Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess Invited Elon Musk To Share Learnings With His Team

Volkswagen aspires to beat Tesla at its own game having made an audacious bet on electric vehicles as a group. But Tesla isn't just the pioneer in space but now the most valuable carmaker in the world by market capitalization. While this competition has been there, Volkswagen's CEO Herbert Diess has maintained a friendly relationship with Elon Musk who recently became the world's richest man. This friendship has further evolved as now as he recently invited the Tesla and SpaceX supremo to an internal Volkswagen conference which featured 200 of its most important executives. Musk shared his insights at the conference which happened in Alpbach, Austria via video conference. The conference was focused on preparing the group for the massive changes that were needed to prepare itself for electrification. 

Diess is of the belief that Volkswagen did things correctly in the old world but it faces many unknowns in the future and he wants his team to make decisions faster, with less bureaucracy and more responsibility. The conference also featured Erin Meyer, a business author and a professor of business. Musk was the surprise guest. 

Meyer shared insights around Netflix's transformation from a DVD rental company to a video streaming giant. When Musk was asked what made Tesla so nibble, the billionaire replied, "It's the management style. I'm primarily an engineer and, besides the car, I'm fascinated by supply chains, logistics, and production processes."

The business school professor spoke about Netflix's transformation

He also asked him about how Tesla was able to manage the global semiconductor crisis better than any other automaker with the Tesla software teams rewriting the software in just 2-3 weeks enabling them to use different chips. This is not the first time Diess and Musk have interacted. Last year, Diess invited Musk to drive the ID.4 electric car which was Volkswagen's first EV, and Musk drove it and gave some feedback around it. 

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The Volkswagen Group has made an investment of upwards of $80 billion to transform into an EV first automaker. Even its luxury brands like Audi and Porsche are embracing electric powertrains rapidly and recently it even sold Bugatti to Rimac for a major stake in the electric sports car maker.