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VW CEO forced out during pivot to electric vehicles

Key shareholders in Volkswagen AG VOW 0.37%▲ joined forces with labor leaders to oust Chief Executive Officer Herbert Diess, who was in the midst of a push to turn the German auto company into a top maker of electric vehicles.

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Mr. Diess was informed around midday Thursday that the company’s core shareholders and labor representatives had decided to fire him. The broader supervisory board learned of the decision at a meeting at around 4:30 p.m. Friday local time, according to a person familiar with the proceeding.

The sudden ouster comes after renewed internal strife over the slow progress developing core software for the company’s new generation of electric vehicles. The delays have caused the launches of some models to be pushed back, raising doubts among the Porsche-Piëch family about Mr. Diess’s ability to deliver on his promises, people familiar with the situation said.

VW’s leadership crisis has plunged the company’s electric-vehicle strategy into uncertainty and has raised questions about the company’s governance, which is dominated by a triumvirate of family shareholders, the German state of Lower Saxony and the country’s biggest trade union. 

“The hope of the supervisory board must be for new group CEO Blume to have more success in guiding the software strategy of the group,” Daniel Roeska, analyst at Bernstein Research, said in a note to clients. “However, it will take months to come up with a new plan, and creating unrest as the group is heading into a challenging 2023 is the wrong time, in our view.” 

Mr. Diess couldn’t be reached for comment.

Auto-industry CEOs around the world are wrestling with how best to transition to new technologies—much of which isn’t core to their companies’ expertise and requires different thinking, cost structures and skill sets. 

Car executives are under pressure to get ahead of new rivals, many of them in Silicon Valley, which have deeper pockets and are unencumbered by a capital-intensive legacy business focused on making gasoline-powered vehicles.