Herbert Diess has put his money where his mouth is. In 2015, Volkswagen agreed to spend $15 billion to buy into Tesla. Now, Diess has set his sights on beating Elon Musk and building a more sustainable carmaker.
Mr. Diess heads the new board-approved plan for Volkswagen’s brands to reduce CO2 emissions in the transport sector by up to 70 percent. He said such a move could save at least $38 billion and fight global warming.
Volkswagen has been a leader in the field of sustainability, but lags far behind competitors like Tesla. The German automaker showed off its new e-Golf electric car at a number of international motor shows this year.
Since taking on the company’s strategic plan earlier this year, Mr. Diess says Volkswagen is ready to “set its sights on beating Tesla.”
Other attempts to overtake Tesla, such as a failed Ferrari marketing campaign in 2009, haven’t exactly paid off.
However, Mr. Diess said Volkswagen’s plan was not about competition with Tesla alone, but instead about reducing emissions in the car industry as a whole. “I am convinced that electric cars and sharing can bring big improvements. “The way to do that is not by blocking the development of hybridization,” Mr. Diess said.
Read the full story at Bloomberg.
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