Volkswagen’s CEO Herbert Diess believes that his company can catch and then pass Tesla in terms of global electric vehicle sales by 2025. Diess also thinks that the global supply chain shortage is about to ease up a bit and that Volkswagen will have a surge of momentum towards the second half of this year.
Diess made the comments on CNBC’s Squawk Box Europe and included a number of interesting tidbits about the future of the brand. Of course, the main story is that he believes that Volkswagen will overtake Tesla by 2025: “Markets are always about the future. Tesla currently is in the lead when it comes to EVs, probably also it is the most digital car company already and they have some advantages. We are still aiming at keeping up and probably overtaking by 2025 when it comes to sales.”
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Volkswagen is only the latest automaker to publicly state its intent to overtake Tesla in the near future. Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors came out last year with the goal of becoming the leading electric vehicle retailer by 2025. It hopes to make 2 million cars per year by then.
Ford’s CEO, Jim Farley, has said that “We plan to challenge Tesla and all comers to become the top EV maker in the world.” Of course, Ford says that it plans to build 2 million cars per year by 2026 so a year behind General Motors. Nevertheless, all of this comes down to one thing: Tesla has all of the biggest guns pointed straight at it and needs to figure out exactly how it’s going to deal with the competition. There’s no question that it got out to a huge head start and that it changed the trajectory of the automotive landscape but now, it seems to be losing ground.
The entire Tesla lineup seems to get more expensive at arbitrary times and exciting new products like the all-new Roadster and the Cybertruck have yet to make it to production. Now we wait to see if the Elon Musk-led company can set the bar higher.