Volkswagen AG (VOW3) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to everyone. Good evening, good afternoon or good morning from wherever you have dialed in to our Sustainability Conference. It's the seventh time we host it as Volkswagen Group, and it's the second time we do it here from the Volkswagen Group Academy Studios. So my big pleasure to welcome everyone here. We have a fully-packed agenda with exciting speakers. We start with Thymian Bussemer, who will present to us how Volkswagen goes with People Sustainability in this whole auto industry transformation on how we enable people to be successful also in the new world of the automotive mobility. He will be followed by Mauro Pianezzola, who will give us a presentation on Group Information Security. So the whole topic about Data Protection and how we make sure that in the more digitalized world, people are -- can be sure that their data are protected from any third-party access. And last not least, our CSO, Dirk Voeste, whom you enjoyed listening to already last time. He will give you an update where we stand on the topic of sustainability in Volkswagen Group. Looking very much forward to his contribution. And last not least, it will be myself, who will give an update on group topics and in particular, where we stand with regards to our green financing topics. Each and every session will be followed by a brief Q&A. [Operator Instructions]. If you are not quite sure how to do that, I'm sure that our IR colleagues will definitely help you out and how to put a question into the system. And we try to answer all the questions which we receive. If we are not able to give an answer to all of them, you can be very sure that we will definitely follow-up in order to make sure that everything is answered properly. With that, some housekeeping items. You know that all presentations today will include forward-looking statements. This is why we have to put it under the Safe Harbor language and other cautionary statements, which will govern today's presentations. And I encourage you to read the disclaimer to yourself because I don't read it to you. Yes, with that, I'm very glad to welcome Thymian Bussemer here on stage. And in order to save time, I ask him to start his presentation.

Thank you very much for the kind invitation and the nice introduction. I wanted to make the joke. Good afternoon, good morning or good evening, wherever you are, ladies and gentlemen, but Rolf has done that already. My name is Thymian Bussemer; I'm heading the HR Strategy and Innovation Department at Volkswagen Group headquarters here in Wolfsburg, and I have the pleasure to elaborate a little on the strategic approach of Volkswagen towards workforce transformation or as it is often called as well just transition. And I start with some basic facts. I think you all are aware of that, that the automotive industry has, of course, a significant impact on European economy. So contribution to gross domestic product, GDP in the EU of our sector at 7% in Germany at 13%. If you turn to the other side of the slide, we see the proportion of working age people [indiscernible] who are employed in the automotive sector, this is 4.5% in the EU and 2.2% in Germany. I'm kind of proud to belong to a company who has really over decades, contributed to creating well-paid and rather future-proof jobs. So at Volkswagen, if you look at the figures in the last 35 years since 1990, we have more than doubled our total workforce, and we still have a strong center of occupation in Germany with nearly 300,000 people working for the group in Germany, which is, let's say, in the light of all discussions about deindustrialization and similar things, I think, quite an achievement. The question is, if this will go on forever. And as a note, this will certainly not go on forever. We know from research that Germany's automotive industry has reached its peak of employment in 2018 with -- this is OEMs, not the entire sector. What we see here, the original equipment manufacturers with 834,000 people. We see that the turnover of the German OEMs has grown since then with -- despite of the corona gap, but occupation hasn't. So apparently, there is something going on. Clear that we are moving into a completely new geopolitical situation, which will have impact not only on politics and society, but on economy as well and especially to the automotive industry as many of the OEMs like Volkswagen are global players. I think the Shanghai Motor Show in April was very-closely observed by many analysts, journalists, because the question was really, is China already at the tipping point? Or do we see only the top of the iceberg question if at least the Chinese market will be very soon in majority be delivered by Chinese manufacturers, if the Europeans and the German still play a role on this market. But as well as a question, how long it will last that we see the first Chinese car factories in Europe. So everything very dynamic. If we look at the state of occupation in the German automotive industry, we see a strange duality. We see reports about layoffs, rather massive layoffs, I need to say, for former times comparably stable industry sector, but we see the skill shortage as well. So there is no clear direction in the sense of downsizing or upsizing, but something is changing. I need a second to breathe. I think the development can be explained with basically two trends. And one trend is that we are losing work volume. We are losing workplaces in the traditional industrial sector, so in manufacturing work. This has to do with rates of productivity, which we constantly see. It has, of course, to do with the amount of sales volume. It has much to do as well with the upcoming, that best battery-powered vehicles become more dominant on the market. So these are research findings from the study we conducted with Fraunhofer Institute in Stuttgart based on real Volkswagen planning data, and we see that in vehicle production [indiscernible]. We are about to lose something like 12% of work volume in the mix of ICE and BEV, which we have projected. With the electric powertrain in the mix -- here, it's different here. It's not the mix of our planning. Here, we see that to produce the electric powertrain needs 60% less work than to do an internal combustion engine powertrain. And we see here there is a mix again of ICE and BEV that in the realm of gearboxes, we will lose something like 70% of work volume. So we have clearly a decline of traditional industrial work. The second trend is that, and this is the other side of the moon that the importance of knowledge work in automotive is massively increasing. So we see that the research and development exponentials are constantly rising. We see that software really has arrived in the car. We see how many million lines of codes need to be written to be coded to fit our cars. And we see this is Volkswagen internal data on the right-hand side that even in traditional areas of manufacturing like coach building, the qualified work nowadays out numbers unqualified work, if you look back to the times of [indiscernible] was in coach building clearly completely different. This means that as I already stated, there is not one direction of development. The product strategy, the electrification, the digitalization of the car clearly affects the kind and quantity of skills what we need. And we see that carefully manage labor costs essentially with costs you can see on the right side that the annual labor costs of Volkswagen amount to EUR 15 billion which is 15.5% of our entire turnover. What we see [indiscernible] of this chart, we are facing a combination of structuring view [indiscernible], digitization of work, so it is not simply that there is a process of decline where areas which are growing and the others which are getting smaller, but this is side-by-side process. We at Volkswagen addressed this workforce transformation holistically with our people strategy. This means we have deliberately decided in HR, and I'm an HR Manager to stop with functional department strategy making. We have written a group people strategy as a viable for this transformation process. Here, you see the high-level targets of our Volkswagen Group People Strategy. I don't go too much into detail there, but it's one goal is to be aligned with society and environment. This means to secure the social legitimacy of what we are doing in order to keep our license to operate. We are proud about our outstanding strong culture, which we do have, which helps very much in the transformation process. We want to enable our teams to perform best. This has to do with leadership as well, and we want to provide for each individual employee an excellent employee experience. Now, I breathe once again and get a bit more tangible. This is no longer the Volkswagen Group. This is Volkswagen passenger car brand. And you see here that with a just transition process or the management of the workforce transformation process from [indiscernible] old-to-new, we have now 9 years of experience. So we started in 2016 with a so-called [indiscernible], which in its core sets that we create 9,000 new jobs in future-orientated areas, but that we cut at the same time 30,000 jobs in traditional areas. We then accelerated this process in 2019 with a road map digital transformation where its core was the creation of 2,000 new IT positions at Volkswagen, at Volkswagen passenger car brand and massive investment of EUR 4 billion in digitalization projects. Around Christmas 2024, so of last year on the 20th of December, we agreed on with the unions and the work councils on Future Volkswagen. Future Volkswagen is a complex program with many, many items and agreements. But in its core, it says that we want to save EUR 4 billion per year and that we reduce our headcount at [indiscernible] in Germany until 2030 by 35,000 jobs. If you put those 3 programs up another, I think one can see good and overall movement in the direction. It's a transition from traditional industrial occupations and skills to more and more tech-enabled knowledge work. Because I mentioned the 35,000 FTE reduction, how do we do that? Of course, I mean, we are proud to be a socially responsible employer. And so we run this layoff in the same way. We are using the demographic curve. We have a hiring freeze. We work with partial retirement agreements. This is [indiscernible] side. We have termination agreements [indiscernible] , and we have reduced the number of vocational trainees and so we flattened the inflow curve with young people streaming new into the company. I'll now switch to the other side of the transformation, not the layoff side, but the re-skilling and up-skilling side. There, we have our Volkswagen Group People Academy, which operate everywhere in our entities around the world. And the group academy is centrally responsible for running vocational training, but to coordinate those re- and up-skilling processes as well. I go on in a second. I think an important thing what we do in this transformation process as we shift our vocational training from past to future. So we abandon or reduce traditional industrial occupations and establish new future, say, vocational schemes, especially to mention [indiscernible] chemistry. Chemistry played no role in the automotive industry for a long time. This changes rapidly with the electrification of the car, suddenly, we need plenty of experts in the realm of chemistry. This is a so-called [indiscernible] or subway chart. We have that in the Group Academy for many, many professions, which we run, and it shows how much time it takes and how many stations have to be passed by to requalify people to future skills. You see here a Skilled Metal Worker, which is a very traditional industrial profession can be converted or transformed within about 100 days in a Mechatronic Specialist for automotive. If you invest 85 more days, [indiscernible] people who finally flesh the software then on the cars. And if we prolong the transformation process for up to 24 months, this former Skilled Metal Worker could become a specialist for operative data logistics or an expert for vehicle electronics. At the same time, and this is not transformation. This is our normal learning ecosystem. We roll out degree to an external platform which offers 24/7 at every location around the world, specialized learning content, and we fill that up with specific content for our job families at Volkswagen just in order to ensure or to give the best motivation for people to learn on their own initiative in safe chosen environments. This is a special item, [indiscernible] Berlin. This is a spinoff of the in [indiscernible] in Paris. So software training school of a new type. We have located [indiscernible] Berlin here at the marketplace in Wolfsburg, just on the other hand side of the [indiscernible] to ensure really a high-proximity between the students there and our technical engineering, our IT, I think there's really an innovative way to proceed the software, schooling, teaching in a new way. That's already my last chart. Then I take a second to breathe. If I sum up what I've tried to state here, then first, the decline in employment in the automotive industry in Germany and Europe will continue. I think this is rather for sure. To which extent this will take place has to do with framework conditions like labor cost, bureaucracy, regulation, some other factors. Second thing to note is that we all at Volkswagen, the management, the Works Councils, unions, in this case, [indiscernible], we feel a high responsibility for successfully designing this workforce transformation. So we do not want to force out anyone. We do not want people to put into new jobs with new skill demands, which they can't fulfill to. But we want to offer, of course, outlets for people to start something new even outside of Volkswagen if they are willing to. Sure, we are and we will remain an attractive employer. We will be a magnet for talent. This will shift with the overall transformation I have been describing more to tech, to IT, than to traditional engineering, but engineering remains important as well. We are working on our apprenticeship schemes, as I stated, to create future professions for the automotive industry. I think this is very important as well. And with innovative re-skilling concepts, we are enabling our employees to make easier transitions from direct to indirect during the transformation process. Yes, this was much of content in a very short time out of air, but I hope you could understand what I tried to explain about our strategic approach towards workforce transformation. And I'm absolutely happy to answer your questions as far as I can do that.

Thank you, Thymian, for the very insightful presentation. Very much on time. That's greatly appreciated. It sounds like a big challenge. Actually, we are ahead of given the whole transformation of the industry. Taking the first questions from the stage. Can you tell us, Thymian, which degree of management attention directs the Board to the project of just transition?

The degree of attention is definitely high. I mean this has to do with the governance model of Volkswagen with a strong union, with a rather close cooperation between Works Council and management. But if I speak to top managers or Board members, I really learn. They are concerned about what is happening here. And I mean it comes on top that many of our factories are in rather rural areas, I would say. So the concern what happens to cities [indiscernible] we massively reduce the amount of jobs is a social concern. Now the attention is given. I mean that's the reason why we do really big invest in re-skilling in new and innovative ways of vocational training. I think Volkswagen is maybe not unique, but exemplary for being responsible at this point.

Very good. The second one would be -- what -- in your opinion, yes, will this transformation be finished by 2030? Or is this an ongoing process where we basically can't stand still and always have to think about new ways on how to transform and perform?

We are almost coming in the realm of philosophy because then the question would be, isn't transformation not always infinite? So change is from A to B, yes, I am in A, and then I want to go to B. The transformation to me is a constant and a bit like resilience, adaptation to changing conditions. But now there will always be transformation, but I think we are really in a central decade of transformation of the automotive industry. This is on the one hand, is it turn to electric mobility. Second is as stated that I think that many of the markets will re-change in the sense of who serves whom? And there, of course, in the outcome, it's the goal of Volkswagen is to remain a global player being present in all markets with a wide range of models reaching from small consumer cars to the luxury segment. And so this really has to be carefully designed, planned and implemented.

Very good. We have now here the next question, which comes from Justin Bazalgette. First of all, he thanks you for the very clear presentation in terms of the challenges the industry is facing and from a training and technical perspective and how the group is rising to these challenges. And you, Thymian talked about hiring freeze and the internal training program to develop new skills and expertise needed for the transformation. Can you confirm what the turnover is for new hires after 1 or 2 years? The question is very much related to how good is Volkswagen at retaining the newly trained workforce rather than losing it to its competition.

Yes. So first to say is that the hiring freeze is for Volkswagen [indiscernible] Volkswagen passenger brand. So as we call the traditional factories, we do have in lower [indiscernible]. So there are other programs and other brands and entities, but the formal hiring freeze exists here. If I understand the question properly, can we confirm that we are really not hiring any longer? That is one part of the question. No, of course, I can't. I mean, in HR where I'm working, we have our health services, for example, and we are obliged by law to have a certain amount for, I think 2,000 employees, we need one medical doctor. So if one medical doctor gets retired, then he has to be replaced, and this is true for Fire Brigade and other functions as well. And of course, there will be selective hiring of specialists we need for future business. But I can confirm as well that they are being appointed by the Board. So there is no external hiring at the moment, which does not go through the Board. Was that the question? Or was that something...

I think this is how I would understand it as well. And maybe the second part, that how can we make sure that we retain the well-trained workforce and that they are not -- that we are not losing them to our competition.

Yes. This is a question I'm very much up to because this is my -- basically my core business. I state that we are and we will remain an attractive employer even if you say, Volkswagen is currently running through difficult times. We are one of the biggest European enterprises. We have a huge range of options where you can work in which country, what you can do, how you can change your Board department or your discipline, which does not mean that we should sleep on that. And in the team of [indiscernible] , we are working currently on a new approach on employer attractiveness. But I don't think that we get totally unattractive. What I really see as an HR strategy is kind of risk is if the situation goes on for too long, so if we don't do any extra hirings from universities for 5 years or whatever, we lose a full generation and have a new and fresh knowledge.

Yes. And maybe Justin, as a hint, we always highlight in our presentations, the progress we make on the employee side, when you compare, for instance, first quarter numbers to the year-end numbers, then you see that overall, Volkswagen Group reduced employees by about 7,000. And in first quarter, when we just look at the German operations, where Thymian has referred to as the [indiscernible] , the workforce was reduced by about 2,000 employees. There is one follow-up, and we still have some time actually for another question comes as a follow-up from Justin. In terms of reduction in workforce numbers, what is Volkswagen doing to help these employees who are leaving to make the transition to new jobs or retirement easier.

Well, I've showed a slide with 4 major instruments which we use in this transformation process. And I mean, let's say, the most traditional and convenient way is a so-called demographic curve. So we hire less new people than people which go into retirement. We can, in Germany, accelerate that a little about this instrument of partial retirement agreement [indiscernible] side, I don't know if similar constructions exist in other years. This means that we pay for that people can leave earlier. There's a so-called active and passive phase. There can be longer or shorter 2 and 2 years where we are still working and 2 years, as we say at home, but still on the payroll. This gives us a certain flexibility. We are, in fact, working in Volkswagen [indiscernible] on programs to give employees a perspective out of Volkswagen to become entrepreneurs -- you may be aware that ammunition industry and especially in lower Saxony is due to the global political situation rather growing. So there's really a bunch of programs and offerings we are doing. But I must clearly state what we don't do, we don't dismiss people. So we abandon positions. We say we don't longer lead the function of specialist XY for whatever, but this does not affect the working contract from the people. So you can be absolutely assured that who leaves us does this voluntarily.

So no forced redundancies. Thymian, it was really a pleasure having you on stage. I thank you very much for the insights, the discussion and your contribution and looking very much forward to welcoming you next time here on stage.

Interest to you. I thank a lot for the kind invitation. I wish you a successful conference, and I hope that this was at least of some kind of interest to you.

It definitely was. Thank you, Thymian. And actually, that brings us to our next guest speaker here on stage, which is Mauro. Mauro, please come up here. stage is yours, and we are very much looking forward to your presentation. Thank you.

Also from my side, welcome. Thank you for the invitation. My name is Mauro Pianezzola. I'm the Head of Group Information Security Management Process and Systems. And in the next few minutes, I will present you a little bit overview about our organization of the group information security. A short agenda from my side. I will tell you about something about our challenges. It's not our challenges only for the group. It's a challenge for the whole world. I will explain something about our organization, and I will explain you some details about our ISMS, UNICE and CSMS certification. Our challenges. I don't know if you are aware about this key facts. Approximately, we have over 394,000 new variants of viruses, trojans and malware worldwide every day, not in one year, every day. We are talking about approximately 36 billion of phishing e-mails worldwide. In Germany, 86% of our German companies are of cybercrime, and they produced over EUR 1 billion in damage only in Germany. Our passwords, maybe everybody of us is aware about this. It's possible to crack a password in a few seconds if it's not a long encrypted and secure password. The target data is not only the password or the target data is, of course, in this presentation and also in this conference, financial data, employee data, customer data, personal data, social media and so on. And reactional hackers are becoming well-equipped cyber games, cyber organization. And one of the most important topic by my point of view is the human factor is one of the most critical gateway for our attackers, example social media and the phishing mails. The group information security, and now I'm talking about the headquarter of the group information security located here in Wolfsburg. We have a lot of projects and fields of action. I come later with more details, more numbers. But I'm talking about Industrial Cybersecurity, ICS. It's more related to production, not to the car, but in the production area. We are talking about systems for paint shop, body shop and laser machines. We are responsible to implement, to maintain and to use security tools and processes. We have a Special Security Operations Center. It's called VSOC, the Vehicle Security Operations Center. It's in relation to a normal SOC, but specialized for vehicles. We have, of course, third compute emergency response team. We have times per year, I come later in information security specialist expert conference called ISEC. And we have also implemented an ISMS, Information Security Management Systems and the CSMS, Cybersecurity Management Systems. Also, we are responsible for the whole group for the identity and access management and the so-called PKE services. It's the services for our own infrastructure for certificates for our batches and also for our cars, car communication. And we are conducting information security assessments in all the world regarding companies and applications. Some detailed numbers. Here in the Group Information Security in the headquarter, we are talking about 165 employees from 30 nations. We are conducting 1,000 security ratings per year per annum. That means application that we are using or in place before we can put it in place. We are conducting a security assessment regarding this application. We have established more than 40 security application tools, for example, antivirus, endpoint security tools, logging and monitoring tools, they are under our responsibility and not under the responsibility of other operations. We have 36 regulations, for example, password regulation, how to handle password, how long has to be established a password, regulation about communication between external partners, regulation on how to develop secure software, regulation for administrator and users and so on and so on. We are conducting over 50 security assessment per year per annum for companies. That means, for example, my department is responsible. I'm going to the headquarters of the companies, and we do on-site assessment. We check if they are already established also in ISMS systems. We are taking look over the Access Management, how the people can enter hire-fire and also this process also will be checked by our side. We are responsible for over 3 million identities. That means every employee here in the whole group which receive an identity, it will be created, performed and supported from our side. And we are also certified. It's ISO 27K and the TISAX and CAR2-X certification. I will explain in 2 slides later about ISMS and CSMS certification. Over 1,200 requests regarding security we received yearly, per annum. For example, can I use this USB stick? Is it possible to switch on or to put on my personal device on the computer on the business hardware and so on and so on. And also, we have -- regarding the security assessment, we have a goal. A goal is that every company which will be assessed by me have to reach a minimum security maturity level from 3.0. And we, as information security at the moment, we have reached a goal of a result of 3.51. And what I mentioned before, we conduct a security community and security conference. Good luck at the moment, if we take -- we are performing this security conference in this day today and yesterday, we start with this. And I'm talking about more than 315 security specialists from all the group, which are actually located here in the Volkswagen Arena, and they are sharing, presenting all the topics of security strategy and what we will do in the next years for the whole group. This was a part of Group Information Security in the headquarter. Now the question, of course, is what happens with other companies because we are not only VW here in Wolfsburg, we are located in the whole world over 660,000 employees. In this case, we have created a new or own steering committee. It's called GISSC. It is a Group Information Security Steering Committee. It's the highest corporate information security body in the group. And we are talking about strategic topics. We are performing six regular meetings every year. In this case, also the next GISSC will take place tomorrow. And as you can see on the right side, there are all companies from the group involved or big companies from the group involved, which from brands and a region with their own voting rights. The voting rights depending on the project, which -- where the companies are involved because in the GISSC, we have also established a group information security program, which I will present in the next slide. And maybe you have a question why you can't see Lamborghini and Ducati? It's very easy because Lamborghini and Ducati are part of the Progressive Group, brand group, Audi, and they will be represented by Audi, but they have their own voting right and they clarify this voting right first with Audi and then the Audi colleagues will present it in the GISSC. Also implemented or incorporated arethe regions, not only the companies and the brands, also the regions. You can see here Region North America, Region South America and Asia Pacific and Middle East and the China region with our joint ventures. Also these colleagues are participating on the GISSC and will be here also tomorrow. The Group Information Security Program is part of the GISSC. It was established in the GISSC, and we are talking about more than 50 projects put in 5 different clusters. The clusters are here shown. It is GISSC Aligned Protection, of course, authentication and security solutions. We're talking about governance and awareness campaign. That means the rules, the regulation, what we are creating, we will discuss and agreed in this program. The identity and access management solution because it's a separate and own part in our security community. And of course, the product-related cybersecurity management systems, governance and operation are involved in this project. It's driven by process and business. This program, we will make and review every year. If it's already necessary or if we are finished or we are to change something because, of course, attackers and security are not fixed. They will change and we have moving targets every year. So we go in deeper details and then we will change it. We will decide in this group program also standards for the whole group. And of course, it's based on our Information Security Strategy. The ISMS, the Information Security Management Systems is established. And also, we will check and we will certify about this. We have two certifications. It's the ISO 27K and the TISAX certification. The TISAX certification is one certification, which we ask also to all our supplier and external partner who works with us. And the ISMS have the scope in the global information system area, not in the product, outside of the product. We are talking about telecommunication because we are also telecommunication provider. We have our own apps. We have marketing, sales, after sales systems. We have production systems. We have corporate platforms. You heard from the colleague before, the degree, for example, also it was checked and validated from our side. We have, of course, suppliers and contractors, which we are checking. We have your own hardware devices for charging, for example, the [indiscernible] and we have the production area, there's a shop floor IT and the production area, which of all kind of this information is part of -- or data protection is part of our ISMS, Information Security Management Systems. Then on the next step, we have the product-related management systems. It's called CSMS. It's Cybersecurity Management Systems that have more in relation to the car. It's in the car and for the car. We are talking about applications, apps, which will be installed and used in -- to use the car, for example, Apple CarPlay or apps which we can check the weather or plan a vacation. We are talking about all systems who are responsible to ensure that the car works. And important is it's related to the UNECE Cybersecurity Community or is a European rule which obligate every car producer to fulfill these requirements from the UNICE because if you can't fulfill these requirements and if you don't have passed a certification from this from the UNICE, you're not allowed to register more and to sell more cars in the world or in the European Union, and this is very important. We have passed this certification this year, in the beginning of this year, and it will be conducted every year, one0time per year, self-assessment, check assessment and then a full-assessment. This year, we have passed our full-assessment. And the main topic is, of course, to check with threats and risk we have in the car, what can happen if we have something of this, what we are doing to minimize, to mitigate this risk and what kind of damage maybe can be created? If we don't close the risk and the most important topic is, of course, is there any relation to -- not only to security, but to safety. That means it's safety relevant. We are talking about death or health from person. So in this both combination, ISMS and CSMS is necessary to ensure our security. As you have seen, we are in the whole company connected and I think, yes, this is the last slide. It's a glossary for later for you to see what it means.

Thanks very much, Mauro. super thrilling topic. It's one of the most exciting topics, I think, in today's presentation. Just out of my own curiosity, and it's not now a prepared question, but does the rise of artificial intelligence make your life easier in data protection and security? Or is it more that the hackers have now a new tool actually to make your life much, much more difficult than it was before?

Good question, both of them. It makes easier and it make it harder for us because easier, I tried the first topic. It's more difficult because AI, artificial intelligence, also the hacker used it to enter on our site to find vulnerabilities and so on and so on. And it's very easy. And in one minute, they will find -- they ask, can you tell me if there's a possibility to enter in the car configurator of BMW or VW and so on and so on. But at the same time, we are using the same logic to avoid that this will be happened and it's possible. It will help us to find faster and easier vulnerabilities to close them faster and easier and of course, to communicate it also to our to our community. It's a combination, good and bad.

At least we are in a not that helpless position. That's good to hear. The first question here from the auditorium comes again from Justin. And he says that there have been some articles in the media recently raising concerns around the lack of security relating to plugging electric vehicles into chargers. Do you have an overview of the current risks? And how is Volkswagen responding to those risks, Mauro?

Okay. Good question. I'm sorry, but I can't give you too more details or too detailed information about this because you can imagine it's not only VW, it's also all the other companies. This is a public media information, are well-known. We are aware about this. We are using special systems also to identify these legs. And of course, we are on track on this, not only we, also our colleagues, our market companies, the other OEMs also from other cars are aware about it. But sorry, I can't give you more too much details about this. But everything is under control.

So it's a running process, and we can't comment on it, but we are of the opinion that we are in good handle of it, Justin. The second question comes now here from [ Mr. Draghi]. Any risks related to smart driving vehicles and how Volkswagen is positioning itself in this context?

Okay. Actually, we have -- we don't have too much smart driving vehicles. So there are known risk. The risks which are known, we are also aware about this. And also we are aware -- it's also an ongoing process. We are checking using state-of-the-art systems process and sharing information between all OEMs, all companies and also not too much details. Sorry for this.

I can at least imagine that cloud services and over-the-cloud updates are allowing us to react faster than in the past and should definitely be an accelerator of fixing bucks if they occur. There is another question here on the list. Do you work with Bug Bounty Program? Do you reward individuals for finding and reporting software vulnerabilities, Mauro?

Yes, of course. Yes, we have also a Bug Bounty program. We established this, if I remember, 7 years ago, and it was very fine. And of course, we have also received some information from ethical hackers, I call it ethical white hackers, friendly-hackers and they inform us about some open point issues in our systems. And of course, we are paying -- but this is a typical normal process. Every good company, every big company has this Bug Bounty Program and Volkswagen also have this implemented and in place.

Thank you. And the next question comes from [ John Clark] and he wants to know what are the most attractive targets and tactics for hackers when it comes to autos, Mauro, to the extent possible? Is it more the driving routes? Is it more how much gas is still in the tank? Or is it more excess maybe even to the mobile to the smartphone actually they're searching for?

I'm not sure, but I suppose it's more to receive an overview about general information of the car. I hope that it's not the topic to manipulate the car to activate a break or to accelerate if you are on the red traffic light, I think it's more the interest to enter in the car, to receive information to see how the people are driving, what are they doing. And of course, it's one of the most important topics here, what we have to protect is our personal data, the data protection from personal data, private data from the people. And when you have a connected car or you are connected with your mobile device on your car, maybe it's very easy to steal the information from your mobile device and to share this with maybe your bank data or passwords and so on and so on. But also, we don't have so much experience at the moment.

So I would also suspect it very much depends on the intention of the hacker, right? If he wants to do some harm, then it would be more about being interested in applying the brakes or is he interested in the data? And I hope we have answered your question, [ John]. And the next one comes again from Justin. You talked about AI. Could you also confirm whether cybersecurity risks have increased with the use of software-developed vehicles, which means there is less mechanically connected driving and more software-controlled driving?

No, I can't confirm. At the moment, we don't see any difference at the moment. It's very -- we can't -- I can't confirm to say with AI, it's more -- it's increased. No.

Very crisp answer. Thank you. And the next question comes is about the maturity of our cybersecurity processes. I mean there is likely no area in the automotive world, which is changing faster than technology. So how mature and how developed are our processes and procedures?

Okay. The maturity is very easy. It's an international standard. It's an international ISO standard, which based on the TISAX standard. And in this case, we have different maturity levels from 0 to 5, or means we have nothing, 5 means we have, and 1 means we have a process in place, description of the process, 2 means there is not only the description also in place, and we are creating KPIs and so on and so on. And what we do or what my department do when we perform an assessment, we are checking how is this process established, defined? Is the description available and how they maintain this. And based on this international standard, we can calculate the maturity level of this tool, process and company.

Super. That was the last question we had, Mauro . I thank you very much for that very insightful presentation. It was a pleasure having you here on stage and looking forward actually welcoming you next time. So that brings me to our next speaker, a well-known guest for the [indiscernible] Team and the IR community, Dirk, about the progress we make on sustainability. Stage is yours. Thank you.

So welcome from my side, and thanks for having us and having me to present our strategy, regenerate+ to give you an oversight what we have launched, what regenerate+ is all about and certainly where we are today. Let's see if it works. And here it is. Moving what matters, regenerate+. Last year around that time, Oliver Blume, our CEO, launched our strategy, regenerate+ it's about sustainability. It's about the Volkswagen Group, how we position ourselves in the area of sustainability, what are our ambitions, what are our targets, what is our steering mechanism and also for today, what is the progress we have made so far? We started with a vision and you may recall from your end is becoming a nature and society positive mobility provider. That's what we're aiming for. And we don't know if we really reach it, but we feel we need to tackle it. It is a point of if you wouldn't do it, we wouldn't lose something also in terms of positioning ourselves for long-term business success. It is where we see nature and society are really in balance. If nature gets out of balance, society gets out of balance. If society is out of balance, nature will be out of balance. And that certainly has an impact on ourselves as people on the planet. And certainly, it has an impact on our business. So it is our business, let's say, imperative to really drive sustainability. It is our business imperative to embed sustainability and it's our business imperative to drive sustainability into our business activities and certainly be profitable short-, mid- and long-term. It comes with commitments. Sustainability is also about values and attitude. And very, very importantly, you see here our 5 commitments around the frame. It's protecting and strengthening our environment, treat people with dignity and respect, integrity and compliance for sure. And I think you really got a very good overview when you look at our cybersecurity and the efforts we're doing in this area. And certainly, very, very importantly, it's about taking responsibility towards society, particularly as Volkswagen. And last but not least, very, very important, provide mobility, provide sustainable mobility for today and for the long-run. That's our business goal. That's our business ambition, and that's certainly where we are here, providing also value to society and certainly capture the value from the cars, from the mobility services we are offering to the society. That was the wrong one. Hold on, let's go into this direction. And this is also when you look at sustainability definition in the classical way, and we define sustainability as creating value for today's and future generations for society, business and environment. [indiscernible] asked your question, so why do we have 4 dimensions? And the classical sustainability definition or scope is around those 3 definitions. But -- and you heard it from Thymian on this an hour ago, it is about our people, bringing our people, guiding our people, giving them a voice, moving them from an analog into a digital world and moving them from a combustion engine development and sales into electromobility. With regenerate+, we set KPIs, and you will see them in a minute on the next slide. We really integrated it into our group strategy. Regenerate+ is the foundation of the group strategy being launched and announced a couple of weeks ago at the press conference of Oliver Blume. And certainly, it provides the frame and the strong commitment from the group and the brands. So the 12 KPIs, which we have identified 3 in each of those 4 dimensions are broken down to brands. Each individual brand has their target, yearly targets to develop. So we see what's really coming from the brands, living up to our top KPIs. We steer the company top down and of course, together with the brands, bottom up so that we're really driving progress. Those are the 12 KPIs. And in the following, I will go into more detail and provide you also where are we with those KPIs, what is the status, what are proof points of our journey. Very, very clearly, it's about decarbonization, the first KPI, the decarbonization index to drive really the carbon pathway downwards. And as a company, as a group, we are targeting, we are aiming for being net carbon-neutral by 2050. It's about the share of circular materials. And I will have a few deep dive slides with me today to give you more insight of where we are on our circular economy approach, which on one side is helping us on our decarbonization route. And on the other hand, it certainly helps us with the materials on [indiscernible] material, and it really turns out to be a profit pool, a business opportunity for us. Biodiversity is key when we drive into nature positivity and then you can go on through the various KPIs, and we'll follow them in detail on this road. So where are we? -- nature. First thing, I think, very promising. We are on our path. And if you look at the production, we are nearly already 50% down in our decarbonization pathway since 2018, and we are targeting 2040. I mentioned the overall group will be net carbon-neutral by 2050. That's what we're aiming for. But wherever we can, we push the limit. We push the limit in terms of decarbonization. However, always with a business mindset behind where it also makes business sense. In the production, and you will see this on our next slide with a deep dive on production. Here, it is about 2040, where we're aiming for in our production sites worldwide, 114 production sites. We're looking at resources, and we will talk about circular economy in detail. But I just wanted to highlight, we're giving ourselves the ambition by 2040. We want to have 40% of the material which we're using in SOP cars should come out of circular material. And we are already on our way. If you look at the Audi family, you will see headlines, seats, door panels, foot muses and so on and so on really coming out of recycled material. Also, if you look at the Audi Bus, some of those materials are really already coming off circularity, be it the steel, be it the aluminum or if you look at Audi, for example, the Audi Q4, 30% of the glass is recycled or the Q6, the roofing of steel is recycled. So we're really on our way. More to come in a few minutes if I have the chance to give you a little more insight. And certainly, on the ecosystem side, we talked about how to assess our nature footprint, how to assess biodiversity. And certainly also, we are trying to push here again into nature positivity, not only on our own sites and together with our supply chain, but also beyond our value chain, and that's the biodiversity fund. We are currently launching a fund of approximately up to EUR 25 million a year. We have received very interesting proposals already from renown institutions. We are currently evaluating together with an expert team, those proposals, and we are planning to publish the, let's say, the awarded, the funded project in the course of the second half, most likely closer to COP30. And I talked about it in the factory, in our production plants, a lot of success is already happening. And here, you see the initiative Zero Impact Factory. It's not only about carbon and decarbonization, it's about reducing the impact. It's about reducing the footprint of each and individual factory. And you see that we have massively made progress in reducing this footprint. We, first of all, over-achieved our 2025 target already end of last year, a great success, a great teamwork. And here again, I think it's important to highlight, it is not one initiative, it's 1,000 initiatives, more than 9,000 initiatives worldwide of really driving this reduction pathway. It's about waste reduction. And you see here really impressive numbers on a car-by-car basis, nearly 80% reduction, CO2 reduction, energy consumption reduced, water reduced and VOC reduced significantly. So first of all, I think great job from our production guys, from our production people and again, a topic where we feel every initiative counts. And certainly, I think here are some examples on the right side, you see Wolfsburg with CO2 reductions in the power plant. You see Puebla with 99% of industry waste recycled already. So this is really benchmark also internally for us and Pamplona with less than a cubic meter of water produced per car. These are benchmark figures from our side. And what I also, let's say, experienced myself, those production colleagues, our production colleagues, they're exchanging on those technologies. It is not one site does everything on itself. They are talking to each other. They're visiting each other production plants on a regular basis to really exchange best practices. And even yesterday, we had our regular, let's say, sustainability dialogue with our employees. A couple of hundred colleagues are always on the call where we're exchanging best practices and where we are also, let's say, giving colleagues the opportunity to see what's going on in other areas in order to scale and to transfer all the ideas. People, it's about the [indiscernible] quota. We will and most likely reach our target by 2025, around 20%. That's also part of the remuneration of our Board and our top management, similar like the decarbonization index is part of the remuneration. We're talking about training hours. And I think Thymian already gave you a deep insight of what we are doing to really to transfer and help our colleagues to move from analog into digital world for moving from an older, that's a working environment into a new environment. And very, very important as well is the accident frequency. And if you recall the number from last year, it was a different number due to international standards. We changed the way we calculated it. And that's why the number is 6.4. However, our ambition, our target remains to really push it by 2040 below 1, and it's about society. And we talked about a lot of topics and society can be broad defined very broadly. It is about supply chain. And here, we have our S rating, our Sustainability rating. And we have internationally also with other OEMs identified criteria. We're looking at our relevant Tier 1 suppliers and rate them according to their sustainability performance. And that means safety, internal processes, environmental impact mitigations, but also human rights topics. And certainly, we want to push the needle beyond 95% by 2040. We are at 83% from last year. So we are on a good way. It's a lot of work. And certainly, if you ask your question, why not 100%, why only 95%? It's about new suppliers coming on board. They need to understand the S rating. They need to get the training. We need to get the ordering process right. So we believe we have the best coverage by roughly 95%, always pushing for more, but that's certainly the one which to be achieved based on this turnover. Stakeholders, very important to have the dialogue with stakeholders. And we are looking at various new formats. It is very target-oriented. We are launching a very target-oriented communication with society, with interest groups, with NGOs, with politicians, but also with science and academia. We have launched our forum. That's our kind of, if you want to say a kind of marketplace where we meet and discuss those topics. We had it last year in October, the first forum in Berlin. Next, in this June, we will have a second one. We invite colleagues from industry, from politics, from science, from academia worldwide to discuss with us about regenerate+, but even more over, give us feedback of where we can improve. Offering topics to really see where is sustainability going, what are the next steps, what are the trends align on them and also that helps us to prepare much better in order to, let's say, have a sound strategy to look where is our strategy or where there are some improvement potentials and certainly, I think, get a better understanding of our way forward in the broader society, and that works well. And certainly, in this regard, and I will talk about it in a minute, we have launched our new Sustainability Council, a very new format. We haven't seen this format so far in the industry. So I will also be very happy and pleased to give you some insight in a few minutes. And here, you see another target, reputation. If you look at our report, since 2017, we are reporting where is our reputation standing in terms of a reputation study. We completely reworked the study together with 2 universities. The study is ready. It will be -- the questionnaires will be launched during summer, and we will see by the end of the year. So if we meet each other next year virtually again in the conference, I will give you an update where do we stand with the new numbers and certainly also where is our ambition, our target corridor. And it's all about societal impact. We have, and you will see this in a minute, more than 200 projects, roughly EUR 60 million in donations to drive this. And on top, we have launched a Sustainability Impact Fund. We have currently received more than 40 proposals already, and it has roughly around EUR 20 million per year. That's what we're targeting. And this is compared to the Biodiversity Fund, an internal fund. So internal colleagues, internal units can apply for additional funding in the area of social, societal and neighborhood engagement, but also in terms of environmental protection. So again, as I said in production, every initiative counts. And with this additional funding, we will also trigger and incentivize our colleagues to really move forward, to really bring sustainability to life to really bring and live, regenerate+ and provide long-term impact. So those are the examples, more than 200, roughly 70% in the region, 25% on national level, 4% on international level. Very broadly, as I said, it's community engagement, it's knowledge, it's education, it's also gender equality inclusion, but it's also about ecosystems and biodiversity. A lot of projects have been really driven, a lot of impact has been made. And on the right side, you see the announcement or more details on the fund, starting with EUR 5 million this year, ramping up to EUR 20 million until '28, '29. And as I said, we just saw today the first proposals, very interesting proposals, very broadly, not only from Volkswagen, not only from Germany, really from all over the world, from the U.S., from Africa, from Latin America and also from Asia. This fund is really meant to drive sustainability, to integrate sustainability even deeper into our company. And it's not only the Volkswagen brand, it is for all brands, Audi, Skoda, Fiat, and you name it. On the business side, very, very key. How do we drive business with sustainability? One thing we will talk about in a minute, and that circular economy. Certainly, our BEV share is key, and you see that also as a target. And here with 2030, we still expect to reach 50% and we are on the way. On the other hand, we have businesses like MAN Energy Solutions, who really drive decarbonization across the industry or we are investing into start-ups and you look at our venture capital fund like Motive which is particularly investing into decarbonization technologies and circular economy technologies. So a fund dedicated to support our regenerate+ approach. And also from that end and Rolf and his team are pushing here the limit of really seeing what of those outstanding bonds could be really, let's say, covered by Green Bonds. And here, you see the target which we're looking for by 2040, above 50% of the outstanding bond volume should and will be covered by Green Bonds. Currently, we are around 23%. So let's deep dive with a few slides into circular economy. Circular economy is not only, let's say, a word from a scrap yard. It's about various super-important business activities. First of all, you increase the resilience of your supply chain because somebody said, now we have this car mining or mobile mining already on the street. And why should we, from a European perspective, for example, let those materials go. We need to keep it, in Europe, particularly as under the current dynamic environment, supply chains are vulnerable. We have not tapped those profit pools yet, and we are developing these profit pools, particularly when you look at used pounds. This is something which is really driving the topic and it's really an additional profit pool, which we haven't fully explored to this point in time. So this is where we're really aiming for. It's about decarbonization because circular material has a reduced carbon footprint. So more and more circular material helps us also on our way to decarbonize our company, not only in the production, not only in the use phase, but definitely also in the supply chain. We see uncertain legislations, and we are seeing quite of a debate now on a European level, where are we with these quotas, quotas for battery recycled material like cobalt, lithium and manganese and lead or, of course, also with the polymer discussion. So that's a little bit of a topic where we are also engaged in targeted advocacy, not against those quotas, but in a way that those quotas match the reality in the market of available material and available, let's say, battery electric vehicles on the market. And what we're seeing is a high dynamic in the market. We are seeing a lot of merger acquisitions in this regard. So that really sees -- gives us the idea of from ourselves is there is something going on. And we, as Volkswagen Group will play a significant role in that. So how does circular economy look like from a scatch? And you see in the classical above of the circular, this is was our classical business. We designed cars, we produce cars, we sold cars, and we had a good customer relationship over time, either from a private base or lease base. Now we are looking into getting the car back various ways through extended leasing, for example, through incentive programs and others and then looking into the chain, how we can really, let's say, not only get the car back dismantle it professionally, sell those green parts or used parts, get into the material again and using this recycled material in our process again. And here again, it really starts with design. So we are also having huge efforts in our research facilities, how we can really, let's say, look at new polymers, how can we look at new designs, how can we look at dismantling, let's say, technologies. I think this is an effort we are putting really quite some efforts into it to really play a major role in this market. And these are some examples which we're driving. Vehicle Recycling, Volkswagen, the brand has really taken step forward, looking also at an own Circular Economy Hub, battery recycling driven by Porsche and certainly our colleagues at PowerCo and battery -- looking at battery recycling technologies with various partnerships. And Audi, and I mentioned them already with glass and steel are certainly looking at secondary material to close that respective loop. So in a nutshell, circular economy is one of a business driver for the future. We are currently making the calculation what it really means in business terms, but there is an investment into this topic, very clear strategic priorities in regenerate+ and our group strategy and efforts, as I said, to drive this topic forward to really make it also a business opportunity for the Volkswagen Group. If we're looking into another aspect, and I'll take you now on a different level, this is how we are implementing our strategy and it's our strategy on our 4 dimensions and how we measure success. It's about value creation, it's about impact. But today, I would like to focus on one elements. One is ESG and secondly, the stakeholder to give you a little bit of an idea where are we with our stakeholder engagement process, particularly our New Council. ESG rating, you're aware that we are having chosen these 3 rating agencies, our major rating agencies, MSCI, Sustainalytics and ISS ESG. You see we are very well on track, very much into a positive direction, looking into improvements wherever we can and seeing also surely now that our strategy, regenerate+ will flourish, and we will see the impact on our rating based on the strategic course we are taking, based on the business actions we are implementing around regenerate+ and our 4 dimensions. And you will see that in the sustainability report, which based on [indiscernible] and the double materiality metrics, but we will also see is what we call the ESG Factbook, which will be launched to our Annual Shareholder Meeting by the end of next week. It is an Excel-based data pool designed for your use. You will see all the key figures into it. You will get all the links into it. So very much driven to you, hopefully, convenience to get the best data points to answer all your data questions you may have in an Excel-based tool, it will be on our website. You can download the Excel sheet and then use it also for your calculations and work around it. Some of those data points will be quantitative for your calculations and your modeling systems, but there will be also quite a lot of qualitative data points, but we feel a very condensed we call it fact book, a very condensed fact book is something which you could also use in your daily, monthly or yearly work to evaluate our performance and our assessment. Happy to receive your feedback when we have launched it. So stay tuned. It will be launched -- officially launched on our website next Friday. And then we talk about in the last few minutes about our Sustainability Council, which we call sustainability practice groups. And you see quite a large council here together with Oliver Blume, and they are in our hybrid lab factory, and this is a factory where we are researching and developing dismantling technologies, automotized dismantling technologies for circular economy. We have set up a council not in the typical way, as you know, from several other companies, and we had it in the past. We have smaller councils per dimension, so one in nature, one in our people, one in society and in business. Three external experts in their field, and we will give -- I will show you who that is in the next -- on the next slide, three external experts in their respective fields working together with three internal experts on their respective field. So for example, our Head of Environment Production is certainly in the Nature Group. And it's not -- again, not only [indiscernible], it is really broadly said colleagues from Africa, colleagues from the various brands are in the internal one, and you will see that we try to be as diverse and impactful from the external ones as possible. They gave us unbiased feedback and they give us feedback on a project basis. So we immediately get an impact on our projects, on the experts who really lead those topics who are leading those projects. And on the one side, and you see here a picture with Oliver Blume taking up by the face-to-face meeting in spring this year. They also advise the Board of Directors. So we have had long sessions with mainly the whole Board of Directors of the Volkswagen Group on that evening. So it's not only directly impact and very agile impact on the project and together with the experts. It is also advising and challenging our strategy, advising and challenging also our Board and really, in principle, having a kind of dual function, very agile to a certain degree, also underestimated the work because we felt, okay, they will meet every 3 months. no, most of the groups work on a monthly basis. So very interactive, very collaborative on eye-to-eye level, very impactful and a lot of insights we are getting from this new kind of setup. And here, you see a sketch of the external experts. For example, we have Rebecca Tower from the [indiscernible] in the Nature Group. We have Joel Harter, a U.S. professor, which is helping us together also with Thymian and the team of really how we transition into the generations and how we transition people in work. We have Aaron Kramer, the CEO of the BSR Network for corporate social responsibility or William Todts from the Transport & Environment NGO in the business side. So very, very broadly, academia, business, start-ups, internationally covered as best as we can. So really getting also the impulses from various ends. So the teams work, nature, our people and society in the teams, but they also, of course, work together as one council and really having meetings, as I said, for example, with the Board of Directors. Coming to a close, my last slide, it is about, again, to open it up, it's about empower people, and you heard it from Thymian. It's about protecting resources, for example, circular economy and make a business out of it. And very, very importantly, it's about regeneration and regenerate progress through carbon-neutrality, circular economy and certainly very, very important through partnerships because particular circular economy is really asking for partnerships to develop it and really making around as possible. But all in all, it's about ourselves. Really driving and engaging and initiating really the spark with our people to drive sustainability, to drive it in a way that is good for our planet, but very, very importantly, and as you saw from all the examples, which are really matter to our business. So shaping sustainability together, but very, very importantly, moving what matters.

Thank you very much. I was told in order not to amalgate here in the picture, we have to stand a little bit aside from it. I can only very much confirm what you have said last. It all starts with us. And if it's not us who start, then it will be no one and us starts now. The first question, if I may, Dirk, we had you last year here and you introduced regenerate+ to us, very detailed, very structured, very analytic. Where do you think did we make greatest progress? And where do you think actually we have still -- we are a little bit behind. What is your assessment?

I think you cannot win in all 12 KPIs. You really need to focus. And certainly, I think where we made progress, as I said, in the production very, very clearly, we drove really the topic over there. The decarbonization index goes into the right direction. The BEV share goes into the right direction. And I think what we're also really getting is saying to get more transparency in the supply chain. I think those are keys, where we really see strong progress and where we are going. Where do we need to be better and faster? It is certainly the point of evaluating in the area of people to really get those points going. And I think Thymian already told us our path forward. This is a way to go. But I think here also, we have to respect the current environment. And again, I think one size doesn't fit all. But I think what we're really trying to do is to give also our brands the respective focus where they need to go, but we also give them the freedom to perform in the areas.

And we take the first question from [ Lisa Popoff ] The European Commission approved a motion to allow automakers to meet emission targets based on their average emissions over the period 2025 to 2027 rather than just in 2025. How does Volkswagen plan to adapt its EV production strategies in response to the adjusted EU emission targets and what impact does this have on its long-term sustainability goals.

Thanks for the question. First of all, I think what we really see is we have a portfolio of electric vehicles now entering the market. Some have been really introduced, and you saw that from the Shanghai Motor Show, Rolf, you have been there and you saw our impressive lineup of products, which we really developed in super short-time in Chinese speed. But what we're also seeing is, let's take the example of Volkswagen brand, for example, we're really looking at the ID.2, which is more or less just around the corner. We're seeing the ID.1. So Lisa, this already pays into the strategy of, let's say, meeting those targets. So we are really ramping up our BEV sales. And you saw that this year, we are really strongly grown in our BEV shares compared to last year. We are really leading with our products, the statistics in Europe, in Germany. So that's really going on to it. If you see the ID.7 sales, strong sales, very, very good adapted and taken up by the market. So very, very promising that the cars, the products we are really bringing to the market are meeting those criteria in terms of duration, chargeability, charging time, et cetera, but it also meets by the design. And I think I'm very, very positive that what we have implemented years ago is now taking to flourish and that the period, which has been agreed and suggested also by the European Commission is on one side, helping us. But definitely, they will keep and course on our way to really move into the area as electromobility is the future.

Yes. And maybe let me add, Lisa, from our perspective, we can't stand still. And the future is uncertain. Currently, there is a big push towards BEV also on our side. Dirk has mentioned that our share, in particular, in Western Europe grew year-over-year in quarter 1 now to 19%. And the more actually we make sure that we are already in 2025 and 2026, achieving those targets, the more actually it reassures us then for the year 2027. So there will be definitely no adaptation or slowdown in our effort to electrify mobility, in particular in Europe because of a potential relaxation of the CO2 targets. Next question comes from Justin. Great overview of regenerate+. Could you confirm if and when Volkswagen Scope 3 carbon emission will be aligned and validated to the 1.5 Celsius rather than the well below 2 Celsius target?

Thanks, Justin, for the question. We are currently committed to where we below target. It will be very tough, and we don't have a timeline if and when we will commit and also validate and certified, as you said, for SBTI-certified to the 1.5-degree Celsius . So we stay on the well below 2 degrees target. And again, it's one thing I think, and as you also said, Rolf, we are really pushing the needle. When we look at the significant investments into electromobility, our investments into decarbonizing our own production in our view of circular economy and others to push also into our supply chain. It is also a question, of course, of balanced investments, I think we need to see.

Very good. A question actually, which very much fits into that topic is the next one, which is coming from [ John Clark]. Do you have any specific initiatives to address vehicle non-exhaust emissions, Dirk?

Non-exhaust emissions, so one thing is definitely, as I said, the Zero Impact Factory, where we really -- and this is production or supply chain, as I understand your question, hopefully right, John, is it is about the whole production. And as we said, we moved the needle from 2050 to 2040 in this regard. And again, let's take the circular economy at this point in time, significant investment into this area. But certainly, I think also, as I said, for example, buying recycled glass, buying recycled steel, which all have a reduced carbon footprint. And certainly, what we do see is also in the discussion with our suppliers is saying, where can we get carbon-reduced material, carbon-reduced steel. So we are in various discussions with our suppliers to get this topic. And maybe one concrete example on top is when we are looking at, for example, battery produced for our ID fleet, this battery has to be produced with renewable energy. So we need to make sure that the battery also comes with a very strong reduced carbon footprint.

Thanks, Dirk. The next one is again from Lisa and highly likely Dirk and I will share the answer. In November 2024, Volkswagen and Rivian established a joint venture to develop software-defined vehicle technologies. What advancements have resulted from the Volkswagen-Rivian partnership? And how are these being integrated into Volkswagen EV lineup?

First of all, we are very successful with it and very happy about this partnership. It really brings us new insight and I think a different speed in developing the software in the right manner. And certainly, I think what it will bring in terms of sustainability perspective, of course, a much more efficient and effective whole steering of the car in terms of the usability of charging electricity in the batteries, we will see much more topics in the way how the car designs and runs and be more efficient on this side. But I think the joint venture is much more advantages from this end.

I fully agree, Dirk. I mean the Lisa, we have to separate two worlds. The one is the more Western world, where we will use the Rivian software stack. And the first vehicle in which it will occur is the ID Everyone or the ID. 1, if you want to put it this way. So the EUR 20,000 level entry car will come with the latest and greatest technology and software. And then we have the Eastern World because of the geopolitical dispersion at the very moment, we decided that we will not have only EE architecture for Volkswagen Group, but two. The other one is developed with [indiscernible] and was also highlighted just recently at the Shanghai Motor Show. We are making very good progress here. First, vehicles with the so-called China electric architecture will start in early 2026. So here, we are a little bit more advanced because the ID Everyone will come in 2027. And as Dirk has said, the joint venture is progressing very well. We are ahead of schedule. We have been able also to share software and hardware components in other vehicles we use. We are currently also investigating if we can apply them to the internal combustion engine world in order to really scale the software solutions. So good progress on this front. I hope this was exhaustive. And next question is a follow-up on the question before from John. He's clarifying that he was focusing on emissions from brakes, tires, road surfaces and windshield cleaners.

But thanks for your follow-up question, and thanks for the clarification and the credit for the information products. Yes, we have quite some examples and topics not only on brakes and surfaces, road surfaces. Road surfaces is a difficult topic because it's not really in our business. But of course, with the brakes or windshield cleaners and others. Give you maybe two examples. Tires. Tires, of course, is a topic. microplastic, I think, is the keyword, which we need to mention here. And we are in dialogue and cooperation with our tire suppliers to see what we can really do to minimize load micro plastic, for example, on this topic. And the topic which you didn't mention, but I think something which is worthwhile as an initiative is when you look at air condition fluids, PFAS-free air condition fluids. So there are a lot of initiatives in the individual spaces where we see to reduce those emissions to air, water and to soil into this regard. And if you look, for example, at lifelong fillings of suspensions or engines into windshield wipers, et cetera, also this -- the way we are looking at it, lifelong filling capsulated processes, I think all of them are really going into the right direction to mitigate and minimize emissions to the environment.

Very good. Last one from my side, Dirk. You highlighted the newly established Sustainability Council. Can you tell us a little bit more about the interaction? How does their recommendations go in our strategic processes? And in particular, what's the exchange between the Sustainability Council and the Executive Board? How does this work?

It's a little bit like two triangles on top. So you have the Sustainability Council in the middle. And I think what we have now very intensively is a dialogue with the -- let's say, with the project team, with the circular economy team, with the production team, but also with the HR team, they're looking at the strategy. So really strongly immediate impact with the colleagues, which it really matters. So that's, I think, something really new in the past and also with other Boards, it takes time until it trickles down from the Board of Directors into the respective functions, as you know. So this is really captured and a very strong engagement directly impacting our regenerate+ KPIs and certainly the projects we are in. The question is how do we talk to the Board and how does the Board talk to the council? And that's what we have established when there is a face-to-face meeting, and we also had phone calls with [indiscernible] for example, but also with Oliver Blumo already, where the Board is giving advices and challenges to the Board of Directors. For example, the new group strategy. The new group strategy has been challenged by the council before it has been launched. [indiscernible] , our Head of Strategy of Lead of Strategy, presented it. And afterwards, we had a long and intensive discussion with Board members on those strategy and even follow-up calls with individual teams so that we are seeing it is not on a council in a vacuum. It is not on a council to giving project advisers, but certainly is also used really by and for the Board of Directors to give them advices, but very hands on.

So lean, fast, listening, sounds very much like the whole regenerate+ strategy. Dirk, it was a big teaser having you today.

Thank you very much, and I'm looking very much forward to welcoming you next time. Thank you very much.

Thank you. So with that, it's on me for the last part of the Sustainability Conference, and I will briefly talk about the -- our progress we have made on the Green Financing. So when we look at the year 2024, we have been very successful with the issuances of our Green Format Bonds. You can see here on the very left-hand side, the share of Green Bonds in our total issuances and it accounted for 57%. We were a little bit surprised by the success ourselves. And therefore, because not knowing actually who is, in particular, issuing what and in particular, in which region of the world, we have set ourselves a little bit less ambitious target for the year 2025, where we are looking for having more than 30% of all of our bonds being green. The reason is not that we want to step back from our targets because what you can see from the next slide is obviously the target is to reach the 30% level by 2030. We are with what we have achieved in 2024 currently at a share of 23% and always sustainably delivering above the 30% threshold should allow us by 2030 to reach our target of 30% of our outstanding bond volume being purely green. Next topic I wanted to give an update on because we think it deserves a proper level of transparency is the [indiscernible] topic. Just as a brief recap, in November 2022, we were signed a red-flag from MSCI because of unconfirmed allegations of forced labor usage at a plant in [indiscernible]. This plant was owned by a joint venture where we were a partner of this joint venture. And since then, we were working on a solution. In June 2023, we promised that we will conduct an independent audit in order to clarify the matter and to investigate whether we can confirm the usage of the forced labor or not. The outcome of this audit, which has been conducted then in December 2023 was that there was no evidence of forced labor to be found. We published the whole audit in the meantime on our website, under our controversy website. And as a consequence, MSCI removed the red-flag. We even went a step further because of economic reasons in December 2024, we decided even to sell our stake in the joint venture to a third-party and not only the stake in our joint venture, but also the related test track in [indiscernible]. So that all-in, the case is still classified as being ongoing with MSCI. Such process can take up to 3 years from start of investigation. But as of now, Volkswagen does not hold any stake or any participation in the region since December 2024. We hope you found that the process was handled in a professional and very transparent way. This has always been our utmost intention -- we wondered a little bit about the procedure of MSCI because we still have to insist. It was unconfirmed allegations. And I still leave it up to you whether the exit from that region is really helping the concerned people or whether the focus is now shifting towards other regions where there is not such a prominent manufacturer represented, but that's on another side note. But as indicated, we wanted to address the issue with full transparency, and I hope you saw a clear will to handle this in a very professional way. Where can you find further information on all of our sustainability projects? There is, first, the Green Finance Report. which highlights the progress and results of our Sustainable Financing Strategy. It builds on the Green Financing Framework, which has been established and introduced in 2022. Then, of course, the Sustainability Report. This report is now part of the Annual Report. And if you want to start reading, please start on Page 228 because the former pages are all handling with the regular annual report stuff. Then we have an ESG figure and PAI Indicator Sheet uploaded on our web page. It's ESG indicators, which reflects Volkswagen's group measure performance and progress on environmental, social and governance matters. We hope you find it useful. It will be updated on a regular basis. And last not least, our ESG controversies website, where we want to keep you up-to-date on allegations which have been made, what is the Volkswagen position towards these allegations and what's the progress actually we are making on the one or the other topic. You heard today from Dirk that there will be also an ESG Factbook available shortly, which I'm personally very much looking forward to. And all of this, as I said, is to enhance transparency for our stakeholders. And yes, I think if you have any other suggestions what we can add or what we should do better, please give the team a shout the SE team around [indiscernible] together with Thomas Küter. Please approach myself directly, and we are very happy actually to take up any valuable suggestions. With that, that brings me to the end of today's ESG conference. Of course, I'm very happy to answer any questions if you may have them. And you can use the chat function within the chat to place any questions directly to me. And I have also the first question from Justin. Yes, of course, Justin, all the slides you have seen today and all the presentations you have seen today will be available on our website very shortly, together with the Q&A sessions we have just held that goes without saying. And as I said, the ESG Factbook should be available in a couple of days from now. If there is no other question at this very point in time, I would like to thank you very much. I would like to thank you for your -- for the vivid discussion we had. I also would like to thank all the presenters today for their contribution. It was a lot of fun. And of course, if there is any follow-up, anything unanswered, please follow up with the team. And we are very looking forward -- very much looking forward to welcoming you latest in May 2026, then to our eighth Sustainability Conference. And yes, I wish you a great afternoon, evening or morning, wherever you have dialed in from and looking forward to catch up soon. Thanks very much, and goodbye.