Matthias Mueller, the former CEO of Volkswagen Group, has been named chairman of Piech Automotive, an electric-car startup run by the son of the late former VW Group Chairman Ferdinand PIech.
Mueller is one of a number of high-profile figures involved in Piech Automotive, which was founded by Toni Piech and Rea Stark Rajcic, a Swiss designer and entrepreneur. They include tech investor Peter Thiel — a co-founder of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook.
Piech Automotive said in a statement that it had completed its first round of investment with Thiel’s involvement, but did not provide further details. It announced that a second round to raise capital to launch a production car would be managed in the coming months under the leadership of UBS.
Mueller was ousted by VW Group’s board, controlled by the Piech-Porsche clan, in April 2018 and replaced by Herbert Diess.
Mueller had taken the top job at VW after the automaker’s diesel cheating scandal. He was seen by insiders as a reluctant CEO who had an uneasy relationship with the government of Lower Saxony, which is VW’s second-largest shareholder.
