‘Elon Musk wanted Volkswagen CEO Diess as Tesla CEO’

Herbert Diess, now CEO of the Volkswagen Group, could possibly have become CEO of Tesla a few years ago. Tesla CEO Elon Musk reportedly presented him with a contract.

Elon Musk and Herbert Diess met last year in Germany, in what looked like a cozy get-together with a Volkswagen ID3. However, the two came a lot closer together a few years earlier, according to research by the German Business Insider. In 2015 it would have come to a climax, when Musk wanted to step aside as CEO and apparently saw Diess as a good successor. According to Business Insider a contract had already been drawn up for Diess, which only had to be signed.

The Munich-born CEO announced his departure from BMW at the end of 2014 and then became head of Volkswagen’s board of directors in the summer of 2015. Somewhere around that time, Musk would have wanted to bring him to Tesla, but without success. Musk himself remained at the helm of Tesla and Diess focused in recent years, among other things, on preparing Volkswagen for a more electric future. Despite this, Diess has repeatedly not been secretive about admiring Tesla. After meeting Musk and Diess at a Volkswagen ID3, Diess got behind the wheel of a Tesla Model Y and expressed his positive impression of that car.

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