Volkswagen poaches Apple executive

At first glance, poaching an executive from tech giant Apple to lead Volkswagen's autonomous car push seems like an odd strategy.

That's until you realise that just a year ago, Johann Jungwirth, the Volkswagen Group's new Head of Digital Transformation, was the President and CEO of the North American research and development laboratory of Mercedes-Benz in Palo Alto.

Jungwirth was the man behind Mercedes-Benz's well received autonomous F 015 concept car, along with the technology inside the S-Class that autonomously recreated the Bertha Benz drive in the world's first car, but jumped ship for Apple a year ago.

He has been on Volkswagen’s radar for some time, according to sources at Wolfsburg, and has been given a post senior enough that he is answerable only to Volkswagen Group CEO Matthias Müller.

The Romanian-born Jungwirth studied electrical engineering in Stuttgart and the motor vehicle program at MIT and joined Apple in 2014 as the Director of Mac Systems Engineering, where he was deeply involved in Apple’s autonomous car project.

But, more critically to Volkswagen, his duties at Mercedes-Benz covered the development and industrialization of autonomous driving, powertrain development, electric drive technologies, telematics, infotainment and connected driving.