Volkswagen Hires Apple Battery Production Head

The automotive group Volkswagen has started to aggressively build up a staff of specialists in battery production. The Wolfsburg-based company is poaching both with the competition and with tech companies such as Apple .

As per reports, Soonho Ahn will work for the company in the future. He was most recently in charge of battery development at the computer company Apple for two years. The engineer from South Korea previously worked for the battery departments of Samsung SDI and LG Energy.

In addition to this, Volkswagen was also able to sign Jörg Hoffmann, who previously worked for BMW. In the future, the battery cell expert will ensure that the Wolfsburg-based company can transfer the production of the new solid-state battery cells to an industrial level. These systems represent a promising alternative to the common lithium-ion systems because they are safer and still provide decent performance.

Various partners on board

Volkswagen has been working flat out for some time to develop its own electromobility capabilities. In addition to the production lines for cars, the company also wants to manufacture the power storage units themselves. A total of six plants are to be set up in Europe for this purpose. Since Volkswagen is breaking new ground in terms of its own history, it naturally makes sense to recruit external specialists.

But various partners have also been won for these projects. For example, VW is getting help from Northvolt in Sweden and Going High-Tech in China. The latter is to become a technology partner in Salzgitter, where the company’s engine plant will be given a corresponding new task. The strategy of cell production in-house differs significantly from the production of the previous combustion models, in which a large number of core components were provided by the large supplier industry.