A new age
The networked car: Johann Jungwirth is steering Volkswagen towards a digital future.
Johann Jungwirth should not find settling into his new home particularly difficult. After all, Potsdam in Brandenburg with its many innovative companies and research institutions has more than a touch of Silicon Valley, where he lived and worked until recently. One Potsdam network has even given itself the ambitious name “Silicon Sanssouci”.
Johann Jungwirth has now spent several months working on the future in the city outside the gates of Berlin. At the Volkswagen Group Future Center in Potsdam he has been planning the move into a new age for the German car company, which has recently been in the news most because of an emissions scandal. As the new digitalisation chief, Jungwirth is meant to guide Volkswagen into the digital future. Jungwirth, who was born in Romania in 1973, has a good idea of what that could look like. He previously worked for the US company Apple. In Silicon Valley, as Director Special Projects, he made a major contribution to Titan. This was the project that enabled Apple to secure the first patent for an iCar – a vehicle capable of autonomous driving. “I am firmly convinced that we will become the leading mobility provider by 2025,” says Jungwirth about his new employer. To achieve that, Volkswagen will have to evolve “partially into a software and services group”.
