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Electric car startups from China and the US are emerging like mushrooms. They cause a stir with their spectacular, often powerful concept cars. But as quickly as they appear, it is often silenced again at companies like Byton, Nio, Aiways or Faraday Future.
We feared the same for Zurich’s electric car startup Piëch Automotive, from the Toni Piëch dialect (42) and its business partner Rea Stark Rajcic (36). With the impressive Mark Zero prototype, a sleek electric supercar, the two made headlines at the Geneva motor show last spring. But then there was silence again at Piëch Automotive. Some people no longer agreed: It was probably nothing with the startup idea to shake up the automotive world with established partners.
Former VW CEO new on board
But: The project continued feverishly closed to the public. Apparently, Piëch’s ideas also convince industry veterans. Now, the list of board members reads like a who’s who in the auto industry.
For example, former BMW engineer Klaus Schmidt (64 years old, responsible for M sports models at the Munich-based car company) has been with Piëch Automotive as head of development and new co-CEO since the beginning of four years. . Jochen Rudat (40, spearheaded Tesla’s market launch in Europe) and Andreas Henke (48, nearly two decades at Porsche, most recently CEO of hi-fi provider Burmester) as second Co-CEO will join them.
The new chairman of the supervisory board is none other than former VW chairman Matthias Müller (67). “The project fills me with great enthusiasm,” says Müller about Piëch Automotive and the expected start of sales for late 2022 or early 2023. Not surprisingly, before his time as CEO of VW, Müller was at the helm of Porsche And among other things, he made the decision to build a purely electric sports car with the Taycan.
Solid financing with various investors
Piëch Automotive’s financing appears to have strong backing: a year and a half ago in Geneva, Toni Piëch announced that he would need around € 500 million to start as a new carmaker. You want to pool this money with multiple investors in multiple rounds of funding. Andreas Henke says today: “We need less than originally planned.” Investors do not include the Piëch or Porsche families, but rather the US investor Peter Thiel (53), who helped complete round of financing A. The next round B is now planned with UBS as the advisory bank.
New engineering campus in Memmingen
Construction of the Piëch engineering campus in Memmingen (D) in southern Germany, where the young Zurich start-up is preparing for the next chapter in the possible success story, also begins just in time for the commissioning of the first prototypes. Because with the newly recruited experts, the modular vehicle concept, allowing numerous body variants, driving types and hardware and software upgrades, Toni Piëch could continue the automotive success story of his Piëch / Porsche family with another chapter from 2022 /2. 3.
