"When the Green Deal comes, we will need 40 large battery factories in Europe"
Herbert Diess, VW CEO on the question why Chinese and American companies built large 🔋 plants but no German
Diess "A good question. I talked to everyone in Germany, but they waved it off."
Herbert Diess
"Many suppliers believe it is too late to get involved. I am convinced of the opposite. We are still at the very beginning of development."
Diess continued
"If the EU's Green Deal comes about in the way it seems likely, the battery factories announced so far in Europe will only cover around five to ten percent of demand."
VW builds a Battery factory in Salzgitter together with Northvolt
Diess
"For the major German suppliers, this would be a solvable task. For the traditional plant manufacturers, too. "
Diess continued
"This involves mechanical engineering, process technology, and chemistry. All things that German companies have mastered. Instead, we prefer to discuss synthetic fuels"
Porsche invests in e-Fuels
Diess:
"For the same distance, a car running on synthetic fuels needs five to six times more electricity than an e-car. Therefore, the technology is suitable for niche applications at best."
Herbert Diess, CEO VW concluded
"But for the masses, this (eFuels) is unthinkable from an economic point of view alone. The issue is over. Everyone knows that the climate targets for the coming years can only be achieved with electric cars."
"Daimler, VW & Co. can say what they want, the pressure from Tesla has accelerated the change for them. You can see this at the carmakers' sites here in the city, all of which are digitalizing and electrifying themselves".
He added
"The Tesla factory in Grünheide is basically a good thing for the location Brandenburg and Germany for the time being. Elon Musk is locating one of the most competitive technologies of the future there - and is creating thousands of jobs"
Jan Otto, Union Head Berlin
"Let me say it directly: The factory is not yet finished, so it makes little sense to negotiate collective agreements already. We will do that together with the employees."
"We are not a start-up, we have structures and processes that have grown over decades. Many of them crusted and complicated. And above all, we have a wide variety of interests and political agendas within the Group." ...
... "These make the already large project even more costly and complex. But resistance should spur us on and provide additional motivation."
... "This also means that we have to readjust our VW strategy in order to keep up with new competitors like Tesla. (...) Under "Mission T" 31 top executives from Volkswagen Audi and Porsche were included. The question was how we can catch up with Tesla - " ...
“What do we have to achieve in the next six months to catch up with Tesla in terms of technology by 2024?”
Top Managers from VW ask themselves a wrong question
It explains why they are where they are today
The Transformation is not about Tesla but VW
If the answer to VW about Tesla is a project, Project T then they don't really understand the challenge in front of them
A project alone will not chance VW and without change, they won't innovate faster and developed competitive technology linkedin.com/pulse/how-we-t…
It is revealing that they believe a project and 6 months change can help them to catch up with Tesla in 2024. The challenge VW has is not to make 6 months change or implement a Project Tesla to be competitive in 2024.
"We will no longer adapt the current A8 to this technology - for reasons of our own quality and safety requirements."
First the delayed L3 for A8 and now cancelled
"The charging station infrastructure is not yet as advanced as it should be. That's why we need the efforts of the public sector, but also cooperation like Ionity (...) It is important that everyone in this field gives full speed. (...) For me, charging is the key to success "
Duessmann reply when he was asked about Battery Day and Battery Innovation
"It is no secret that the battery is increasingly becoming one of the most important competitive factors. Accordingly, we are making the battery a core competence within the Volkswagen Group."
"It is the largest private investment project in East Germany since reunification and probably also one of the largest industrial investments in the whole of Germany in the last 40 to 50 years. This investment shows that Germany is ..
... still an attractive investment location. We are trying to show, even at the speed Tesla needs, that Germany can also process approval procedures faster. There is no political influence on this. The procedure is legally secure, it is solely in the hands of the authorities. ..
They work at an enormous speed and yet no less conscientiously. I am therefore very optimistic that the first cars will roll off the production line next summer. In addition, the Gigafactory helps us to show that climate protection can be combined with value creation and jobs."