Volkswagen and Tesla may be bitter rivals on the electric vehicle market. Still, when it comes to the CEO of two companies Herbert Diess and Elon Musk, they have a soft corner for each other in there heart’s, which is discernible from the recent appreciation which came from Diess side for Tesla at an event where VW was presenting the new Golf hatchback.
According to Diess “Tesla is not a niche”, and also he added that he has a lot of respect for Tesla and also that its a competitor which should be taken seriously. The admiration was a reaction of him being questioned about Tesla facing trouble as its too small.
Elen Musk was the first one to show the strong chemistry that was developing between him and Diess when he was the first one to come in defence of Diess in response to a Bloomberg Opinion article which questioned Diess role in Volkswagen’s high-profile Dieselgate scandal of 2015.
He tweeted “Herbert Diess is doing more than any big carmaker to go electric. The good of the world should come first. For what it’s worth, he has my support”. After the Volkswagen diesel emission cheating scandal broke out, Volkswagen has planned of going electric with its new MEB platform, which is a modular car platform for electric cars.
Thus now, two brands have a simple project to work on, and hence this is also one of the reasons for two brands coming closer.
The market is also full of rumours that Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess is interested in acquiring a stake in Tesla which would help him expand his electric platform though a spokesman of Volkswagen denied this news. Tesla is consistently facing the problem of tight cash flow and embattled stock price in 2019 so far, which give a base to the rumours and also explains the reason for two CEO’S admiring and supporting each other. Just on the day, Herbert Diess came in support of Tesla; its shares soared to 18 per cent, the most significant jump in last six and a half years, which was followed by a surprise quarterly profit report.
Both Volkswagen and Tesla are investing in electric cars the difference comes when we look at the scale of two companies as Volkwagen has a dozen other profitable gasoline car brands (Audi, Porsche, Lamborghini, etc.), while Tesla only has one yet-to-be-profitable product line.