Volkswagen 'can overtake' Telsa to become biggest EV manufacturer by 2025

Published date29 June 2022
Publication titleIrish Times: Web Edition Articles (Dublin, Ireland)
"Elon must simultaneously ramp up two highly complex factories in Austin and Grünheide [near Berlin] — and expand production in Shanghai. That will cost him strength," Herbert Diess told workers at VW's Wolfsburg headquarters on Tuesday

"We have to seize this opportunity and catch up quickly — by 2025 we can be in the lead," Mr Diess added.

The confidence from the VW chief stands in contrast to comments he made just last month when he told a Financial Times conference that VW "didn't expect [its] main US competitor to be so fast and well prepared", and that it would be a "tight race" to be the dominant electric vehicle producer by the middle of the decade.

VW, which has invested more than €52bn in the development of battery-powered vehicles, plans to sell approximately 700,000 electric cars worldwide this year, less than half of the 1.5mn that Tesla chief executive Elon Musk suggested his brand would be able to deliver.

However, Tesla, which coped better than most competitors during the early stages of the semiconductor supply crisis, has more recently been plagued with production problems at its so-called gigafactories in the US, Europe and China.

Musk told a Tesla owners' club last month that the company's plants in Texas and Germany were "gigantic money furnaces right now", losing billions of dollars as they struggle to secure parts and accelerate manufacturing in the face of global supply chain bottlenecks.

Mr Diess, who is friendly with Musk and has credited the entrepreneur with popularising electric cars, seized on these developments in his address to staff, saying that while VW's strongest competitor "remains Tesla", the company was "weakening". His presentation contained a meme that showed actor Jason Momoa representing VW creeping up behind fellow actor Henry Cavill cast as Tesla.

In...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT