Audi’s new CEO Gernot Doellner is hardly recognized to the general public and even business insiders are more likely to have Googled him after it was introduced that he’ll substitute Markus Duesmann on Sept. 1

Doellner, 54, is a 30-year veteran of Volkswagen Group and an in depth affiliate of VW Group and Porsche CEO Oliver Blume.

Doellner has been sitting on the highest flooring of VW Group’s headquarters in Wolfsburg since 2021 when he grew to become VW Group’s head of product technique. His workplace was within reach of Blume’s.

Doellner has had an in depth relationship with Blume for a few years, though it was Herbert Diess, Blume’s predecessor as VW Group CEO who introduced Doellner to VW’s headquarters from Porsche.

Doellner’s position because the group’s chief strategist was to work out the product planning for the approaching years throughout the manufacturers and, above all, coordinate the automaker’s electrical technique.

Doellner needed to look far into the long run and was additionally intently concerned in planning the manufacturers’ lighthouse initiatives equivalent to VW model’s Trinity program for a sophisticated self-driving automobile.

Doellner is thought to be a conceptual thinker and as somebody who may also make selections when unsure. That is what Duesmann is claimed to have lacked, permitting Audi to sink into lethargy.

Doellner additionally brings expertise in structuring mannequin launches from his time at Porsche. Audi urgently wants this.

The model is about to launch the most important mannequin offensive in its historical past. By 2025, 20 new fashions can be launched, ten of them totally electrical. Blume is aware of that this have to be profitable. And he’s counting on Doellner’s experience.

In contrast to Duesmann who got here from BMW, Doellner is a VW Group insider. He joined the automaker as a doctoral pupil in 1993 and labored his approach up the manager ranks.

Doellner spent a lot of his VW Group profession at Porsche and he already is aware of many Audi colleagues in improvement capabilities as a result of the 2 manufacturers have an in depth technical cooperation. This could profit him in his new place as a result of there was friction between Audi and Porsche engineers.

Doellner initially labored as a programs analyst within the group, then moved to Porsche’s improvement heart in Weissach as undertaking supervisor for reengineering. From 2001 to 2010, he was head of Porsche automobile ideas. He additionally took over undertaking administration for the Porsche 918 Spyder supercar.

He then grew to become head of the product technique division earlier than taking cost of the Panamera mannequin collection from 2011 to 2018. Earlier than transferring to Wolfsburg, he was head of product and idea at Porsche.

EV advocate

Doellner is taken into account a satisfied advocate of electrical drive. For him, battery energy is the higher different than the inner combustion engine not just for causes of local weather safety, but in addition due to its superior driving traits.

Within the first few weeks after transferring to Wolfsburg, Doellner was nonetheless commuting 530 km (330 miles) in a Porsche Taycan full-electric sedan between his dwelling close to Stuttgart and Wolfsburg, as he as soon as informed the Handelsblatt enterprise paper.

He has since introduced his household to Wolfsburg and makes use of a VW ID3 compact electrical hatchback for the brief commute to work. He’ll now relocate to Audi’s headquarters in Ingolstadt in southern Germany. He might swap to an Audi E-tron GT, which makes use of the identical platform because the Taycan.