Out of his admiration for the US electric car maker Tesla makes Volkswagen-Chef Herbert Diess (62) makes no secret: internally as well as publicly, he regularly praises the competitor, often combined with an invitation to his own people to take an example from the efficiency and speed of development of the Californians. Sometimes the impression can arise that the Volkswagen boss would actually prefer to be CEO of Tesla – and that almost happened once. Again “Business Insider“reported, Diess 2015, when he was from BMW moved to Volkswagen, at least one more job offer. The manager had received a contract offer for the position as CEO of Tesla, according to the report. This would only have had to be signed.
According to the report, a Volkswagen spokesman did not want to comment on the information that Diess has so far only entrusted to a few people at Volkswagen, according to “Business Insider”. Also about the reasons why the Austrian made the offer from the Tesla boss Elon Musk (49) failed, nothing is known. One thing is clear, however: In 2014/2015, Tesla was not nearly the size of the industry that the group represents today. The market value was only a fraction of the approximately 600 billion dollars that Tesla brings on the scales today. For a manager like Diess, the start-up from the would have been associated with a good deal of daring United States To be preferred to one of the largest auto companies in the world.
However, Diess apparently already believed in Tesla’s chances of success at that time. As the “Business Insider” also writes, the current Volkswagen boss also acquired a stake in the US group at the time. It is not known whether Diess keeps the papers to this day. If that were the case, however, he would have made a sensational deal: The Tesla share is currently listed at around 730 dollars, compared to April 2015 the price has increased by significantly more than 1500 percent.