EDITOR'S NOTE
Here's a headline that should stop you in your tracks: "Tesla's Musk dials into Volkswagen executive conference." My first thought, when I saw this, was that it must have been either some kind of quirky Elon Musk prank or a weird fluky accident.
But it was neither. It was, in fact, an invitation by the CEO of Volkswagen for Musk to address a meeting of 200 top Volkswagen executives in Austria, in order to "galvanize [their] top brass for a faster pivot to electric vehicles," according to Reuters. I'm sorry, what?! Can you imagine, circa 2015, "Microsoft invites Adobe CEO to talk about transitioning to the cloud," or today, "Facebook invites TikTok CEO to talk about their success in short-form videos and algorithms." Or maybe, "Jacksonville Jaguars invite Patrick Mahomes to talk about success on offense."
Anyhow, Volkswagen's CEO, Herbert Diess, confirmed his invite and Musk's "surprise" Thursday video appearance on Twitter and LinkedIn. "Happy to hear that even our strongest competitor thinks that we will succeed [in] the transition if we drive transformation with full power," he wrote. You have to give Diess credit. He sounds like a disgruntled CEO who sees the future but can't pivot his company fast enough, and is now pulling out all the stops to get there--including inviting his "strongest competitor" to give his own employees a pep talk.
How did this happen? How could the CEO of the world's largest automaker for much of the last decade be calling a company that won't even deliver a million cars this year his "strongest competitor"? Perhaps this review of the Tesla Model S Plaid by YouTuber Doug DeMuro can help explain. The Plaid has three motors (versus two on most other Tesla models) and about a thousand horsepower--the same as what GM just put in its massive new Hummer EV. It can purportedly do zero to 60 m.p.h. in about two seconds. Here's a snippet from DeMuro's test drive:
"It's like nothing I've ever driven, ever. Ever. It requires you to completely rethink everything you've ever thought about automotive speed. [Accelerates again, struggles to catch his breath, laughs out loud.] It's like the craziest rollercoaster you've ever been on in your entire life! I've driven everything...Bugatti, LaFerrari...the experience of those cars is quite something. You go there that day and you know this is a big moment. You're terrified, you've called your insurance company...it's such a special thing. This is just a car a dude can buy...you can just do this, and yet you're faster than all that stuff."
So if the point, for a certain category of car buyer, is performance, then why would they buy anything else on the market, until something better comes along? And even if you can't afford the $130,000-and-up Plaid, you might still be pretty pumped to own a much more affordable, Volkswagen-esque Model Y or 3. It's like J.B. Straubel, a Tesla cofounder, told Jason Calacanis on his podcast the other day; they were all expecting the rest of the auto industry to immediately start working on EVs once they saw the first Model S in action. Instead, nothing really happened.
It's been almost ten years since the first Model S came out, and only now is Volkswagen inviting Musk to galvanize the workforce on EVs. And it's not just about speed and performance. From the Reuters story: "As an example of Tesla's prowess, Diess said it took the rival only two to three weeks to rewrite software to allow for a switch from one type of microchip, which went out of stock, to another." He asked Musk to explain.
I asked Scott Keogh, Volkswagen's Group of America CEO, about this on Power Lunch yesterday. Keogh himself was in the meeting with Musk last week. "I'd say we're in-between where Elon is [and the rest of the industry]," he said, in terms of chip design, "and we are putting an absolute priority on the electric vehicles."
I'd say everybody seems to now putting an absolute priority on EVs. The real question is how quickly they can catch up.
See you at 1 p.m!
Kelly
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Selasa, 19 Oktober 2021
Volkswagen and Elon Musk
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