Dear prostep ivip Members,

The European automotive industry faces enormous challenges, and navigating these complexities becomes even more demanding amid ongoing geopolitical crises. As a global corporation, we at Volkswagen are particularly affected by these dynamics. If we want to shape the future of mobility with the same impact we‘ve had on its past, we must transform our vision and take the offensive. We‘ve spent recent years laying the necessary groundwork for this transformation.
The new normal in mobility is defined by software controlling all relevant functions. We already view the vehicle as part of the user ecosystem today.
Users interact with our products, and their requirements vary significantly from region to region. This is why at Volkswagen, we no longer speak merely of a Software Defined Vehicle, but rather of a Customer Defined Vehicle. We‘ve established various user journeys to meet the expectations of different target groups.

This simultaneously provides us with a clearer understanding of how customer requirements can be realised through software, backend, and vehicle system architecture.
A crucial consequence of this new reality is our departure from the "world car" concept, as it no longer meets the requirements of all local markets.
Instead, we‘re expanding the capabilities of our global R&D network to strengthen product localisation and develop products specifically for regional markets. Wolfsburg remains the innovation engine for the core brands of Brand Group Core, but we aim to increase our development cadence through stronger decentralisation. Our objective is to substantially shorten the PEP (Product Emergence Process) by more than six months and significantly reduce development effort.

We need more speed in development, and we must become more cost-effective to strengthen our competitiveness. Modernising our system landscape represents a vital key to reducing development times and costs.
Following comprehensive system evaluation, we‘ve decided to implement Dassault Systèmes‘ 3DEXPERIENCE platform as our enterprise PLM platform. A decisive criterion in our system selection was the future-readiness of the new technology, particularly regarding artificial intelligence support.
To make the transition to our new PLM platform as agile as possible, we‘re taking a novel approach oriented around development process phases.
We‘ve defined so-called plateaus – coherent clusters of specific capabilities required for each respective phase. By year-end, the first plateau with its full functional scope will be deployed directly in the ID.1 vehicle project. The ID.1, our compact, affordable electric vehicle, is scheduled for market launch in 2027.
Beyond AI, all aspects of virtual development hold high priority for accelerating our development processes.

At Volkswagen, we remain heavily hardware-oriented, testing everything under extreme conditions in very hot and cold environments. This approach has made us strong, but naturally, it also makes us slower. We don‘t intend to completely abandon these hardware tests, but we plan to reduce them by 50 percent by replacing them with virtual and hybrid testing methods. This not only saves time but also provides the positive side effect of better understanding our vehicles – when executed properly. It‘s actually easier to assemble and test a car than to configure a simulation environment or test bench to function like the actual vehicle.
Volkswagen is reinventing its R&D, and the ID.1 represents the first project where we‘re implementing new processes and methodologies for the „Customer Defined Vehicle.“ We‘re confident we‘re on the right path.

Yours,
Thomas Kamla
CTO ID.1, MQB Classic, Cooperation Projects, Methods & Tools