VW Group CEO Herbert Diess has finally realized the power of social media, especially Twitter where Elon Musk rules with his 42.7 million followers to date.
Herbert Diess posted an interesting tweet that can be seen as intimidating towards Tesla, he is now fully determined to grab the EV market share from the Silicon Valley-based automaker.
Because of a long-time friendly relationship with Elon Musk, Diess directly tagged him in his tweet. It seems Elon was not very happy about this, he has not replied to this tweet even after 24 hours have passed.
Although his Twitter account shows that it was registered in December 2020, the first tweet was posted only yesterday. Since this tweet, the number of Herbert’s Twitter followers have jumped from ~4k to ~12k within a day.
This tweet suddenly caught the eye of Elon Musk and Tesla Twitteratis, some welcomed him aboard and some are asking serious questions about Volkswagen Group’s strategy for increasing its electric vehicle market share and the automaker’s future plans in this regard.
He also received a bit of criticism regarding the infamous VW diesel-gate scandal. Volkswagen has another chance to prove that they have changed and are really working for the betterment of our future generations.
Diess has around ~154k followers on LinkedIn including me but he usually does not face such criticism in the comments section there. Many of his LinkedIn followers must be employees of the VW Group and its subsidiaries, but Twitter is a different space.
Someone asked him if this Twitter account is managed by staff at the VW PR department or he is personally posting the tweets, if he’s doing it himself, he should mark the personally posted ones. His reply was interesting, “I don’t need to mark my own words,” he said.
Both Elon Musk and Herbert Diess meet regularly whenever they get a chance. Diess was also present at the prestigious Golden Steering Award in Germany when Elon Musk announced the European Tesla Gigafactory will be built in Berlin.
The last public known meeting of both CEOs happened when Elon Musk landed in Frankfurt on his way back from Giga Berlin to test drive the Volkswagen ID.3 electric hatch. VW ID.3 is a Tesla Model 3 rival in the European market but has yet to seriously dent the Model 3 sales in the region (spec for spec & range comparison).
VW has also launched the ID.4 compact electric SUV to rival the Tesla Model Y and leaked documents show that the German automaker has been closely studying Model Y design and dimensions to create a worthy competitor.
Elon Musk has set a new trend for 21st century CEOs, you need to directly be in touch with your current and potential customers to amplify the company’s impact. Herbert Diess has ultimately grasped this idea and has started acting in the right direction, still a long way to go.
To stay tuned with Tesla and Elon Musk news follow us on:
Google News | Flipboard | RSS (Feedly)
