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The appearance at the Geneva Motor Show last year caused a sensation not only in the automotive industry.
Anton Piëch, son of the legendary Ferdinand Piëch, presented the prototype of an electric sports car that bears his name: Piëch.
In the meantime, his company has taken a few steps.
Ex-Volkswagen boss Matthias Müller has recently been the head of the board of directors, while Andreas Henke, most recently head of the audio specialist Burmester, heads the board.
WORLD
: Mr. Piëch, you have brought well-known and experienced car managers into your start-up, what do you expect from them?
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Anton Piëch
: That you build a good company.
That sounds trivial, but I've already founded several companies and I know that implementation separates the wheat from the chaff.
There are plenty of good ideas, but if the skills are lacking, that's a problem.
Anton Piëch, namesake of the auto start-up
Source: Piëch Holding AG
WORLD
: 14 employees are shown on your website.
Is that the whole company?
Piëch
: The number of our employees is actually not much higher, but it only reflects a small part of our team.
We work with external developers, a total of up to 150 people are involved in our project, many over a long period of time.
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WORLD
: Mr. Müller, you were VW boss and Porsche boss, a car manager can hardly achieve more.
Why are you now participating in a start-up?
Matthias Müller
: In the VW Group I got to know all the strengths and weaknesses of such a large company.
I am 67 now and I have made the decision not to pursue an office in any large company.
Instead, I have invested in start-ups and work in an advisory capacity there.
Toni Piëch and Rea Stark's project is about technology as well as entrepreneurship - I'll do my best to make it a success.
Ex-Volkswagen boss Matthias Müller
Source: Piëch Holding AG
WORLD
: How deeply are you involved in the business?
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Müller
: As chairman of the board of directors, I'm not involved in operational terms.
But I'm a car man with heart and soul, so I'm interested in how things are going.
The operational responsibility lies with Andreas Henke and Klaus Schmidt, the chief technology officer.
WORLD
: Mr. Henke, you worked at Porsche and were head of the family business Burmester.
Why didn't you go back to a corporation?
Andreas Henke
: I didn't really want to go back to the automotive industry.
At Porsche, I worked on the 918 Spyder, which was hard to beat.
Here we are again creating something new, we are trying to approach the automobile with great passion, a clear conscience and a philosophical difference.
Andreas Henke came from the audio company Burmester
Source: Piëch Holding AG
WORLD
: Is the automotive industry currently experiencing a new era?
Piëch
: Yes, we are in a new era.
Because technology changes, there is room for start-ups in industry.
Here in Europe we can draw on an experience and tradition that does not exist anywhere else.
Nevertheless, it makes you shake your head when you say: I'm starting a new car company.
Even if your name is Piëch.
Müller
: We are currently experiencing the third revolution in the automotive industry.
The first was industrialization with the Ford T, the second was the Toyota production system in the early 1990s.
Now we have another quantum leap, driven by the climate and mobility transition.
While the transformation of large companies is slow and evolutionary, start-ups can take more risk.
That makes it very exciting.
WORLD
: Most start-ups arise in the USA and China.
Is the early days passing by in Europe?
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Müller
: That may have been the case, but it has changed.
I am involved in several start-ups, all of which come from Germany.
You don't always have to be first, but second you have to do better.
This is what it will look like, the Piëch sports car.
The first series vehicles are expected to hit the road at the end of 2022 / beginning of 2023
Source: Piëch Holding AG
WORLD
: If you compare yourself to great electropioners: Is Piëch more like Tesla or more like Polestar?
Henke
: Both comparisons are limp.
With our envisaged models, the two-seater, the four-seater and the SUV, we are well into the luxury segment.
Each of the vehicles will cost at least 150,000 euros.
We also distinguish ourselves through our focus on sustainable mobility, because we plan to one day replace the battery electric motors with hydrogen drives or internal combustion engines that run on synthetic fuels.
This is how we achieve three to four times the mileage.
This dramatically reduces the carbon footprint.
Müller
: I have great respect for what is created at Tesla and Polestar.
I worked for a long time at Volkswagen with Thomas Ingenlath, the boss of Polestar.
The brand is to occupy the upper market segment for Volvo.
Tesla, on the other hand, aims to become a mass manufacturer;
the volume is developing positively, but the business side is still lagging.
Piëch
: Our ambition is to build a profitable car company.
What connects us to Tesla is independence.
Brands can no longer offer them in larger containers.
WORLD
: Do you want to compete with Porsche?
Müller
: I would never work for a Porsche competitor - neither are we.
As a small series manufacturer, we will perhaps produce 10,000 cars a year.
WORLD
: When you write Piëch on a car, the expectations are enormous, because the whole family history resonates.
Can you even meet these expectations?
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Piëch
: Not me, but my team can do it.
The name naturally arouses special associations, but the customers in our segment have extremely high quality standards anyway.
WORLD
: How can you redeem it without doing your own research and development?
Piëch
: There are two options for innovation: Either develop things yourself or quickly integrate new technologies from the market into your own products.
We have chosen this path, also in production.
There is a great deal of technological uncertainty, so it is an advantage if you can always switch to the best suppliers and producers.
WORLD
: Are the corporations leaving a niche open because they cannot invest in all new technologies at the same time?
Müller
: BMW, Daimler and VW play the entire spectrum, and they are doing well.
Millions of internal combustion engines will still be in operation worldwide in 2050.
That's why I'm also campaigning for e-fuels because they can be a solution to reducing emissions in the vehicle fleet.
We, on the other hand, no longer have to worry about burners.
WORLD
: Who are your suppliers, where does the technology come from?
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Henke
: We are working with a new player on the battery, so Toni and Rea were lucky enough to meet the right people and had the courage to say yes at the right moment.
Almost all other suppliers are the usual suspects in the industry.
The method of choosing the best supplier in each case and developing it in the V-scheme has been used in aircraft construction and IT for decades.
Our service lies in the integration: of technology and soul.
WELT
: How can it be that you have exclusive access to a sensational new battery technology and that large corporations do not dispute that?
Piëch
: To join large manufacturers with a new technology is very complex.
Our supplier comes from China, is based in Hong Kong and has a German management.
We have a contract with him as a first-time user, but we want to help the technology get into the masses.
It is not the case that a battery, even if it is superior, will be installed in all cars tomorrow.
Müller
: Something similar is happening in the battery segment as it is with the car manufacturers.
There are the big providers like CATL, Samsung and LG who have to save themselves in the future.
There are also start-ups that find it difficult to do business with the big companies.
WORLD
: When do you start producing?
Henke
: The plan remains to put the first series vehicles on the road at the end of 2022 / beginning of 2023.
Müller
: The date mainly depends on the quality.
We don't see our customers as guinea pigs, we want to offer them a well-engineered product.
WORLD
: VW had problems starting the Golf and ID.3 this year - because of the software.
Where does your software come from?
Henke
: We have different partners for this - very well-known and new ones.
We don't say exactly which ones yet.
WELT
: Do you also buy the core competence of engine software?
Henke
: Yes.
Ultimately, however, there has to be someone who understands what is happening and who is able to summarize these building blocks.
The brain is with us.
Piëch
: We work like Apple, whose product also lives from the integration of its hardware and software components.
As a specialist in small series, the challenge of making a leap in volume like Tesla from Model S to Model 3 is also eliminated.
WORLD
: Because you
're sticking to
the roadster to talk to Tesla models?
Piëch
: The roadster was made on someone else's platform, it's different from our car.
We develop our own modular architecture, a Piëch-IP.
We build our product range on this.
Always making comparisons with Tesla is not productive.
There is a wide range of new approaches that are good for industry and business.
WORLD
: Can VW, Daimler and BMW still be at the fore in ten or 20 years, when today's start-ups have grown up?
Müller
: The decline of the German auto industry has been predicted around ten times in 100 years.
This is the eleventh time - and she will still survive.
We'll have to wait and see if Tesla really gets the curve.
Most manufacturers from China have not yet managed to establish themselves globally.
There will certainly be an adjustment, of some brands only the name will remain.
And we will no longer talk about an auto industry, but rather a mobility industry.
The actual transformation is to adapt to the future needs of customers with intermodal mobility chains.
WORLD
: Do you personally find it difficult to say goodbye to the combustion engine?
Müller
: Yes, because it should take place so radically.
The modern diesel is the cleanest drive concept and also superior to electromobility.
I wonder why you have to be so rigid on the part of politics.
In my opinion, technology openness would be the order of the day.
Piëch
: The combustion engine doesn't just stand for CO2, but also for the fascination of the automobile, this brutal relationship between man and machine.
There is something sensual about the sound and the vibration.
We are saying goodbye to this because the car is becoming a cell phone.
We are trying to build a bridge and hope that we can keep some of the virtues of the combustion era alive in our cars.
Henke
: From my point of view, it's not a final farewell.
There are still many drive variants to come that we are not yet thinking about today.
In the future there will be different concepts, depending on whether I get up at 5 a.m. on a Sunday morning to have fun alone on the pass road or whether I commute to the office.
And when we long for the past, we still have our old cars in the garage.
"He had gasoline flowing in his veins"
The ex-VW boss Ferdinand Piëch died in Rosenheim at the age of 82.
Piëch turned a takeover candidate into a global corporation.
Dietmar Deffner in conversation with capital market analyst Robert Halver.
Source: WELT / Dietmar Deffner