Volkswagen AG (VOW3) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Audio Gap] Christian Senger and Christian Dahlheim will then present our mobility solutions platform to you. And as always, all documents will be available on our website. We'd like to now show you what mobility for generations to come looks like. [Presentation]

It is always fascinating to see the engagement of our people. It's our diversity and scale, our enthusiasm for individual mobility that make us unique. And it is the rich history of mobility that has excited generations; iconic products like the Volkswagen Beetle, the Golf, the Audi Quattro or the Porsche 911. With our electric models, the ID.s, the Audi e-trons or Porsche Taycan, we have laid the foundation for fascinating and precious future-proof brands. We are currently experiencing the transition from the combustion engine to e-mobility, an important step towards a cleaner planet. The next much more radical change is the transition towards much safer, smarter and finally, autonomous cars. Until 2030, the world of mobility will have seen the greatest transformation since the transition from horses to cars at the beginning of the 20th century. The future of cars, the future of individual mobility will be bright. Today, we will present our strategy through 2030. We call it NEW AUTO because cars are here to stay. Individual mobility will remain the most important means of transport in 2030. In fact, people driving or being driven in owned, leased, shared or rented cars will still account for 85% of mobility. Those 85% will be at the core of our business. At the same time, cars and our business models will change more than ever before. Let me take you on a journey to the year 2030. Mobility in 2030 will be autonomous, digital, smart, sustainable and safe. Imagine that your grandmother or your 8-year-old son can hop in a Volkswagen cab to visit one another whenever they want without mom or dad behind the wheel or maybe you just need a quick ride within the city, you can use one of our mobility apps and an ID.BUZZ will pick you up and your friends driverless. Like in robo taxis, in private cars too, autonomous driving will be available, at least on open highways in many parts of the world. You can spend your time in the car working, playing with your children, talking to friends or watching movies. Traffic will be much safer. Vehicles and infrastructure will be communicating to significantly reduce traffic jams and accidents. The virtual driver will be much better and safer than any human. The new world of individual mobility will bring other benefits for society, too. Electric cars will serve as the relevant buffer to stabilize grids and shave the peaks of oversupply. For our business models, that means revenue and profit pools will shift gradually through 2030. First, from internal combustion engines, or ICEs, to electric vehicles, and later, to software and services. The ICE market is set to decline by over 20% over the next 10 years. At the same time, by 2030, the global electric vehicle market will be on par with ICE sales. We will be more profitable with EVs because batteries and charging will increase the share in value add. And with our platforms, we will be more competitive. Keeping the batteries for second life use and finally for recycling will allow for additional value creation. We are aiming at keeping control of the valuable raw material production for first use in the car, second use is home storage and then full recycling, the circular economy. We are aiming at higher market shares in EVs. With our global platforms, we will increase scale right from the start in China, in the EU and in the U.S., allowing even other industry players such as Ford to benefit our economies of scale. Electric cars will get cheaper over time driven by advancements in battery technology and in scale, a surprise for mobility falling below today's level. Industry revenues are going to double in size compared to today. The automotive market is projected to total $5 trillion by 2030. That's 10x as much as the smartphone market. That explains why big tech players want to enter our industry. With our combination of world-class brands supported by then globally leading technology platforms, our position to tap into those profit pools is good. In the NEW AUTO world, customers will still choose a specific design, body style and brand for service quality. But more than ever, brand differentiation will come from software and services. Already today, our brands are leading in their segment. Audi is the most advanced premium brand, electrifying its product portfolio. The Audi e-tron is the industry's first fully electric premium SUV. The Q4 e-tron is the first Audi on the MEB platform, probably the most desirable one with a clear premium appeal. The e-tron TT has become Audi's new brand shaper with 800 volts charging capabilities, impressive performance and outstanding design. With its high-tech project Artemis, a highly efficient, sophisticated electric car with Level 4 driving features, Audi will yet again develop cutting-edge technology for the whole group. Now in control of Bentley, Audi will use this technology to build the most sophisticated luxurious Bentley, thereby entering segments that haven't been accessible to the Audi brand before. Bundling Bentleys, all-electric luxury car portfolio with Lamborghini and Ducati in the Audi premium group will further leverage all possible synergies in premium. With Markus Duesmann and his team now fully in charge of the group's premium activities, we have efficiently organized our premium brand portfolio. The Volkswagen brand is driving electrification worldwide with its accelerated strategy. Volkswagen will be the market leader in EVs by 2025 by rolling out a leading BEV platform. With the complete ID family, the ID.3, the ID.4, ID.5 and ID.6 as well as the iconic ID.BUZZ coming already next year, Volkswagen has been building up the most comprehensive EV product portfolio in the industry yet. And with its high-tech future project Trinity, a level 4 already fully electric car, the Volkswagen brand will bring the Artemis technology into the volume segment affordable for all. Leading the volume group, Volkswagen provides scale and technology for our other brands. CUPRA, with its emotional cars built on Volkswagen's technology platform MEB, is already outselling Alfa Romeo and quickly gaining traction in both quality and quantity of sales. Based on the same technology, ŠKODA offers state-of-the-art cars with an unbeatable value for money proposition. With ŠKODA being the most profitable volume brand already and CUPRA at the brink of sustainable profitability, margins in the volume group will continuously improve. Volkswagen commercial vehicles is evolving more and more into a lifestyle brand, offering the range of famous California vehicles and soon launching our most emotional electric car so far, the ID.BUZZ. It will significantly contribute to enhancing the appeal of the Volkswagen brand, reloading it with emotions and love, particularly in the United States, where the coming home after 30 years will boost our EV campaign in the market and bring back the emotional touch with all the memories from the '70s. Through the combination of our commercial vehicle platforms with Ford, we are becoming very competitive in the light commercial vehicles and medium pickup truck segment worldwide. Porsche performs in a league of its own. The company has shown resilient EBIT margins of above 15% over the past years. Porsche has always maintained a higher degree of independence while being industrially integrated into the group, contributing technology and benefiting from scale and the Volkswagen manufacturing footprint. Today, Porsche is stronger than ever before. It has embraced electrification early and will sell 80% EVs by 2030. Porsche is a strong testimony how an automotive icon can remain an outstanding sports and performance brand while repositioning towards electrification and sustainability. Our technology platforms will offer cutting-edge technology at unparalleled scale at high quality and competitive costs available worldwide. The mechatronics platform, the next generation of our hardware platform, in the succession of MQB, MLB, MEB and PPE, will allow us to reduce complexity over time as we will consolidate our existing platforms to one architecture for the entire E product portfolio from entry-level to top of the range, from 85 to 850 kilowatts, our super platform. It will be 100% electric and ready for autonomous driving, available for all models and brands. To improve and speed up our mechatronics platform competencies, we will invest around EUR 800 million into a new research and development facility in Wolfsburg, further improving best practices in platform design. Markus Duesmann and Thomas Schmall will lead the entire program. Hardware platforms ensure customers get the best product and quality at the best price. It's software that will ensure the seamless integration of NEW AUTO into our customers' digital lives. CARIAD is developing the software backbone for all group cars, our own software stacks. The Volkswagen operation system will be the platform to deploy new software and features anywhere at any time and turn the car into a continuously improving self-learning machine. By 2030, we target that 60% of our sales and 37 million cars will be based on our own software stacks, gathering large amounts of data that will constantly make our products better. With the electrification of our fleet, we are building up the core competencies, battery cell technology, including chemistry and raw materials, charging and energy. Volkswagen will be one of the biggest battery users globally. That is why we are working on our own cell format across all brands. By 2030, it will cover 80% of our electric volume. Thomas Schmall and Elke Temme will share exciting news on our charging and energy business later on. Mobility and transport as a service. Fully autonomous will be an integral part of our business model in 2030. Robo taxi services require 4 different layers of activity: a booking platform to match demand and supply, holding the customer data, and managing the payments. This platform can be highly profitable. The operation of the fleet service business, which we are testing with our MOIA brand in Hamburg. The autonomous vehicle, we will start with the ID.BUZZ AD. And then the virtual driver, the most complex software system the world has seen so far. In fact, a worldwide active neuronal network, which continuously improves its driving capabilities, also potentially very profitable. Sustainability. Reducing our CO2 footprint, and so safeguarding the future of individual mobility is our mission. By 2030, we will reduce the carbon footprint per car by 30% over its entire life cycle, in line with the Paris Agreement. This equals roughly to 15 tons of CO2 per car from today's 34 tons. By 2040, we expect to achieve nearly 100% zero-emission vehicles in all major markets. And by 2050 at the latest, our global operations will be climate-neutral. For our investments in future technologies, we have earmarked EUR 73 billion until 2025, representing currently 50% of our total investments. And we will continue to raise efficiency throughout the group. We are on track to meet our 5% fixed cost reduction program for the next 2 years. We have committed ourselves to reducing material cost by another 7%. We have started a working capital management initiative. And we are optimizing our ICE business with fewer models, a much reduced ICE drivetrain portfolio, which we just agreed to reduce by another third and a better price/mix. In 2030, China, the U.S. and Europe will remain our main focus of our activities. In regard to the U.S. market, there's never been a point in time where we were better positioned to significantly increase our market share. We are ready to bring a wide range of highly attractive EVs tailored to the U.S. market and participate overproportionately at a time when everybody has to start from scratch. The ID.4 had a flying start, perfectly in time for Biden's push towards e-mobility. In China, Volkswagen has been the unrivaled market leader for many years. Our goal is to achieve this position although in the Chinese e-mobility world. We achieved major milestones in recent months, taking majority stakes in e-mobility businesses for Audi and for Volkswagen for the first time, investing in local battery manufacturing and ramping up our software capabilities with a carrier subsidiary. With the ID.6, ID.4 and ID.3, we are rapidly rolling out our e-portfolio this year. Our key electric joint venture, Volkswagen Anhui, will become the local hub for our mechatronic architecture. As China will grow faster than the rest of the world, we are gearing up our operations with more local skills and capabilities. Taking our 660,000 people through this transition is the biggest task for our leadership and requires a new flexibility and adaptability for each individual. We have the right strategy to be at least as successful in NEW AUTO as in the old world. We are providing the training, reskilling and adequate working environments. Together with the Works Council, we have made our German sites fit for the future, turning our plant in Zwickau into an e-mobility site and planning similar groundbreaking transformation for our plants in Emden and Hanover. The transformation of our group components is unparalleled in the industry. With Trinity and Artemis, we are planning 2 flagship projects for Wolfsburg and Hanover. Our workers' representatives have been supporting the strategy, ensuring alignment between management and the workforce and facilitating change, starting with the future pack back in 2016. In times of unprecedented change, our employees at our German sites will have job security through 2029. So much restructuring in such a short period of time would not have been possible without reliable labor relations. My thanks, therefore, goes to the Works Council led by Daniela Cavallo. Because competitive profitability is a basis for a safe -- long-term safe jobs, it is an important goal for us. And I'm convinced that together with Daniela Cavallo, we have a solid basis of trust to continue working successfully on our future. The mobility world will be changing radically over the next decade. Individual mobility has a bright future as we are making it emission-free, safe and convenient. Being driven safe and comfortably, fast though smooth in beautiful cars will be a very desirable new experience. Volkswagen, with its innovative brands and state-of-the-art platforms in its NEW AUTO strategy, is preparing to play an important role in this new world. And now I would like to invite Arno Antlitz on stage.

Ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome from my side as well. Together, we look positively to the changing world of mobility. An exciting factor in the future of our industry will be the fundamental shift in revenue pools. Our industry is in the middle of the shift from combustion engine cars to electric vehicles or EVs. In 2030, we expect new car revenues from EVs to surpass those of ICEs. Towards 2025, we expect the third revenue pool to emerge, the software-enabled business based on autonomous driving. This pool will increase significantly in the years to come. In 2030, it will almost be on par with EVs or ICEs. Against the backdrop of this development, our financial strategy is tailored towards a twofold goal: firstly, prepare our company to capture a significant part of these revenue pools; secondly, safeguard and strengthen our financial foundation and the ability to generate cash flows on the way towards this new industry. At the same time, provide sufficient flexibility to adapt if things develop in a different way. So what are our priorities to financially steer the transformation? Looking at our ICE business, we intend to keep our ICE cost competitive and the corresponding cash flow stable, and continue to effectively reallocate our capital and resources towards electrification and software. Looking at EVs, we want to ensure the successful ramp-up of our battery electric platform in terms of customer satisfaction, product substance, low complexity and cost, and to secure best margins along the whole value chain, especially upstream towards cell manufacturing or raw materials. Looking at software, we strive to establish a business model for a unified and powerful software stack that will be deployed throughout all our brands and millions of cars per year, and to establish a relevant mobility platform to enable us to tap into recurring revenue pools of software and mobility as a service. When it comes to phasing out combustion engine cars, we are convinced our current toolkit, MQB, will deliver a clear competitive advantage. ICE margins will come under pressure towards 2025 and beyond. Headwinds will be the declining demand and the challenge of diminishing scale, rising cost of emission regulations like Euro 7 and tax disadvantages compared to EVs. To mitigate these headwinds, we strive to radically reduce complexity of our ICEs. In Europe, we intend to decrease our number of combustion engine models by 60% until 2030. On top of that, our MQB will enable us to keep the scale we need. MQB product substance is still highly competitive. The initial investments have been made already. Therefore, the phase out requires only minimal additional structural funding. And MQB provides us with the flexibility to bundle production of ICEs in multi-brand production plants to keep factory utilization at competitive levels. Ladies and gentlemen, we are fully committed to transform our company towards electrification and digitalization. Each planning round, we increase the share of investments in these new technologies, and we will continue to do so. As a consequence, by 2025, we expect better electric cars to amount to around 20% of our total sales. By 2030, we expect this proportion to increase to around 50%. And despite a slower start in 2021, we stick to the target of around 6% BEV share in 2021 and confirm that we are fully on track in terms of CO2 compliance in Europe. We've launched 5 major work streams to finance these ambitious plans. The first stream focused on intensive use of synergy families along our brands. However, we made no compromise when it comes to product substance. In the future, we want to provide even more differentiation for our customers. An excellent example here is the ID.4 family. ID.4, Q4 e-tron and ŠKODA ENYAQ, great cars which target different customer segments and needs. The second work stream involves intensified work on productivity in our plants. For the third stream, we have just launched a working capital initiative. We are fully aware that we have huge potential here. The fourth stream involves a broad purchasing program that we have just launched. And we are well underway to reducing our overhead cost base. Concerning fixed cost base, we see a promising start of our initiative. We have reduced overhead expenses by around 7% compared to 2019 so far. And we are well on track to achieving our 2023 target of around 10% reduction. And step-by-step, we will provide additional proof points on the progress of other program elements. We intend to capture even more group-wide synergies to optimize R&D spending and continue our strict cost discipline. On the other hand, in the years to come, we need to keep combustion engines cars competitive, prepare for a significant EV ramp up, and significantly invest in software. Therefore, we foresee higher proportional R&D and CapEx in the next 2 to 3 years. With the phase out of investments in combustion engine cars, we want to bring this combined ratio down to 12% in 2024 and down to 11% towards 2025 and beyond. These figures include CapEx for 1 giga factory in our books and 1% R&D per year for software and CARIAD. In line with scale effects from higher sales and production volume, we expect higher EV margins over time. We will lower proportionate R&D, thanks to shared platforms. At the same time, we strive to achieve battery cost savings, increased economies of scale and lower factory costs through our electric vehicles. Combining these levers should lead to a margin parity of ICEs and EVs within the next 2 to 3 years. To reflect our sharpened strategy, we are also raising our ambition level for operating return on sales for 2025. We are increasing the original range of 7% to 8% in 2025 to 8% to 9%. We will take these ambitions as the foundation of our planning round 70 in November. Of course, higher profits and optimized working capital should lead to even stronger cash flow. We will update our cash flow guidance, too, in November. Ladies and gentlemen, we intend to tightly financially steer the transformation of our company. Step-by-step, we will complement the steering of individual brand performance with focus and transparency along key platform as value drivers. Volkswagen is a bundle of some of the most fascinating, powerful and valuable brands in our industry. We are proud of our brands, and we are certain that strong individual brands will remain a key differentiating factor going forward. We will strive to even better position our brands in the future and work hard on cost and efficiency. To strengthen cooperation and synergies, we redefined our brand groups: volume, premium and sport. In these brand groups, our teams will work even closer together for the good of our customers. In China, we want to keep our leading market position. We are enlarging our current JV network alongside our 2 strong partners. With [ FRB and S4B ], we are setting up 2 new pure EV joint ventures: Volkswagen Anhui and Audi FRB NEV company. At the same time, unified technology and scale will be the driving force in our industry. This means that we need to shift our focus towards value drivers like EV platforms, a unified software stack, battery energy, charging and mobility solutions. We want to install industry-leading platforms across strong brands to capture even more synergies in the future. Our internal decision-making and capital allocation will be geared towards that goal. As a consequence, our financial steering in the future will integrate brands and value drivers. When it comes to setup of these platforms, we apply 3 guiding principles. First, where suitable, we intend to structure these platforms in separate entities that could operate in a stand-alone capacity. This will enable us to plan and steer unit individually and to capture the full-scale advantage throughout the group. CARIAD is a good example. Others will follow. Second, we want to secure scale and know-how along these value drivers, either by organic growth or through partnerships and cooperations. Our goal is to keep balance sheet as lean as possible. And third, when it makes strategic sense for us, we will also use the opportunities to grow third-party business like the cooperation with Ford on our MEB platform or possibly later in software. One example of a key value driver is our software company CARIAD. With CARIAD, we are fully committed to developing the leading automotive software stack in the industry. We are moving towards a synergistic business model. Most of the software-related R&D costs of the brands have been shifted to CARIAD, which will be reported as a stand-alone entity in the future. The CARIAD business model foresees a significant upfront investment phase of about EUR 2 billion to EUR 2.5 billion per year. In the income phase, CARIAD will receive license fees paid by the brands or paid by potential third parties for the software use. And this already started with the rollout of the ID family architecture. Thomas will give you examples from battery energy and charging, our third platform. The fourth platform is a group-wide mobility platform, enabling our customers to access a broad variety of mobility offerings like mobility on demand, individual rental and subscription models. We intend to integrate this platform within our financial services business, either together with a partner or as organic enlargement of our current competencies. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a clear plan how to create value. We will scale our EV platforms. We are committed to developing a leading automotive software stack, and we will continue to invest in autonomous driving and mobility services. During this transition, our traditional business will help to generate the profits and cash flows to do so. Based on these unique opportunities, we strive to be a leader in the transformation of our industry. We will preserve our natural resources, and we will achieve this with integrity and based on our values. I am delighted to be part of this journey. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Arno. You have just brilliantly explained the strategic directions that we need to address to be successful in the increasing automotive profit pools of the future. Then, the scalable systems platform, SSP for short, is our basic layer and for sure, a major component of NEW AUTO. Focusing the most important modules within one mechatronic platform architecture is the next logical step. At Volkswagen Group, we have decades of valuable experience in the development of cross-brand vehicle platforms. I think it's fair to say that we are the unchallenged platform heroes. Now we take this approach to the next level, and we will do it faster and more target-oriented than before. In our current ICE portfolio, we are basically using 3 different architecture. And our best offer is already based on only 2 different architectures, the MEB and the PPE. In the second half of this decade, we will introduce SSP for one strong mechatronics platform, or as Herbert Diess mentioned before, the super platform for the whole Volkswagen Group. Introducing the SSP means leveraging our power in performance management and building on our capabilities to maximize synergies across all segments and brands. Starting in 2026, we will have only one single platform architecture for all our future models. Unified mechatronics and a unified architecture are central to future software solutions. Thereby, the SSP will be the key enabler for future technologies like autonomous driving, and it mirrors our understanding of NEW AUTO. However, SSP does not mean that we will be producing a top-of-the-line, one-size-fits-all solution. We still need to achieve maximum product differentiation as well as a significant reduction in variance at the same time. Therefore, the SSP consists of a standardized, high-value modules with dedicated variants as well as a few predefined platform sizes. We will be reducing complexity through reducing the number of variants within each column, the modules and the platforms. At the same time, we can still offer great brand differentiation due to scalability and various combinations of the modules in combination with the varying platform sizes. So let me focus on the battery system as an example of how we will look to reduce complexity versus today. Using our SSP, we can decrease our variance across Volkswagen Group by more than 60%. So we reduced from a peak of 22 different battery systems to an expected amount of only 8. Thomas Schmall will give you more detail on our unified cell later. Regarding the different platform sizes, we will also reduce today's complexity by about 50%. And I think you can understand what this means for us in terms of economies of scale. And as I mentioned before, we can still address specific vehicles and brand requirements through the combination of the different modules with the vehicle platforms. However, we will ensure that there are strict limits on the combination of the different variants since this is crucial to complexity and therefore, to the practicability and financial success of the SSP. For example, we will be able to use the same combination of E³ stack, autonomous driving stack, and powertrain for Porsche entry model and for VW performance model. Considering the scalability of modules, Porsche will be able to offer a dedicated performance version for the top specifications. And to put it in a nutshell, we can meet the entire range of our customer needs without reflecting this variety in our product development. This is an important concept to master the complexity that comes along with an increased meaning of vehicle-related software. With the Audi Artemis model, we will be spearheading major modules of the SSP starting in 2025. It symbolizes the transition from the PPE platform to the SSP. And with E³ 2.0 and the new unified battery cell format, it already brings an important part of the SSP into series production. From 2026 onwards, Volkswagen Brand's Trinity project, together with the first Audi model on SSP, will scale the SSP into volume. And by the end of this decade, we will have rolled out SSP across all of our core segments and all brand groups. To give you an idea about how serious we are about this approach, the SSP will, by 2030, already cover a bigger volume than the PPE and the MEB put together. So we can proudly say that the rollout of the new mechatronics platform and the related reduction in complexity will be faster than ever before. As far as our plans go, we want to sell more than 40 million vehicles based on the SSP over lifetime. This stands for the economies of scale that we are expecting from our new group mechatronics platform. We are now laying the foundation for the SSP at full speed. We have organized the development by a clear allocation of responsibilities within the Volkswagen Group. And we've already made key decisions. To give you an example, besides the unified cell, we have determined 800-volt flex as a standard tension for the whole SSP. This allows us to combine the different powertrains with different battery sizes in combination with best-in-class charging capabilities and reduced complexity. But when it comes to the advantages and performance of the SSP, E³ 2.0 is probably the best example, especially E³ 2.0 as one of the high-value modules will be the enabler for a growing portfolio of software services. Through this electronic architecture, we will be able to provide new functionalities quickly and efficiently to our customers across the group, and we will realize significant economies of scale. Now that you understand what our SSP means for us, this is a great opportunity to hand over to Dirk Hilgenberg, who will now explain the great potential of E³ 2.0 as well as a related ecosystem in more detail. Dirk, the stage is yours.

Thank you so much, Markus. Hi, everyone. I'm Dirk Hilgenberg, CEO of CARIAD. Herbert and I go back a long way. We met in the manufacturing plant 20 years ago in England. Back then, we had a huge and transformation project ahead of us. I realized this strong leader has a vision and persistence. I really like this approach. No wonder, we carried out the project successfully. 20 years later, just recently, I got a text message from a former colleague: "Wow, guys. You did it once. Now you're doing it again." Yes, here we are again, and we still share the same vision and persistence. And now we are among the leaders of a transformation on, let's say, a somewhat larger scale. We are creating the leading software stack on which tens of millions of cars will operate by 2030, laying the foundation for the group to tap into new data-driven mobility profit pools. This mission started exactly a year ago. Since then, we have accomplished what many people thought would be impossible. We brought together experts, capabilities and know-how from Audi, Porsche and Volkswagen into one agile independent entity. And we have hired over 1,000 international engineers and software developers. Over just 12 months, our now 4,500 colleagues have been working day and night to accomplish a series of major milestones. We've integrated 15 software companies into the CARIAD family to consolidate our skill base. And we have developed a software solution to provide over-the-air updates, starting now with the volume segment. I'm talking about our software platform, 1.1. You can find that platform in the Volkswagen ID.3, ID.4 and the Audi Q4 e-tron. It enables functional updates at any given time at any given location just like on your smartphone, a step change made possible by CARIAD and the closest collaboration with our brands. Just last week, we released the first major update for Volkswagen ID customers. It includes new user experience for the infotainment stack and advanced driver assistant features. The system now reacts even more precisely and better recognize other road users. This will make driving experience even safer and more comfortable. As of this summer, the brand will send over-the-air software updates to the ID family every 3 months. Meanwhile, we have been working on the next evolutionary development step. In 2023, CARIAD will release the premium software stack 1.2 with launches of the electric Porsche Macan and the Audi Q6 e-tron. It will bring a completely new experience to Audi and Porsche vehicles. This platform will feature a new unified infotainment platform based on Android automotive and the third-party app store, providing you with the access to your favorite entertainment and messaging apps. With 1.2, the first vehicles will be ready to migrate to the all-new Volkswagen automotive cloud. What's more to come? We have started on working on a revolutionary new, unified and scalable software platform, our software stack 2.0. This is the ultimate game-changer that will be introduced in 2025. This software platform will bring VW OS into the world. It is the universal operating system that you will find in all future cars of our group, no matter whether it's an Audi, a Volkswagen or a Porsche. It allows for maximum development synergies in the group, while empowering our brands to differentiate in brand and user experience in their cars. Our software stack 2.0 also includes full level free autonomy and is ready for Level 4 for individual mobility, meaning that our car can take care of steering. It [ also ] provides digital customer experience that will outperform the competition at scale as well as connectivity to our automotive back end. This enables comprehensive data uploads and downloads from the vehicle to the cloud, a crucial lever for automated driving. We will integrate our stack 2.0 in Audi's Artemis project for the first time in 2025, then scale it up to the volume in Volkswagen Trinity project in 2026. By 2030, up to 40 million vehicles from all brands will be operating on our software stacks. The 2.0 solution will, therefore, be the key to massively tap into new profit pools for the group. Herbert, that's a bigger scope than we tackled 20 years ago. But I'm confident that together with the outstanding teams at the brands, we will shape the leading software stack in the age of NEW AUTO. CARIAD will be ready. Let me now dive into what technologically defines our game-changing architecture. There will be 3 layers. Firstly, future-proof hardware. That's cameras, sensors, actuators and a powerful computing platform. We are reducing dozens of controllers to a new powerful control unit and semiconductor chips, simplifying the architecture massively and decoupling hardware from software. Secondly, we are looking at the software layer. That includes our VW OS. As the car will be connected to the cloud, we will be able to keep the car always up-to-date with the newest features, including applications, functions and demand. And thirdly, we are creating and developing innovative automotive features, application and services. These will shape the user experience that millions of customers around the world will enjoy. The car will become your personal mobility companion, a companion enriching your ride with automated driving features, an intelligent personal assistant organizing your trip or video conferencing on the go. This new unified tech stack will pave the way for Volkswagen to transform into a truly software-driven mobility provider. Our software will create the largest mobile real-time data fleet in the industry. The Volkswagen group sells around 10 million vehicles a year. That's 10 million data sources. 10 million cars that will migrate to the cloud every year. Data will be the new asset of our group. It opens up enormous opportunities to boost the benefits for customers and brands alike. Let me briefly explain why. Our new platform enables us to analyze data from an unparalleled number of cars on the road, and it enables us to continuously update our fleet with these new features over the air. This ongoing cycle for millions of vehicles is what we call the big loop process. The big loop will change and expand product life cycle of vehicles as we know it today. While for the last decades, the start of production mark the end of the engineering process, it's now just only the beginning. Our stack 2.0 is ready to transform the business model of the entire group. After point of sale, we will be able to enrich the customer experience in an unprecedented way. As the customer, your car will improve as you use it. It will improve continuously, or if you wish, just temporarily. If you would like to take the car on vacation, simply book more electric range for a few days. If you want to relax on your ride, just download enriched automated driving features and enjoy the ride. As customers pay for these mobility service,in and around the car, our brands are able to tap into business models and new revenue streams. In numbers, the new ecosystem will open up the possibility to substantially increase Volkswagen profit margin per car based on connectivity and automated driving. Transforming into a tech company for us means building up competence and boosting our capabilities. By 2025, we aim to develop 60% of software in-house. We want to be a full owner of key software and technology enablers, including big data, security and AI capabilities. International bolt-on acquisitions will rapidly fill technology gaps. We recently agreed to take over additional teams with several hundred engineers to further expand our coding capabilities. We are also counting on strong partnerships to help us transform. We've teamed up with Microsoft to not only create the Volkswagen automotive cloud, but also to establish the tool set for developing automated driving functions. And we are expanding our footprint around the globe. We are already engaged with teams in China and the United States, and we are going to establish subsidiaries in both regions this year. The 2 markets are key to bringing our software up to speed. We have a significant presence in China with the company Mobility Asia. Today, more than 600 engineers and software developers are catering for Chinese customer expectations towards software, apps and services. To satisfy the fast-growing customer demand for technology innovation, we will significantly grow this competence base alongside with the engineering workforce of our brands. The U.S., however, is key to building up core technological capabilities in automated driving and artificial intelligence, growing our team with expert talent, talent that has experience in automotive startup ecosystems as well as in leading technology companies. As a nucleus, we already started a cloud development hub, which is building the Volkswagen automotive cloud based in Redmond, Washington. Overall, this is a major endeavor for the future of our industry and our group. We have a clear plan for the future and an effective setup and the right skill set. But clearly, it's a team effort. Powered by CARIAD, we are sure that our prestigious brands, loved by millions around the world, will shape the digital customer experience of the NEW AUTO for generations to come.

E-mobility has won the race. The first question will be now who wins in e-mobility? The winning team in e-mobility will be the team who is able to master technology, scaling and value chain. And all this should be done with high speed and size. Size matters in that game. NEW AUTO for us means stronger than ever before, focused on technology. Welcome to the powerhouse. NEW AUTO to us at the powerhouse means moving battery selling system, charging energy, powertrain and platform modules and third-party business. For the whole Volkswagen Group, straight to the future, we will do that. 3 months after the first Volkswagen Power Day, today, I will give you an update on battery cell and system. And later, Elke will give you the information about charging and energy. Let me start with battery cell and system. Our unified cell concept is the central pillar of our battery strategy. We need high standardization. Massive scaling and massive reduction of complexity will give us a potential cost saving of up to 50%. We'll start rolling out the unified cell concept in 2023, ramp up until 2030, able to cover 80% of the worldwide Volkswagen EV volume. Let us now look a little bit deeper at the unified cell concept. With the prismatic unified cell, we can contain different chemistries, even market ready. High [indiscernible] for the cost sensible entry segment, high manganese chemistry for main volume segment and high nickel for the premium and high performance solutions. Clearly, the intelligence of the battery cell is inside, and sustainability is a key for all that, entry and volume to comprise the cobalt 3 main chemistries. The prismatic unified cell is compatible to all upcoming innovation as a cell-to-pack system, a cell-to-car system, a dry coating process or the high silicon anode. But finally, solid-state will be the game changer. It will be robust over many cycles. It cuts charging time in half and improves reach by 30%. Our partner, QuantumScape, has reached the agreed technical milestones, and we already tested the cells in our new labs in Skellefteå via Northvolt here. We agreed with QuantumScape that the first pilot line will be in Germany. That's the reason we are planning to apply for state aid. For 2 reasons, we decided to take work in the closed-loop thematic. First, creating a closed-loop is the most sustainable way to build batteries. We will control 50%, second, of the added value in [indiscernible]. The biggest cost block in the cell is the material. Volkswagen will expand scope in the value chain. That means setting partner chips and find the right balance of make or buy through the whole value chain. Our power plant is set up 6 giga factories with 40 gigawatt only in Europe. That's only for fulfilling Volkswagen demand. With partners, this will make us a major player in battery technology. Update to location one in Sweden. We are maintaining our share at Northvolt and investing additionally EUR 500 million. Update location 2, Salzgitter. We are extending the existing partnership with Gotion. Gotion is high-level technology company, will be our partner to induce unified cell in Salzgitter. Yesterday, we signed the memorandum of understanding with Gotion. Let's have a look. [Presentation]

Well, fantastic. Thanks, Chairman Lee in China and his team. Thanks [indiscernible] team here in Wolfsburg. We're expanding our existing partnership with Gotion, and we will drive it to the future. Thanks a lot for the whole team. Update location 3. Location 3 will be in Spain. The Spanish government decided to launch a big transformation program for the whole industry of the country. They call it [ Perten ]. And Volkswagen will be happy to apply to take part in transformation of the country into electric world. We announced 6 giga factories at the Power Day 3 months before. 50% are now decided and still 3 more to come. Welcome back to the powerhouse, and the next chapter is coming right through now, charging energy. Elke, it's up to you, fully reloaded. Thank you.

Thank you, Thomas. Charging and energy is another pillar of our e-mobility offensive. To realize this efficiently, all Volkswagen Group activities of charging infrastructure, being it hardware, being it software, services and energy services, have been bundled in the new charging and energy division. Elli, as our European backbone, is responsible for charging and energy solutions around the world. In North America, Electrify America stands for the biggest open high-power charging network for our customers already. And with CAMS, we have a significant partner for Chinese infrastructure initiative in China. Together, we will provide all charging and energy solutions for the group brands across the globe. We see ourselves as a full-service provider, who is serving the customer with one-stop shop solution. And that is why I'm thrilled to have so many inspiring colleagues around me, because with our ambitious targets, we are planning to become a decisive player in the charging and energy industry. Therefore, we expand our scope, providing consistent solutions based on hardware, recurring software and recurring services. Of course, we won't do that all on our own but also rely on partners, especially when it comes down to services like installation. In addition, we pushed public high-power charging infrastructure in the markets to enable the overall transition towards e-mobility. The following look on our milestones in terms of infrastructure shows fast charging is a key demand for our customer. And Volkswagen is delivering on it with focus on North America, Europe and China. You may remember on the Power Day, we have already announced several initiatives for these regions. And I'm happy to show that we are delivering on it and even push it further. Let's have a closer look at North America. Today, Electrify America already provides the largest open network of DC fast chargers in the U.S. and is serving all models of electric vehicles on the market. I'm excited to announce that we will push our commitment into the charging network even further. Electrify America will more than double the total amount of the existing charging sites in 2025. Just let me repeat, it will more than double. This means that we will have in total 10,000 charging points at this time. Let's travel back to Europe. I'm especially happy to share the following news about our cooperation with Enel. In March, we announced to work together with Enel in Italy. And I'm proud to say that just a few days ago, we signed the contract for the joint venture. Together with Enel, we will build up to 3,000 high-power charging points in Italy. That allows comfortable e-mobility in Italy. Let's have some impression from there. [Presentation]

As you can see, we have achieved a lot in a very short time. But we are on a marathon, and you have only seen the start so far. There is one mega trend evolving within the e-mobility world, and we want to be among the first to bring it on the road and to our customers. I'm talking about bidirectional charging. EV technology serves us well because it's fascinating, climate-friendly and makes every single EV a mobile power bank. Or to put it in other words, it's the next big thing of e-mobility. We at Elli work hard on bidirectional charging because societies, which have decided to invest an enormous amount of money into the field of renewables, should not accept that windmills and solar power plants cannot produce energy because there isn't enough storage capacity available. Just take the year of 2019, 6,500 gigawatt hours renewable energy was lost due to limitations of storage. With this energy, 2.7 million BEVs could drive for 1 year without any further investment. This is the sustainability we are talking about. This is our vision. We want to cross the bridge between the energy and the OEM world to drive sustainability and make charging for free for everyone. We will develop tailored charging and energy services to integrate electric vehicles into the energy system. With our IoT platform, we provide the relevant services that are needed to combine the energy world with the OEM world. Tomorrow's energy management system will be fully digital and data-driven connected with e-mobility, a win-win situation. We will bring the energy transition to the next level. Our aim is clear. We establish the leading smart charging and energy ecosystem for a decarbonized society. Thank you.

In this transformation to become a full-service mobility provider, Volkswagen Group will also offer autonomous ride service. In 2025, we will offer our first autonomous mobility service in Europe, with the U.S. following shortly after. This is another important definition of NEW AUTO. By offering autonomous ride-hailing and pooling, Volkswagen can serve customers who are not able or not willing to drive themselves. And this attractive mobility solutions will be followed by autonomous services for the transportation of goods. Our research forecasts high demand for autonomous mobility services in the 5 main European markets. We expect revenues of more than USD 70 billion annually as of 2030, making it a highly attractive and growing market in which we strive for a leading role. In addition, there is the parcel business. In Germany alone, more than 4 billion packages were delivered in the last year. In this fast-growing sector, personnel capacity is maxed out. But our innovations can offer growth opportunities for our commercial customers. Our answers are autonomous delivery vans for the distribution networks of tomorrow, where delivery workers no longer need driving licenses and become passengers who focus on their loads and the order of deliveries. For the high-quality autonomous service, there are 4 operational units. And they all have their own dynamics as seen in this chart. First, it's all about developing the self-driving system. Second, integrating this into our AD-ready vehicle. It uses the same electronics architecture that CARIAD provides for the passenger cars. Third, handling multiple ID vehicles in a fleet management system. And fourth, providing the mobility service value to our customers. There are earning potentials behind each unit, and we are aware that the largest profit pools lie outside of our current core business of providing vehicles. Volkswagen will, therefore, build up competencies in all of these business fields to provide an attractive, fully integrated service to our customers. Looking at the central capability of the self-driving system, we can see that a privately owned vehicle needs some surround view capabilities and primarily forward-facing sensors. However, an autonomous shuttle needs a real 360-degree long-range surround view to move in highest complex urban environments with various traffic participants. It operates fully self-dependent, shuttles customers who shall be able to hop on and hop off safely. So each use case need its own technical solution, and we are taking 2 approaches at the Volkswagen Group. CARIAD focuses on the cars for private use. For shared mobility, however, Volkswagen was founded a dedicated business section and partnered with one of the big players in the the U.S. headquartered autonomous vehicle technology company, ARGO AI. Together, we are tackling the most complex traffic situations in a city autonomous driving. The use of combination of sensors, including LIDAR, radar and cameras, is essential to create safe autonomous driving capabilities. This video shows ARGO AI's recently unveiled industry-leading LIDAR sensor, which allow us to see objects from 400 meters away. A special technology called Geiger-mode, allows this LIDAR to detect the smallest particle of light, like low reflections of dark surfaces in the distance. So we will be able to get our customers home safely even in the darker nights. And as you can see, the capabilities of the technology are truly amazing. This is NEW AUTO. This LIDAR will be integrated in our first fully autonomous vehicle, the upcoming all-electric ID.BUZZ AD, which will be used for our 2025 pilot service. The ID.BUZZ will be a truly iconic and also highly versatile product. It will support EU-focused drive pooling for multiple customers sharing a ride at an even more attractive price and with the additional benefit of less inner city traffic congestion. The ID.BUZZ will provide safe access from one side, and each seat will be individually accessible with a separate information screen for each passenger. The more U.S.-focused ride-hailing variant will provide a comfortable space for our customers traveling alone or in small groups of family and friends. And for our goods transportation solutions, the autonomous ID.BUZZ cargo provides the ride base for many use cases, eliminating the requirement for a human driver and making parcel delivery even more productive. Autonomous mobility is going to serve many passengers and customers all over the world, making traffic safer and more convenient in the process. This will mean that market and customer expectations for booking platforms and fleet operations will be quite diverse between different regions. Our great strengths is our capability to provide a fully integrated service for ride users across all business blocks and markets, bringing autonomous driving into big scale like only Volkswagen can. As mentioned, in 2025, we will start with our first commercial service in Hamburg with our subsidiary, MOIA, providing fleet management and a booking platform. So all the valuable experience from MOIA with ride-pooling service will be transferred to our future mobility service, giving Volkswagen Group a great competitive advantage over others in the field. Will we be only offering our booking platform? No. Our open tech architecture gives us the flexibility to provide different options for fleet and booking solutions across the globe. We will be able to adapt to the individual requirements of every city and are also looking into mutual beneficial partnerships with locally successful providers, offering everything from an AD-rated vehicle to a full service, both in urban mobility and deliveries. So our next step is to partner with more booking platforms and to improve fleet management solutions. Christian Dahlheim will give a closer look in what Volkswagen Group has planned in this area. Christian?

Thank you, Christian. Ladies and gentlemen, after we have learned a lot about the autonomous shuttle activities, we will now widen the scope and explain you what NEW AUTO means for overarching mobility activities in the entire group. Christian just introduced us to the 4 blocks of the mobility value chain. Let me now show you our plans for Block 3 and 4, fleet management and mobility services. First, I will explain why we will extend our activities in fleet management. But obviously, all mobility offerings require entities that own and operate the fleet. The vehicles have to be financed in the first place, then obviously need to be charged and maintained. As we know from our leasing business, whoever owns the fleet will have a higher share of the adjacent profit pools in after-sales, financial services and also in charging. That is true both for today's as well as for future scenarios. Therefore, Volkswagen will continue to expand the necessary capabilities. We will leverage Volkswagen Financial Services, the world's largest provider of automotive financial services, including its extensive leasing and growing renting and subscription businesses. Volkswagen Financial Services is a key strategic asset and will play a significant role in our ambitious transition to NEW AUTO. We believe that the car rental business is a cornerstone for a scalable and profitable mobility business. In order to further accelerate our growth in this field, we're evaluating make buy, or partner options. In the fourth block of the value chain, mobility service, we will introduce a new Volkswagen Group mobility platform. It will integrate all our mobility services in a single app. With this app, our customers will have easy access to on-demand mobility, be it for minutes, days or weeks. Not only will the mobility in corporate or mobility services belong to the Volkswagen Group, but furthermore, also integrate third-party services, such as cap or micro mobility so that seamless mobility is always just one touch away for our customers. To sum it up, our ambition is to shape the mobility along the entire value chain and to tap into all accessible profit pools. By covering all 4 blocks, we'll have maximum flexibility to choose the best approach for each market and work together with strong partners wherever applicable. The bundling of several blocks will make sure that this business will deliver attractive margins. Now let's take a look what our integrated mobility offering will look like in 2030 and how our customers will enjoy NEW AUTO with sustainable, future-neutral and autonomous mobility. [Presentation]

Thank you, Christian, and thanks to all the other speakers who presented today. Thanks also to everybody who's dialed in.

Today's presentation was only the beginning. It will be followed by many more updates and deep dives over the coming months and years. We are looking forward to continuing the dialogue with all of you as we are implementing NEW AUTO. Thank you.