Volvo Cars appoints Atif Rafiq senior vice president IT & chief digital officer
Volvo Cars appoints Atif Rafiq senior vice president IT & chief digital officer
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.
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Volvo Car Group in 2015
For the 2015 financial year, Volvo Car Group recorded an operating profit of 6,620 MSEK (2,128 MSEK in 2014). Revenue over the period amounted to 164,043 MSEK (137,590 MSEK). For the full year 2015, global sales reached a record 503,127 cars, an increase of 8 per cent versus 2014. The record sales and operating profit cleared the way for Volvo Car Group to continue investing in its global transformation plan.
About Volvo Car Group
Volvo has been in operation since 1927. Today, Volvo Cars is one of the most well-known and respected car brands in the world with sales of 503,127 in 2015 in about 100 countries. Volvo Cars has been under the ownership of the Zhejiang Geely Holding (Geely Holding) of China since 2010. It formed part of the Swedish Volvo Group until 1999, when the company was bought by Ford Motor Company of the US. In 2010, Volvo Cars was acquired by Geely Holding.
As of December 2015, Volvo Cars had almost 29,000 employees worldwide. Volvo Cars head office, product development, marketing and administration functions are mainly located in Gothenburg, Sweden. Volvo Cars head office for China is located in Shanghai. The company’s main car production plants are located in Gothenburg (Sweden), Ghent (Belgium), Chengdu and Daqing (China), while engines are manufactured in Skövde (Sweden) and Zhangjiakou (China) and body components in Olofström (Sweden).