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#01 Computers on wheels:
How can cars become true digital gadgets?
Shaping Mobility – The Volkswagen Podcast – Episode 1

The presenter duo Alina Engelmeier and Vincenzo Lanzilotti talk to Anja Hendel, Managing Director of diconium, and Ole Reuss, Head of Volkswagen’s Software Development Center in Hanover.

How will we spend our time in the car of the future? Which digital features will ensure greater safety and comfort when driving in the future? And will the car become a smartphone on wheels – or is it already? Alina and Vincenzo talk to Anja Hendel, Managing Director of diconium, and Ole Reuss, Head of Volkswagen’s Software Development Center in Hanover. In the discussion with the experts, it becomes clear:
- We are re-imagining the car from a new perspective. Software is at the heart and is constantly being developed.
- The digital journey (“user journey”) starts even before driving and puts customers at the center: digital services and support functions must be easy, intuitive and quick to use.
- Connectivity within the car, but also outside it, offers great potential.
Please note: this Podcast is only available in German language.
The experts
The best digital features are the ones that make life in the vehicle easy, where I feel most comfortable, where everything works really quickly and is intuitive to use.
Anja Hendel joined the management team of digital service provider diconium as Managing Director in January 2020. The company specializes in the holistic development of digital business models and has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Volkswagen AG since January 2020. Previously, Anja Hendel headed the Innovation Management and Digital Transformation Finance department at Porsche AG and served as Director of the Porsche Digital Lab in Berlin. She looks back on years of experience as an SAP specialist at Celesio AG, now McKesson Europe, and the IT consultancy Capgemini.
Everyone in the world knows German engineering. But nobody knows German software design. That’s exactly our disadvantage. But we’re making up for that right now.
Ole Reuss is a specialist for digitalization at Volkswagen. As a long-standing Ambassador in the Volkswagen Group (2017-2020), he developed software solutions for the mobility of tomorrow with the team from Berlin. Since June 2020, he has been building up the group’s own Software Development Center in Hanover together with Jan Wipke – one of now eight SDCs in Europe (Hanover, Wolfsburg, Dresden, Berlin, Ingolstadt, Barcelona, Lisbon and the Porsche Informatik SDC in Salzburg/Vienna) and two in India (Pune and Delhi).
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This topic was first published by Volkswagen Newsroom on 02/02/21.