VW boss attacks Tesla for “barely selling 80,000 cars a year”
Enlarge / Matthias Mi1/4ller, CEO of Volkswagen, at the Volkswagen Preview Night prior to the 2017 Frankfurt Auto Show. (credit: Sean Gallup | Getty Images)
Well, this one will certainly set the cat among the pigeons. Via the Daily Kanban, we came across this video of Volkswagen CEO Matthias Mi1/4ller ripping Tesla during a panel discussion on the future of the automotive industry. Prompted by a comment from the moderator, Mi1/4ller laid into the electric car company for its small production volumes, regular quarterly losses, and for firing hundreds of workers.
Per Daily Kanban's translation:
Now I really need to say a few words about Tesla: With all 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 not get carried away and compare apples with oranges.
The attack comes at a tough time for Tesla. The Model 3, the company's new mass-market EV, is mired in "production hell," with Tesla having little chance of meeting its goal of building 20,000 in the month of December. And there has been a spate of allegations of harassment at the company's factory, with workers reporting racial and now anti-LGBT abuse.
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