Volkswagen Appoints New Battery Unit CTO

TapTechNews June 24th, Volkswagen Group appointed HWVassen as the chief technology officer of its battery business unit PowerCo, who will succeed Soonho Ahn who jumped from Apple to join PowerCo in 2021. PowerCo said Anh resigned on his own initiative and will serve as a consultant for the Volkswagen Group in the future.

Vassen is currently the series development head of PowerCo and he will officially take up the new post on August 1. According to Frank Blome, the chief executive officer of PowerCo, Vassen has played an important role in developing the unified battery that PowerCo will put into production next year.

According to public information, Vassen joined the Volkswagen Group in 1999, held various technical positions at Audi, and became the head of the energy system of the brand in 2005. At the same time, Vassen has also worked in China for six years, being responsible for the development of电芯 and battery systems of the Volkswagen Group (China) etc., and became the senior director of New Energy Vehicles (NEV) of Volkswagen China in 2020. Since the second half of last year, Vassen has been serving as the series development head of PowerCo.

Ahn joined PowerCo in November 2021. Before that, he led the battery development department at Apple in 2018, and before that he worked for Samsung SDI Company as the senior vice president of next-generation battery and material innovation. Even earlier, he was also in charge of lithium-ion battery development at Samsung SDI.

In the middle of 2022, Volkswagen spun off its battery business unit and, together with its partners, invested 20 billion euros (TapTechNews note: currently about 155.754 billion yuan) to build battery factories with a total capacity of 240 gigawatt-hours by 2030. This move is aimed at strengthening Volkswagen's control over the supply chain and helping it catch up with Tesla's leading position in the electric vehicle field.