Herbert Diess looked every inch the modern, global auto titan. His private jet hissed to a halt after landing on the Greek island of Astypalaia and the Volkswagen boss stepped off to be greeted by Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the Greek prime minister.
The two men were there last summer to unveil the world’s first (nearly) carbon-neutral island. Diess had signed off a €10 million (£8.5 million) project to provide subsidised electric vehicles for the island’s 1,300 residents. Mitsotakis would guarantee electricity generated from renewable sources to charge the cars’ batteries.
“We want to make mobility climate-neutral as fast as possible,” Diess told The Sunday Times in a rare interview as he drove into the island’s main town, Chora, in a VW ID.4 electric car. “It’s an