VW CEO Destroys Tesla in Under One Minute During Panel Discussion

Because that, among others, was one of the things Mr. Müller had to complain about Tesla in a very short but concise rant. The outburst came during a panel discussion on the future of the automotive industry that took place in Passau, Germany last Thursday.

The German CEO clearly had wanted to get this off his chest for a long time as it didn't take much to trigger him. It seems like the magical formula was nailed by mistake by the moderator when he said that Tesla was “fascinates customers with its electric cars.”

Matthias Müller jumped in and let one salvo after another rip, even though he made sure to start off by saying "with all due respect." His main complaints were about the company's disappointing sales figures - something the Model 3 hopes to address in the future - its profitability - or rather the lack of it - and its dubious employee policy.

Here are the transcript and translation of Mr. Müller's full Tesla reference (via Daily Kanban): “Now I really need to say a few words about Tesla: With all due respect, there are some world champions of big announcements in this world – I don’t want to name names. There are companies that barely sell 80,000 cars a year. Then there are companies like Volkswagen that sell 11 million cars this year, and produce a profit of 13 or 14 billion euro. If I am correctly informed, Tesla each quarter destroys millions of dollars in the three digits, and it willy-nilly fires its workers. Social responsibility? Please. We should not get carried away and compare apples to oranges.”

Volkswagen's CEO is probably right on every account, but there is one thing even he can't deny: it is mostly because of Tesla that almost all traditional manufacturers are currently scrambling to come up with battery-powered vehicles that are just as good as the Californian company's products. How do you like them apples?