BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

VW's New CEO Hints At Strategy To Regain Trust, Expand Business

This article is more than 7 years old.

Matthias Mueller, chief executive, gave arguably the most important speech of his life in Wolfsburg on Thursday, exhibiting contrition for Volkswagen AG’s transgressions and expressing confidence that the German automaker is on a path to recovering its mojo.

Regaining trust, he said, will be VW’s most important task “over the next few months.”

In his presentation to investors and journalists, Mueller acknowledged that the diesel emission scandal remains an unresolved legal and financial burden. But he promised – perhaps a la Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher – “that we will emerge from this situation stronger than before.”

Mueller took special pains to highlight VW’s intention to develop mobility services such as car sharing and ride sharing, an area from which the automaker may have become distracted while dealing with legal challenges concerning its deliberate faking of diesel emission testing in the U.S.

“This summer, we will present how we plan to anchor (attention to technology challenges) in our strategy,” he promised. “Today I can at least give you a taste of what is to come.”

VW is building three “ Volkswagen Group Future Centers” in Potsdam, Germany; Beijing and in Silicon Valley. He emphasized that VW is more open than ever to partnerships with universities, start-ups “and technology partners.”

He highlighted an existing strategic alliance with Pivotal, a U.S. software developer to build “new kinds of software and mobility solutions for connected customers.”

“We have particularly high hopes for innovative mobility services,” he said, a field “with great earnings potential for our industry in the coming years.” General Motors Co. in January invested $500 million in Lyft, a ride-sharing service.

Mueller promised that VW Group, with its twelve brands has “good chances of again recording solid growth in our operating business in fiscal 2016. Admittedly, this type of annual forecast is not the “faster, higher, further” that you are familiar with from Volkswagen.”

“But that does not mean that we have buried our ambition,” he said. “Quite the opposite. We do not plan to make it easy for the competition to weaken us. We will fight for every customer and every car.”

The German carmaker – and Mueller’s tenure as chief executive – looks destined to remain under a public microscope for some time.