In an interesting and honest comment about their effort to go electric, VW CEO Herbert Diess said that Tesla has an important advantage over legacy automakers when it comes to electric vehicles; they don’t have to worry about protecting their gas-powered car business.
The fact that Tesla only sells all-electric vehicles and only worries about selling electric vehicles give them an important advantage.
Diess made the comment in an interview with Financial Times:
“I think Tesla is doing a good job. They don’t have to care about the legacy. They don’t have to care about the next generation of gasoline in motors and so they can really focus on the future. It’s an advantage.”
The CEO appears to be saying that while they see electric vehicles as the future, but they still have to worry about their legacy business, gas-powered cars, as they invest in electric vehicles.
Nonetheless, Volkswagen is heavily investing in electric vehicles and Diess believes that their mass manufacturing experience is going to help them catch up:
“Some of our competitors have much more speed when it comes to software — software deployment and capabilities where we are still lagging behind. But we are good at scale and so we have a chance.”
VW plans to manufacture up to 3 million electric vehicles by 2025.
