BERLIN -- Wolfgang Porsche and Hans-Michel Piech, members of the family which controls Volkswagen Group, fully support the shift towards electric cars being pushed by CEO Herbert Diess, the Bild newspaper reported.
Porsche and Piech both sit on the supervisory board of VW Group.
"There is no alternative today to the path that he and the VW management have taken. If we do not tackle this transformation now, the group will have a huge problem in the future," Porsche told Bild.
Volkswagen is shifting from being a manufacturer of traditional vehicles to making self-driving and connected cars, as well as electric vehicles, a step which requires cost cuts and efficiency gains, Diess said last month.
Piech said of Diess: "He has our support. He faces a daunting task. He needs strength, but also support from everyone in the group."
Porsche said Germany should consider scrapping subsidies for diesel vehicles and he also questioned whether all the technology experts that VW wants to recruit necessarily have to work at its headquarters in Wolfsburg.
By 2025, VW Group intends to boost the in-house share of software development for vehicles to over 60 percent from the present figure of less than 10 percent. The automaker established a new business unit called Car.Software on Jan. 1. It plans to expand the unit's staff to more than 10,000 by 2025 from 3,000 now.
VW brand plans to launch the ID3 compact hatchback , its first mass-market EV, in the summer in Europe as it aims to make electric cars a significant part of its range.
The plan to roll out the ID3 in Europe this summer still stands, VW said on Tuesday, pushing back against recent media reports that suggested the car could be delayed by about a year. Manager Magazin had reported that software problems threaten to delay the ID3's European rollout.
The ID3 will be followed soon after by the ID4, the brand's first full-electric SUV.
