly on its website, which exposes the internal conflict between Deiss and Volkswagen.

After a tug-of-war between Deiss and the board of supervisors over the extension of his work contract for more than a year, each side took a step back and reached a compromise. In July 2021, the board of supervisors of Volkswagen met and voted to extend Deiss's work contract until 2025. In December 2021, the Volkswagen Supervisory Board again issued a notice that Volkswagen brand CEO RalfBrandstaetter will join the Volkswagen Group Management Board from August 1st, 2022, take charge of Volkswagen passenger car business from January 2022, and succeed Feng Sihan, the current head of Volkswagen Group (China), in charge of China operations and lead Volkswagen Group (China) since August 2022. According to the data, Baird joined Volkswagen Group in 1993, was appointed as a member of Volkswagen passenger car brand management board in December 2015, served as Volkswagen passenger car brand COO in August 2018, and was promoted to Volkswagen passenger car brand CEO in July 2020.

Compared with Deiss's sudden departure, Obermu's superior position is to be expected. According to the data, Obermu joined Audi in 1994 and has held important positions in Audi, Seattle, Volkswagen, Porsche and other brands since then. It is understood that when Deiss served as CEO of Volkswagen Group in 2018, Volkswagen conducted a review of its management structure and divided its 12 brands into ordinary, luxury and ultra-luxury categories, including ordinary brands including Volkswagen, Seattle and Skoda, luxury brands including Audi, and ultra-luxury brands including Porsche, Bentley, Lamborghini and Bugatti. The three brand combinations are headed by Volkswagen CEO Dis, Audi CEO Steed and Porsche CEO Obermu respectively.

The powers of Steed and Obermu will be expanded, and compared with Deiss, who was 59 at the time, Steed, 54, and Obermu, 49, are considered key candidates for Volkswagen's next successors. However, Steed was arrested in June 2018 over the diesel incident, and Obermu became the only candidate for the head of Volkswagen Group. In February, Volkswagen announced that Porsche would go public independently, and Obermu will continue to serve as Porsche CEO after taking over as CEO of Volkswagen, promoting the listing of Porsche IPO.

Since taking the helm of Volkswagen Group, Deiss has been regarded as the most powerful reformer in the traditional auto industry. Mr Deiss, who is just in his twenties, is not too old at the helm of the car, and there is much more he wants to do. he completed the last stop of his career as a professional manager in the world's leading auto group, and whether he would regret leaving his class early.

According to the latest figures, Volkswagen's global sales fell 22.2% year-on-year to 3.875 million vehicles in the first half of 2022, of which sales in China fell 20.5% to 1.47 million vehicles. Herbert Dis posted on Weibo the two major challenges facing Volkswagen in the Chinese market. He said that in the entry-level market, cost optimization is being carried out, and the high-end market should focus on developing assisted driving systems and intelligent Internet connection technologies that adapt to the current mobile travel ecology in China.

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