In Volkswagen’s heyday at the turn of the decade, then-CEO Herbert Diess and Tesla chief Elon Musk had an unusual bromance, often heaping praise on one another’s automotive achievements.
Diess hailed Tesla as the benchmark for success, while Musk went so far as to declare the Volkswagen boss was “doing more than any big carmaker to go electric.”
If only words could fuel a business.
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Today, Musk is the world’s richest man (about 10 times wealthier than in 2020), and Tesla’s market valuation is 14 times that of Volkswagen’s. Diess, meanwhile, was fired in 2022; and far from being Tesla’s mass-market EV peer, Volkswagen is scaling back its electric plans and even thinking the unthinkable — shutting car plants in Germany.
