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Volkswagen Board Member: "Anything Tesla Can Do, We Can Surpass"

Volkswagen's Dieselgate woes seem to be almost over, even though the brand is still trying to clean up its image in the U.S. market, where it appears to put all of its eggs into Atlas' huge trunk.
Volkswagen I.D. Concept in Paris 1 photo
Photo: S. Baldauf/Guido ten Brink
Whether that proves to be a smart strategy or not remains to be seen, but the Wolfsburg company has a safety net prepared as well: the impressive fleet of electric vehicles that only exist on Volkswagen's hard drives at the moment.

VW plans to flood the world with countless EVs by 2025, with the first arriving just two years from now. The carmaker has shown a few concepts (most notably the I.D., dubbed the electric equivalent of a Golf, ignoring the venerable hatchback actually has an electric version of its own), but the actual program is still a mystery.

There were talks about Volkswagen investing one billion euros in building a battery factory, but things have gone quiet in the meantime. There are also no new plants being built, where the one million EVs a year the Germans plan to sell by 2025 would be assembled. Basically, it's all just talk at the moment.

But, to be fair, it's very optimistic talk. For instance, Volkswagen's Chairman of the Board of Management, Mr. Herbert Diess, said during a press conference in Wolfsburg that "anything Tesla can do, we can surpass," as reported by The Financial Times (via Green Car Reports).

Like many other, Diess essentially doubts that Tesla will be able to mass-manufacture an electric car and still make a profit, not to mention one whose starting price is of just $35,000. And he's not just being pessimistic about it: he's basing his assumptions on everything he's learned during his time in the automotive industry.

But has already proven it doesn't play by the rules, plus it has the undeniable advantage of benefitting from a Gigafactory in running order. According to Diess, Volkswagen plans to fight Tesla on the mass market segment, and it wants to start doing it with the first model it launches in 2019. Which gives the Model 3 no less than two years headstart with over 400,000 reservations to begin with.

There's no doubt that if Volkswagen is serious about its electric ambitions and starts pouring real money into it (right now it's a one-to-ten ratio between EV and ICEV R&d funds), it has the necessary might to fight Tesla, particularly outside the U.S. However, it's definitely not going to be as easy as Herbert Diess suggests.
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About the author: Vlad Mitrache
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"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie)
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