Tesla, the new competitor
VW boss Herbert Diess on Elon Musk: why he appreciates the Tesla CEO so much
VW boss Herbert Diess “warns” of Tesla CEO Elon Musk as a new competitor (archive photo from 2021)
© dpa | Carsten Koall / Picture Alliance
VW boss Herbert Diess says in an interview with “Zeit” that Elon Musk “must be taken very seriously”. In the interview, Diess also shows how VW wants to overtake Tesla as the world market leader in the electric car market.
Elon Musk wants to fly people to Mars, challenges Vladimir Putin to a fight and sends turd emojis, but he is also the CEO of Tesla – the US carmaker that pushed electromobility and made it one of the most valuable car brands in the world in just a few years has achieved. And that’s exactly what worries Volkswagen, the second largest car manufacturer in the world in terms of vehicle sales.
“He has accelerated change in the industry,” explains VW boss Herbert Diess in an interview with “Zeit”. Diess is therefore taking a close look. Because he is certain that Tesla is a new competitor in the automotive industry. The VW boss says about Musk: “You have to take him very seriously. He anticipates the future.”
He admits: “We couldn’t have withstood the competition the way Volkswagen did in the past. Luckily we were able to agree to build a new one next to the old one in Wolfsburg.” Using the example of the telecommunications group Nokia, which at the time missed the technological leap driven by Apple, Samsung and Co. and finally sold its mobile phone division to Microsoft, he explains that Volkswagen should not be too self-confident.
This sees VW superior to Tesla
According to the VW boss, his group also has a chance: “Our current driver assistance is superior to the competition. Tesla has to start up three new plants at the same time. That’s demanding.” VW is ramping up five locations in parallel, but with significantly more experience. In addition, Tesla essentially builds two major models, while the VW Group counteracts this with ten brands, says Diess.
The future success of Volkswagen depends on Cariad, the software division of the group, which is to push the development of self-programmed software and its integration into the electronics of various VW group subsidiaries. But not everything runs smoothly at Cariad; the supervisory board has given Diess a deadline of up to the end of June to develop a software strategy. According to the VW boss, however, such a strategy already exists. Nevertheless, he admits that all of the group’s brands were originally supposed to have a common driver assistance system. That should finally happen in a few years.
Source:time