Cariad in September at the IAA in Munich: The VW subsidiary is to equip the entire car company with new software.
(Photo: dpa)
Dusseldorf The long search for a new Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at the Volkswagen software subsidiary Cariad is over. As reported on Friday from corporate circles in Wolfsburg, the US manager Lynn Longo is to take over the post that has been vacant for almost a year. The company did not want to comment on the information.
Longo comes from the American audio specialist Harman International, a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics. The late forties was responsible for the Connected Car and digital cockpit division as Senior Vice President for two years.
Your actual professional home is the automotive industry. Before joining Harman, she worked for General Motors (GM) for two decades. “I was born into the auto industry,” she said in a previous interview. Longo comes from the US state of Michigan, the home of GM, Ford and Chrysler. She first came into contact with Europe when she headed teams at General Motors Europe during her time at GM.
Volkswagen and Cariad are expecting a lot from Longo as the new CTO in charge. With her experience at the interface between the automotive and IT industries, she was exactly the right person for the management board position at the Cariad headquarters in Ingolstadt, the company said. There is a great need for such specialists. She is one of the few car managers who can actually program herself. Infotainment and navigation will play an increasingly important role in software development in every car in the coming years.
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Longo’s appointment has apparently been confirmed for several weeks. In mid-October she had already participated in the global top management meeting of the Volkswagen Group in Alpbach, Austria.
The position has been vacant for almost a year
At Cariad, the CTO position has been vacant since the end of last year. Former SAP manager Björn Goerke left the Volkswagen subsidiary after just a year. Since then, Cariad boss Dirk Hilgenberg has been in charge of the technology and development department.
With Cariad, Volkswagen wants to achieve the breakthrough to become the leading provider of car-related software. The VW subsidiary currently has a good 4,000 employees, and by 2025 it should be around 10,000. The Volkswagen Group invests around 2.5 billion euros annually in building up Cariad. When it was founded, software experts from VW, Audi and Porsche were brought together. Cariad is now hiring new employees from outside the group and is also buying other IT companies.
Volkswagen has its problems building up its own software expertise. Last year, the timely start of the highly IT-driven ID electrical series almost failed due to software problems. There are also delays in other major software developments. On the CTO post, Longo should also ensure that the new developments at Cariad move forward faster.
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