Why VW Group veteran Gernot Doellner was picked to lead Audi

Audi HQ in Ingolstadt, Germany.

Audi’s new CEO Gernot Doellner is hardly known to the public and even industry insiders are likely to have Googled him after it was announced that he will replace Markus Duesmann on Sept. 1

Doellner, 54, is a 30-year veteran of Volkswagen Group and a close associate of VW Group and Porsche CEO Oliver Blume.

Doellner has been sitting on the top floor of VW Group’s headquarters in Wolfsburg since 2021 when he became VW Group’s head of product strategy. His office was within sight of Blume’s.

Doellner has had a close relationship with Blume for many years, although it was Herbert Diess, Blume’s predecessor as VW Group CEO who brought Doellner to VW’s headquarters from Porsche.

Doellner’s role as the group’s chief strategist was to work out the product planning for the coming years across the brands and, above all, coordinate the automaker’s electric strategy.

Doellner had to look far into the future and was also closely involved in planning the brands’ lighthouse projects such as VW brand’s Trinity program for an advanced self-driving car.

Doellner is regarded as a conceptual thinker and as someone who can also make decisions when in doubt. This is what Duesmann is said to have lacked, allowing Audi to sink into lethargy.

Doellner also brings experience in structuring model launches from his time at Porsche. Audi urgently needs this.

The brand is about to launch the largest model offensive in its history. By 2025, 20 new models will be launched, ten of them fully electric. Blume knows that this must be successful. And he is relying on Doellner’s expertise.

Unlike Duesmann who came from BMW, Doellner is a VW Group insider. He joined the automaker as a doctoral student in 1993 and worked his way up the executive ranks.

Doellner spent much of his VW Group career at Porsche and he already knows many Audi colleagues in development functions because the two brands have a close technical cooperation. This should benefit him in his new position because there has been friction between Audi and Porsche engineers.

Doellner initially worked as a systems analyst in the group, then moved to Porsche’s development center in Weissach as project manager for reengineering. From 2001 to 2010, he was head of Porsche vehicle concepts. He also took over project management for the Porsche 918 Spyder supercar.

He then became head of the product strategy department before taking charge of the Panamera model series from 2011 to 2018. Before moving to Wolfsburg, he was head of product and concept at Porsche.

EV advocate

Doellner is considered a convinced advocate of electric drive. For him, battery power is the better alternative than the internal combustion engine not only for reasons of climate protection, but also because of its superior driving characteristics.

In the first few weeks after moving to Wolfsburg, Doellner was still commuting 330 miles in a Porsche Taycan full-electric sedan between his home near Stuttgart and Wolfsburg, as he once told the Handelsblatt business paper.

He has since brought his family to Wolfsburg and uses a VW ID3 compact electric hatchback for the short commute to work. He will now relocate to Audi’s headquarters in Ingolstadt in southern Germany. He could switch to an Audi E-tron GT, which uses the same platform as the Taycan.