Volkswagen Group CEO Herbert Diess takes into account that Apple will become a major player in the automotive industry. The tech company announced this week that it would come up with its own car.
Just before the end of the year, Apple dropped a news bomb. The American company comes with its own car anyway. It hopes to have it ready by 2024. An electric car, how could it be otherwise, that moves autonomously. Probably a car aimed at car sharing and modern mobility in urban areas. According to Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess, it is clear that we have to take this prospect seriously. This is evident from his response to this news, on his personal LinkedIn page.
Diess expects that Apple can play an important role: “We look forward to new competitors that can accelerate the transition of our industry and bring new technologies. The enormous value and the almost unlimited financial possibilities (of Apple, ed.) respect. This is really going to be a challenger, with dimensions that are unprecedented for our industry. ” Diess refers to Toyota and in a sense states that Apple may be of a different order.
Anyway, Diess does not see traditional competitors as the greatest of the future: “I said it before: the most valuable company in the world will be a mobility company. That could be Tesla, Apple or Volkswagen.” It is therefore clear to Diess that ‘his’ Volkswagen must focus strongly on new forms of mobility in order not to miss that train. A vision that recently seemed to put him in a dire situation within the group. Eventually he was allowed to stay on as top man.