Thomas Ulbrich is leaving the Board of Management of the Volkswagen brand after around ten years and will be in charge of development activities for the entire VW Group in China from April 2024. This was announced by the Wolfsburg-based vehicle manufacturer and Volkswagen Passenger Cars on Monday. The Board of Management of the brand, which has set itself the target of improving earnings by 10 billion euros to achieve a return on sales of 6.5% in 2026 in order to strengthen its competitiveness, will thus shrink to seven members. The "New Mobility" department, which was only created in autumn 2022 and for which Ulbrich was responsible, will be merged into Technical Development – the area for which the engineering graduate was responsible as Brand Board Member from February 2021 to September 2022 and which has since been managed by Kai Grünitz.

Ulbrich's previous department will reportedly be transferred to Technical Development "as planned". New software development processes for electric vehicles based on the modular electric drive matrix (MEB) have explicitly been trialled and established in the "New Mobility" department. With the scheduled transfer of all scopes to the MQB evo modular system, the department's "mission" has been completed. He thanks Ulbrich "for his outstanding commitment to the Volkswagen brand", said brand boss Thomas Schäfer. "He has decisively advanced our ID.-electric model series and has also done real pioneering work in software and digital networking and the processes required for this." This work is now bearing fruit and has been fully transferred to Technical Development.

Ulbrich will succeed Marcus Hafkemeyer, who is to take on a different role, as the Group's Head of Development in China, currently a difficult market for VW. Ulbrich, who has been with VW since 1992, has already worked for the Group in China twice in his career. With him, "one of the leading development and software experts will now drive forward the localisation and networking of our development activities" in the region, said VW China boss Ralf Brandstätter, who had been at the helm of the Volkswagen brand himself until mid-2022. He will also become head of the Volkswagen China Technology Company (VCTC), which is to develop the first local electric platform as the basis for new VW brand models from 2026, among other things.