Volvo Cars, the premium car maker, has appointed Atif Rafiq
to the position of senior vice president IT and chief digital officer.
Mr Rafiq, 43, will oversee the company’s continued digital
transformation, helping to evolve how consumers interact with Volvo cars across
the buying, driving, entertainment and service experience. He will oversee the
consumer facing applications, digital touchpoints and enterprise systems
supporting the company’s products, processes and services.
Mr Rafiq joins Volvo Cars from McDonalds Corporation, where
he was chief digital officer, building the company’s digital efforts from
scratch and leading global efforts to transform consumer experience though the
use of technology.
A veteran of Silicon Valley, he has held a variety of
general management positions at leading global technology companies including
Amazon, Yahoo!, and AOL. Mr. Rafiq was also the co-founder and CEO of a
start-up and has advised, invested and served on the boards of over 10
start-ups. He will be a member of Volvo Cars executive management team,
starting January 2, 2017.
“The automotive industry is changing rapidly. This means
that Volvo must also change rapidly. Part of this involves rethinking how
customers buy Volvo’s cars and then how they interact with them once they have
bought them. Atif is ideally qualified to speed up our development in this
area,” said Håkan Samuelsson, president and chief executive.
Mr Rafiq said: “I believe the automotive industry faces its
biggest inflection point in literally 100 years. Whether it’s new technologies
like computer vision and machine learning, or changing consumer behaviours
around sharing and mobility, the scope for leveraging digitization is huge. I
see in Volvo a company that has fully embraced these challenges and can lead
the industry into the future. ”
Volvo has announced ambitious plans in order remain at the
forefront of a rapidly changing automotive industry when it comes to autonomous
driving, electrification and connectivity/digitization.
Volvo Cars will in 2017 inaugurate the world’s largest
autonomous driving experiment, called Drive Me, in which 100 families will
drive autonomous driving Volvos on real roads around Gothenburg in Sweden.
Their experiences will be used to co-develop the company’s future autonomous
driving cars.
Volvo Cars has also announced its intention to create a
joint venture software development company alongside Autoliv, the global
automotive safety company, to develop autonomous drive software, as well as a
deal with Uber, the US ride sharing company, to co-develop high level base cars
for autonomous driving usage.
It has also announced plans to have 1m electrified cars on
the roads globally by 2025.
Volvo Cars has also developed a leading position in
connectivity services that have changed the way it interacts with its
customers, such as its in-car delivery service, its Volvo On Call app, its phone
as key service and offering Apple Carplay.
“In many ways, the development of cars that are autonomous,
electrified and connected overlap. Mr Rafiq will help ensure that all of these
developments are pursued in a cohesive, strategic and technologically-advanced
way,” said Mr Samuelsson.
Klas Bendrik, currently senior vice president Group IT, will
support Mr Rafiq in the transition and thereafter leave Volvo Cars for a new
position.
“Klas has built up a strong IT organization over the last
six years and led the charge in ensuring digitization has become a central part
of our strategic agenda. I wish him all the best in his new role,” said Mr
Samuelsson.
Source: Volvo Cars Global Newsroom.
Source: Volvo Cars Global Newsroom.
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