Audi creates software department with Geoffrey Bouquot at the helm
The new Board of Management department will be headed by Frenchman Geoffrey Bouquot, who was most recently Group CTO & Senior Vice President Strategy at supplier Valeo – and before that technical advisor for industrial affairs in the cabinet of the French defence minister. Audi CEO Gernot Döllner comments on the move as follows: “Vorsprung durch Technik is our ambition, and innovation is the key to our fitness for the future. We need a thorough structural realignment to achieve a faster pace of development and a clear focus on software. By appointing Geoffrey Bouquot, we are living up to this aim.”
According to the Audi CEO, Bouquot has extensive experience in the management and transformation of large development and software teams. In the course of Bouquot’s appointment as head of the department, Döllner emphasises that Audi is creating clarity about what it will focus on in the future: ‘With the decision to create a separate Board of Management department for Innovation and Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV), the Supervisory Board is reaffirming the consistent realignment of the organisation and continuing to place software at the centre.
The background to this is that Audi wants and needs to speed up its development work – the software had led to a long delay in the premiere of the first Audi on the new PPE platform, the Q6 e-tron. To this end, the Volkswagen subsidiary is introducing a so-called matrix organisation, which gives the model series management more freedom, but is intended to structure the competencies in the line areas of Technical Development more clearly. “This goes hand in hand with a paradigm shift towards integrated vehicle development with software as a leading element.”
“As board member for Innovation and Software-Defined Vehicle, Geoffrey Bouquot will drive the transformation to a software-centered organization,” the press release says.
The new manager also commented in the Audi press release: “Audi for me represents precision and the future – engineering and digitalization. I am looking forward to my new role. I would like to do my part in initiating a positive upward trend together with the team at Audi and its ecosystem. Greater efficiency and the further development of digitalization are the paths that lead to this goal.”
VW manager Gernot Döllner has been CEO of Audi since 1 September 2023. After a standstill period, Döllner began to implement his strategy at Audi. This resulted in a number of changes to model planning, the organisation and also management personnel – but initially without any changes to the Board of Management. These only came about when Head of Development Oliver Hoffmann was transferred to Audi’s Formula 1 project as General Authorised Representative in March – and Döllner himself took over the development department.
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