Dr Ardey, first off: What’s the story behind Volkswagen Group Innovation and what exactly do you do there?
Volkswagen Group Innovation is the central innovation unit for the Volkswagen Group. In other words, we carry out research for all Group brands and then present the results each year at the Future Mobility Days. Could there be any cooler job in the company (laughs).
How large is the innovation team?
We currently have a workforce of about 600 employees in our globally distributed innovation centres. Most of these are based in Wolfsburg, but we also have larger sites in the USA, China, Japan, Singapore and Israel. So we have a very international presence.
The department was originally called “Volkswagen Group Research”. What’s the reason behind the name change?
It’s quite simple really. Research is needed to generate knowledge and innovation is needed to produce products or new technologies relevant to the customer, which are then successful on the market and become established. And we want to play our part in this.
To do this, do you also work together with other companies?
Innovation is obviously not exclusive to Volkswagen. In fact it’s even rather smart to have a lean structure internally in order to be able to work together with free resources and external innovation ecosystems. This is where it’s at so to speak. Whether we look to Beijing, Silicon Valley or Israel – these are the innovation hotspots, where the absolute best in the field are working. And this is also where the start-ups, universities and institutes we cooperate with can be found. This represents a substantial part of our work and allows us to find new ways of developing technology in the deep-tech area.
We are convinced that the car will continue to be an attractive and desirable product in the future – in view of all the innovations we are continually incorporating.
Dr. Nikolai Ardey Leiter Volkswagen Group Innovation
Which specific topics are being addressed by Volkswagen Group Innovation?
We have two major topic areas: sustainability and mobility. The former is focused on decarbonisation, negative-emissions technologies – and, also very exciting, the circular economy, in other words a closed loop that will mean that our vehicles ideally no longer generate an environmental footprint. In the area of mobility we are focusing primarily on the most complex variant: mobility in urban centres. However, a basic element of…
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