Volvo hires Škoda's Klaus Zellmer as CEO, then waits a year
Zellmer arrives no later than 1 October 2027, at a company down 45 percent this year
Volvo Cars announced on Sunday 20 September that Klaus Zellmer, chairman and chief executive of Škoda Auto since July 2022, will become its president and CEO. The board's own wording is that he takes the job no later than 1 October 2027, which is a year and eleven days from the announcement. Håkan Samuelsson, who came back in April 2025 on a two-year contract, stays on to manage the handover with the board.
Klaus Zellmer, 59, is Volvo Cars' third CEO in three years
Zellmer follows Jim Rowan, who lasted three years before the board replaced him in March 2025, and Samuelsson, who was brought back the next day for a fixed two-year term with the explicit brief of preparing a long-term successor. Chairman Eric Li, who as Li Shufu founded majority owner Geely, said Zellmer combines deep automotive expertise with broad international leadership experience. Zellmer's own line was about safety: few brands, he said, have built such a strong and lasting reputation around it. He is the second German to run Volvo Cars, after Stefan Jacoby, whom Geely installed in 2010 and replaced with Samuelsson in 2012.
Samuelsson's contract ends in April 2027, up to six months before the deadline
Samuelsson's second term runs to the end of March 2027, and he has said he has no plans to work full time once it expires. Zellmer is promised only by 1 October. The gap is at most six months, and Volvo says the transition will be seamless, but the company has not said who runs it if Zellmer's release from Volkswagen comes late. Samuelsson is 75 and led the company from 2012 to 2022. The 13-model plan he presented in Stockholm on 17 September is now his successor's to deliver: seven cars for Europe and the US, six for China, a doubling of market share and an EBIT margin above 8 percent.
Škoda delivered 1,043,900 cars in 2025 at an 8.3 percent margin
Škoda's record under Zellmer is the reason the board went to Mladá Boleslav. In 2025 the brand delivered 1,043,900 cars, up 12.7 percent and its first million since 2019, on revenue of €30.1 billion and an operating profit of €2.5 billion, a return on sales of 8.3 percent. The first half of 2026 was better still: 555,700 deliveries, an 8.5 percent margin, 108,200 electric cars, up 48.3 percent, and second place among all brands in Europe behind only Volkswagen. Volvo Cars retailed 710,000 cars in the whole of 2025. Škoda's next flagship, the Peaq, has already driven 936 km on one charge before its launch.
Volvo's margin was 3.5 percent in 2025 and 1.1 percent in the second quarter of 2026
The company Zellmer inherits made an adjusted EBIT margin of 3.5 percent in 2025 and 1.1 percent in the second quarter of this year, on revenue that fell from 93.5 billion to 77.7 billion kronor. Headcount is down by around 3,000 against a year earlier, the 5 billion kronor cost target for 2026 was booked six months early, and Samuelsson's own explanation for the numbers is a Chinese market down 30 percent. The shares have lost more than 45 percent in 2026. The 8 percent target on the September slide is, to the decimal, the margin Škoda reported for 2025, and Volvo's new 200 km plug-in hybrid XC60 is the model that has to carry the recovery until the new cars arrive.
Porsche, Volkswagen, Škoda: 30 years in German car companies, none in Sweden
Zellmer joined Porsche in 1997 as an assistant to a board member, ran Porsche Deutschland from 2010 and Porsche Cars North America from 2015 to 2020, then sat on the Volkswagen brand board for sales, marketing and after-sales before taking Škoda from Thomas Schäfer on 1 July 2022. His whole career has been at Porsche and Volkswagen, one group since 2012. Eric Li's justification is exactly that mix, premium and volume, and Škoda's job in the group is the one Volvo now needs done: sell a million cars a year at a margin Wolfsburg cannot match. Volkswagen has not named a successor for Škoda, and the date on which it does will say more about when Zellmer actually starts than Volvo's press release did.
AutoNext Take
Volvo has hired the one executive whose current day job is Volvo's own target. Eight percent is the margin on the 17 September slide; 8.3 percent is what Škoda made last year and 8.5 percent in the first half, on Octavias and Elroqs rather than EX90s. That is the case for Zellmer. The calendar is the case against. A CEO announced in September who cannot be guaranteed before October of the following year is a CEO still under contract to someone else, and Volvo has just committed its biggest product plan in 99 years to a hand-over that may leave the chair to a 75-year-old who has said he is done working full time.
Two dates decide how this reads. Volkswagen has to name a new Škoda chief, and if a name is in Mladá Boleslav before the end of 2026, Zellmer's Gothenburg start moves closer to April than October. Then Volvo's full-year results in February 2027 show whether the margin he inherits is the 3.5 percent of 2025 or the 1.1 percent of last spring. If it is the second, his first job is not doubling market share, it is the cost base Samuelsson has already cut by 3,000 people, and the 8 percent will be reached the Škoda way, by removing cost, before it is reached the Volvo way, by adding cars.
