Porsche boss Oliver Blume will become CEO of Volkswagen from September 1st. As the group announced on Friday evening, Blume is following in the footsteps of former VW boss Herbert Diess. At the same time, he will remain CEO of Porsche AG, it said. Although Blume had been brought into play as Diess’ successor for a long time due to various problems within the group, the news still came as a surprise.
“Oliver Blume has proven his operational and strategic skills in various functions in the Group and several brands and has been leading Porsche AG economically, technologically and culturally for seven years with great success. From the point of view of the entire Supervisory Board, he is now the right person for the Great, to further sharpen customer orientation and the positioning of brands and products,” said Chairman of the Supervisory Board Hans Dieter Pötsch, explaining the decision to make the 54-year-old the new VW boss. But who is Oliver Blume actually?
Blume was born in Braunschweig in 1968 and thus shares her homeland with VW – the group’s headquarters are about 30 kilometers from Braunschweig. After graduating from high school, the Porsche and new VW boss studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Braunschweig before beginning his career at Audi in 1994 with an international trainee program. Two years later he became a planner in the body construction and paint shop department.
In 1999, Blume was promoted to head of body construction for the Audi A3. In 2001, he received his doctorate in “Doctor of Engineering in Vehicle Engineering” from the Institute of Automotive Engineering at Tongji University in Shanghai and became an assistant to the board of directors in Audi production. This was followed by positions as division manager at Audi, Seat and Volkswagen. In 2013, Blume became a member of the Board of Management for Production and Logistics at Porsche, two years later he succeeded Matthias Müller as Chairman of the Board of Management at Porsche. In addition, he was appointed to the Volkswagen Group Board of Management in 2018 and given responsibility for Group production.
He was thus responsible for the market launch of the electric Porsche Taycan, which also met with internal resistance. The owner families Porsche and Piëch were critical of the project. Nevertheless, the electric sports car became a successful model in Europe.
Most recently, Blume’s main task was to take Porsche AG public. There he should remain CEO even after the company goes public. Now he should also “further advance” the transformation to electromobility at VW with the board of directors. It was probably the way Herbert Diess dealt with him and his leadership style that ultimately led to his resignation. Blume should obviously do things differently “with a management culture that focuses on team spirit.”
“My focus is on customers, brands and products,” says the new VW boss. “Team spirit, fairness and passion” are decisive for success. The 54-year-old is seen as a boss who listens. He adds: “We have successfully positioned Porsche technologically, economically and culturally – and see ourselves as a pioneer of sustainable mobility.” That’s probably why he prevailed against Audi boss Markus Duesmann and is now one of the most powerful men in the automotive industry.
Volkswagen should now expect a success like that of Porsche from its new boss. According to the car expert Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, he will also realign the software division. The change in the industry to software-centric cars is a “huge challenge” for classic suppliers like VW, the professor said about DPA. “This is also shown by the replacement of VW boss (Herbert) Diess. Car manufacturers become tech companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft – or they become dependent on the software heavyweights.”
However, a contribution from Tuesday’s ZDF satirical program “Die Anstalt” casts a bad light on the Porsche and new VW boss Oliver Blume. Accordingly, he is said to have boasted that Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner “kept him up to date” “almost every hour” in the coalition negotiations. Blume is said to have had a decisive influence on the decision to continue allowing e-fuels in the EU from 2035.
“We have a very large share in the fact that the e-fuels were included in the coalition agreement. We were a main driver there, with very close contact to the coalition parties. Christian Lindner has kept me up to date almost every hour in the last few days.” , quotes the show Blume. A Porsche spokesman, the Volkswagen Group, to which Porsche belongs, as well as Christian Lindner denied this.
What is clear, however, is that Porsche is building a test facility for e-fuels in Chile together with Siemens. To this end, the carmaker invested around 20 million euros at the beginning of 2021. He also took a 75 million dollar stake in the HIF Global LLC holding, a company of international project developers of e-fuels production facilities. The first liters of e-fuels are to be produced this year. These should initially be used in motor sports, but later also in their own cars with combustion engines and use in driving centers. And the “Bild am Sonntag” said Blume at the beginning of the month: “Porsche relies on a double E: e-mobility and e-fuels.” Because e-fuels are an effective, complementary solution.
Sources: VW press release, Porsche press release (1), Porsche press (2), Businessinsider, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, with material from the DPA.
