Schreiber sues Volkswagen
Dual-clutch developer takes ex-employer to court for DSG royaltiesThe invitation list for the next meeting of the Volkswagen Group’s Former Managers We Still Like Club keeps getting smaller and smaller.
Several former executives are already on the outer for real or perceived involvement in Dieselgate, and now former senior executive Wolfgang Schreiber is suing the German car-making giant for millions.
Schreiber, who engineered the Bugatti Veyron into a production reality, then moved to head up Bentley and push the Bentayga’s development, has already turned down €20 million ($A29.3m) for his input into developing the dual-clutch transmission widely used at Volkswagen.
German magazine Der Spiegel has reported that Schreiber filed a lawsuit with a Munich court, claiming hundreds of millions of euros in compensation for his innovations, patents and developments on the transmissions, which (when working well) behave like automatic transmissions while using far less fuel.
The Volkswagen Group has used millions of the transmissions across its own brand as well as Porsche, Audi, Skoda, Seat, Lamborghini and even Bugatti.
The court filings said Schreiber was only after “adequate” compensation, while Volkswagen would only officially confirm that the dispute was ongoing and that Schreiber had formally demanded payment.
Schreiber began work at the Volkswagen Group in 1984 and headed the Group’s transmission development from 1996 to 2003, when the DSG transmissions went from concept to production in everything from small cars to supercars.
He replaced Wolfgang Durheimer as CEO of Bentley in 2012, only to be replaced by the same man himself in 2014.
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