Elon Musk appears virtually at Volkswagen's executive meeting, offers praise for Tesla's biggest electric car rival

Elon Musk, founder and CEO of the electric car pioneer Tesla, has unexpectedly appeared virtually at the meeting of Volkswagen executives in Austria a few days ago. According to a report by Reuters that cites the article of a renown German business newspaper, Musk praised that Volkswagen is an iconic brand that has now evolved into the main competitor for Tesla. The Tesla boss further offered his advice on making successful business decisions.

Musk said he is first and foremost an engineer, and this approach enables him to make quick and flexible management decisions regarding the supply chain, logistics and production. Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess used Musk's statement to further underline that the German automobile maker from Wolfsburg needs to make quicker business decisions while reducing the involved bureaucracy. Diess further highlighted this impressive economic nimbleness by describing how Tesla during the microchip shortage reprogrammed its software within a couple of weeks in order to make use of a microswitch with better availability.

In this regard, Tesla can apparently be seen as a role model for traditional auto makers like VW that often need more time to adapt to such circumstances. With the imminent opening of Tesla's gigafactory near the German capital Berlin, Volkswagen is adamant to further strengthen its electric car lineup in order to compete with the American EV company. Just recently we reported that Volkswagen was able to celebrate the success of its VW ID.3 and VW ID.4 electric cars, which combined have surpassed the sales numbers of the Tesla Model 3 (model car from US$18 on Amazon) in Western Europe.