Spotlight 10 November 2026 ǁǁǁ͘ ĂŌĞƌŵĂƌŬĞƚŽŶůŝŶĞ͘ ŶĞƚ What independent garages need to know about the new erWin Volkswagen Group’s new erWin portal brings repair, maintenance and diagnostic information for eight brands together in one place. But what does the change mean for independent garages, and what do they need to do to make the switch? In a Q&A with Aftermarket Editor Chris Callander, Lasse Schmidt van Hülst, Head of Sales and Product Marketing at Volkswagen Group Info Services AG, explains the thinking behind the new platform, the practical changes workshops need to be aware of, and what further developments are planned. Chris Callander: What prompted Volkswagen Group to rebuild erWin, and what were the previous systems’ main shortcomings or limitations that you wanted to address? Lasse Schmidt: Two things. The first was structural. erWin had grown brand by brand and market by market, so a workshop ended up with several entry points, several interfaces and licence and user management in every one of them. The second was where the market is heading. Official manufacturer data is becoming more central to independent repair, not less, and a system assembled brand by brand was never going to carry that. So the starting point was consolidation into one portal, one shop, one login, with licences and users managed centrally for every employee and every site. But consolidation is the platform, not the product. CC: From an independent workshop’s point of view, what are the biggest practical differences they will notice when moving from the old erWin to the new platform? LS: Three things change on day one. First, login: instead of a separate account for each brand, a workshop registers once under a One Business ID. That is the company account, and every user sits inside it. Second, the licences. They belong to the company rather than the individual and are valid company-wide. Several technicians can work at the same time, each under their own licence, and one overview shows everything active across every brand. Third, the working context for ODIS. It is still mandatory, but it is now stored once under My erWin > My profile, instead of being entered with every purchase. One point workshops should plan for is that accounts from the old erWin are not carried over. The company registers from scratch. Licences already bought there stay valid until they expire, but only while the old erWin is accessible, so they need to be used up by 31 December 2026, when it closes. Annual licences are the exception; they can be transferred to the new erWin with their remaining term. CC: Is the launch essentially a new way of accessing the same information, or should workshops expect the range of information, services and functionality available through erWin to expand over time? LS: Both, and in that order. The first job was to consolidate. The information workshops rely on is the same official Volkswagen Group repair, maintenance and diagnostic information, now reachable through one portal instead of several brand-specific ones. But the platform was built to grow. Two categories are live today; repair and maintenance, and diagnostics with ODIS. Training is marked as coming soon; for now, training data runs through the importer, and we are working on bringing it into the portal directly. The wider point is that a single, centrally governed platform can be developed. Improved user journeys, additional functions and more digital support along the workshop workflow are far easier to deliver from one system than from eight. CC: How much of the development of the new erWin was influenced by feedback from independent workshops and other aftermarket users, and what were they asking you to improve? Lasse Schmidt van Hülst is Head of Sales and Product Marketing at Volkswagen Group Info Services AG
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjQ0NzM=