Tesla vs Volkswagen
The race between Tesla and Volkswagen has changed levels. This week, Elon Musk’s company surpassed Volkswagen in market value for the first time, despite not selling a tiny part of what the German company sells and has never shown an annual profit since it started operating.
The threat to VW comes true with Musk’s plans to open a factory near Berlin, the heart of the German automotive industry. And for now, Tesla has a competitive advantage in electric cars and software, technologies that are sustaining a shift towards cleaner mobility.
Volkswagen Group CEO Herbert Diess sent a message to Elon Musk: “We are going after Tesla”.
“While Tesla is developing in electric vehicles, Volkswagen is buying software companies and increasing investments in sustainable vehicles and batteries,” Diess said on Friday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
He said in an interview for TV Bloomberg: “This is an open race. We are optimistic that in addition to maintaining the same pace as Tesla, at some point we will overtake it.
Diess summoned VW’s top executives
Diess summoned VW’s top executives and urged them to step up efforts to make the company more agile or risk being left behind. The race will be won by the company that in addition to agility and innovation has the largest scale in this new world automotive scenario.
VW has already started to develop, in Germany, the ID3, its first electric vehicle for the market. This compact hatchback will be the direct rival of the Tesla model 3.
US tariffs and global trade
After a dinner in Davos with President Donald Trump, Diess said he was still concerned about the problem of tariffs that the United States intends to impose on European cars and a possible reduction in world trade. The company is also expected to comply with the new European automotive emissions specifications, which ultimately means that VW is expected to market more sustainable cars.
“2020 will be a very difficult year for the global automotive industry. But the Volkswagen group is doing the right things to be competitive, ”said Diess.
