Within the Volkswagen Group, Tesla’s performance is clearly respected. Group CEO Herbert Diess praises and indicates that Tesla is an important example.
Recently it has become clear that the Volkswagen Group is looking with some admiration at what Tesla manages to achieve. First, a letter from group boss Herbert Diess leaked in which he said that he ‘gets a headache from Tesla’. Audi CEO Markus Duessman then made the firm claim that Tesla is ‘years ahead’. Now it is again Diess who speaks about Tesla. “Elon Musk delivers achievements that many did not think possible,” he reports on Linkedin. “It shows that you can make a profit with electric cars. As one of the few (including Porsche, for example), Tesla is going through the corona crisis without a quarterly loss.”
Diess clearly sees that the traditional car market is changing. According to him, the vision of what a car group should be adjusted to the changing world in order to remain of value. There are also opportunities for ‘his own’ Volkswagen. It should be a ‘mobility company’: “In five to ten years, a mobility company will be the most valuable company in the world. It can be Tesla, Apple or Volkswagen.”