Set to become one of the world’s youngest automaker bosses (in May of 2015), 49 year-old Harald Krueger, has a lot in store for when he takes over the reins at BMW.
He will take veteran CEO Norbert Rethofer’s place at the helm and according to Bloomberg, he will bring forth a “new era” for the manufacturer.
Krueger is more keen than his predecessor on green cars and connected tech, and he is known to have been instrumental in creating the i3 and i8 hybrid-EVs.
According to Stefan Bratzel, the director of the Center of Automotive Management at the University of Applied Sciences in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany, said about Krueger that “his comparatively young age is remarkable. Assuming he doesn’t make mistakes, he’ll start a new era for BMW.”
He said “that’s interesting also because of the paradigm shift that we’re seeing with powertrains, connectivity and business models.”
The source piece also points out that Krueger “was already speaking on topics far outside production. He touted automated production with a robot named Olaf, but he also talked about BMW’s cars parking themselves and called for a broad European framework for in-car Internet connectivity,” when he attended a BMW event held in Berlin.