Dr.-Ing. Thomas Plocher

Dr.-Ing. Thomas Plocher is a German national with a PhD in mechanical engineering, an MBA and a 6-Sigma GB certification. With over 25 years of experience in the automotive industry, he has worked with OEMs and international suppliers in global roles, 10+ years of which were in Asia. He has expertise in the customer-focused innovation process, product management, business development, supply chain management, product launch, and lean process development.

Dr. Plocher has a proven track record in leadership with P&L management responsibilities. He has handled sales of more than 100 million Euro and full budget responsibility of over 20 million Euro annually, and has managed multiple locations with more than 300 people.

He is currently the Director of Electrification at DEUTZ AG, Shanghai, where he is responsible for establishing partnerships with suppliers, startups, and universities in the areas of electric drive systems, energy storage, and generation to establish technological leadership of eDEUTZ and TORQEEDO in China. He is also responsible for the localization and industrialization of relevant eDEUTZ and TORQEEDO products in China, as well as establishing patent leadership in core technology areas.

Previously, he was a Strategic and Technical Advisor at ZTRACTOR, Palo Alto, where he oversaw the development of autonomous electric tractors and was responsible for machine learning and AI applications for autonomous driving and smart agriculture. He was also responsible for drive and PTO motor development, battery cell, module, BMS, and complete battery pack development, hydrogen, and methanol fuel cell technology scouting and supplier evaluation, gear, chassis, and track development, university partnerships, patent research, identification of potential investors, investor relationship management, and industrialization of BearCub24 and product launch.

Prior to that, he was the Global Chief Engineer ADAS and Autonomous Driving at ZF, Friedrichshafen, where he had 9 direct reports and 80 system/function/application engineers in four engineering centers worldwide. He was responsible for global product roadmap, platform strategy, application development, and product releases. He led the development of functions based on fusion of LR/SR RADAR, Camera, LIDAR, and Ultra-Sonic sensor technologies for truck, bus, trailer, and off-highway applications, and developed AL-3 and AL-4 functions. He also defined software architecture and developed WABCO Autonomous Driving Open Platform Technology (ADOPT) to provide customers configurable access to ADAS/Autonomous Driving, Powertrain, Steering, and Brake Systems. Dr. Plocher was responsible globally for partnerships/collaborations with Baidu, Waymo, Valeo, MobileEye, Continental, Bosch, Nexteer, Robosense, Aptiv, ForYou, Nidec, and others.

Dr. Plocher is an experienced generalist, eager to perform in an international business environment, creating products and services with global, multicultural teams. He is married to a Shanghainese and has a daughter born in 2015. He can be reached at ThomasPlocher@outlook.de or +86 130 6269 8618 or Profile on LinkedIn.