Rumor: VW has resigned its CEO software division after two weeks

Volkswagen is said to have dismissed Christian Senger from his position as CEO of Car.Software.Org, VW’s software department. The company had officially appointed Senger as head of the division as of July 1.

Senger reportedly got into conflict with too many people within VW while setting up Car.Software.Org Handelsblatt. The newspaper writes that Senger brought together experts from within the VW group to form the software division, so that it could create the software for the various VW subsidiary brands as an independent unit. This would have met with opposition from the executives of the individual brands, who feared their influence and power.

The software top man would also have asked for too many resources, without specifying enough what all those resources were for. The change of position would be part of a larger-scale reorganization within VW, with which the director of the group, Herbert Diess, would like to demonstrate his power. Diess himself was under fire from commissioners, with claims of violations of the law, but he got away with a reprimand. The supervisory directors would like a breath of fresh air in the management team and in recent months Diess would have replaced several top executives for this reason.

Audi boss Markus Duesmann would in the future be responsible for the development of the VW group’s digital units, which may also include Car.Software.Org. Volkswagen has big plans for this software division, located in the Audi Innovation Campus in Ingolstadt. This should consist of around ten thousand developers and ensure that VW is no longer dependent on third parties such as Bosch or LG for software, but makes as much as possible in-house.

Senger was previously responsible for the development of Volkswagen’s electric ID range and has been working on Car.Software.Org since March, which he was officially in charge of since July 1. He previously worked at BMW on the i-series electric vehicles. He is one of the managers who followed Diess from BMW to Volkswagen in 2014.