VW to name Bentley exec as head of Cariad software unit, reports say

Volkswagen Group CEO Oliver Blume is bringing in Bentley's production boss, Peter Bosch, to turn around its troubled software division Cariad, reports said.

Bosch will replace Dirk Hilgenberg as Cariad CEO in June, business daily Handelsblatt reported on Monday. Bosch is a VW Group veteran. He was appointed Bentley's head of manufacturing in 2017.

Two other members of Cariad's top management -- chief technology officer, Lynn Longo, and finance boss Thomas Sedran -- will also be replaced, according to media reports.

Porsche's software chief Sajjad Khan will join the unit’s board, Bloomberg reported.

The shake-up is Blume's first major restructuring move since he became VW Group CEO last September, replacing Herbert Diess.

Bosch will restructure Cariad and explore new partnerships with tech companies while also expanding VW Group's automated driving cooperation with Intel's Mobileye, reports said.

Cariad has exceeded its budget and failed to meet goals, contributing to Diess' departure. The unit's problems have delayed the launches of the Porsche electric Macan and the new Audi Q6 e-tron.

Both EVs are key models for the two brands' electrification strategies to compete with Tesla. The brands' executives have put intense pressure on Blume to reorganize Cariad and return more responsibility for software development to individual brands, according to reports.

Blume's predecessor Diess had wanted Cariad to be a strong global player in the tech field including creating a scalable EV software platform completely in-house to help the group challenge Tesla.

But Porsche and Audi complained that Cariad is too closely interwoven with their development processes causing internal discord and project delays. There were also significant software glitches for VW's ID electric model range.

The planned launch of company-wide structural car software, initially designed to enable the fourth of five levels of autonomous driving from 2026, has been postponed by two years.

Cariad will not be closed down, despite speculation that this was a possibility, because if that happened "we wouldn't get any cars on the road for the next year and a half," a VW Group executive told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

VW  said the automaker is analyzing Cariad and its projects. A number of decisions have been made, but no decisions on personnel, the spokesperson told Reuters, adding that Cariad and vehicle software development remained integral to VW Group's strategy.

Cariad employs 6,000 people globally.

Reuters and Bloomberg contributed to this report