Volkswagen Feud Threatens a $38 Billion Bet
The German car giant shouldn’t be worrying itself with internal boadroom disputes. It should be taking the electric-car fight to Elon Musk.
An electric future.
Photographer: Sean Gallup/Getty Images EuropeIn parts of Germany, Bavarians were once known as “needleheads.” One day, God, angered at the solipsism in the country’s beautiful southernmost state, is supposed to have picked a local up by the head, thus elongating it like a needle, and rotated it. “See,” God said, “there’s more to the world than just Bavaria.”
The tale might offer a useful lesson to Volkswagen AG’s Bavarian chief executive officer, Herbert Diess, and the company’s board. Internecine conflict at the top of the world’s biggest carmaker risks derailing its 33 billion-euro ($38 billion) bet on electric vehicles at the worst possible moment, with car sales at their lowest in decades and Tesla Inc. becoming a genuine threat. Volkswagen needs to be looking outward beyond its domestic concerns, not inward.