“My Vision: to Use Mobility Simply Everywhere!”

That automation and robotics will take over the world and kill people. An idea that is, of course, inspired by films, for only a person would have any interest in doing that. Machines themselves would not do it, because it goes against any logic in the world of algorithms.

I recently traveled from Wolfsburg to Berlin in the T-Roc for the first time. The car stayed in its lane and maintained the proper speed and distance to the car in front as required by the traffic situation all on its own. I just had to take over the steering wheel occasionally for safety reasons. That’s also a legal requirement. So we have already come very far. And for me, it can’t happen fast enough.

I travel a lot and often ask myself whether traveling makes sense. After all, Skyping works too. Perhaps someday we will even be able to use hologram technology instead of traveling. In fact, the CEO of Vodafone, Dr. Hannes Ametsreiter, has just given the first hologram interview. We can prevent unnecessary travel and do not have to be mobile at all costs. A family reunion is one thing: I want to go there, see people in person and hug them. But if I have a two-hour conversation with someone in the US, do I really have to fly there?

Our contribution in the Digital:Lab consists of making mobility as easy as possible for customers, whether it is through an app or a mobile service. In China, 90 percent of the population now use e-commerce only on their mobile devices. This means that if we offer a service in China, we should set it up to be mobile and not as a web service. The Digital:Lab helps to determine and improve user needs for the products.

On the one hand, there is pioneering work with regard to software development; on the other hand there is pioneering work with regard to culture. More than 50 people from over 25 countries work with us. This is something new not only for Volkswagen but also for Germany and Europe. The pioneering aspect lies in the answer to the question: How does cooperation work when people from so many different countries are working in one team? Our work is very agile; we have flat hierarchies. The teams have discussions in order to reach a decision. There is nobody who says: “I am deciding this now.” It’s an exciting experience.

We always say to our visitors: if someone tells you what the future of mobility looks like, don’t believe them. None of us knows that. My hope is that, in the future, mobility will give us back some space. We will need the space particularly in the city, because many more people will live in cities. So, then we have to consider how to connect the rural population with the city. We are currently still thinking too much in one dimension, in terms of roads and highways. The politician Dorothee Bär was laughed at for her vision of a flying taxi. I found that unfair. The air space is there, isn’t it? And we have been working on how we can use it for a long time. I believe that we will think very differently on land, on water and in the air. My vision is that mobility can be used everywhere and easily. That is not yet the case today.