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Volkswagen’s Diess wants 40 battery factories in Europe to handle EV overload
Volkswagen knows the future of the automobile industry is electric, and it is doing its best to transition its massive German stronghold into a series of large-scale electric vehicle production facilities. A company that is less than ten years out of a major scandal involving emissions cheat devices, VW is equipped with a new head since the Dieselgate scandal initially broke twelve years ago. Herbert Diess is likely the best man for the job: he’s charismatic, he’s driven, and he knows a thing or two about the auto industry. But most importantly, the man who runs Volkswagen knows that to keep up with the surge in electric vehicle popularity, his company will need more of everything, especially batteries, which he is preparing to produce in massive numbers if the European Union’s Green Deal is approved.
Ten years ago, Diess asked the head of China’s CATL, a battery supplier, if the company would ever transition away from smartphone batteries and toward EV cells. At the time, the answer was no. However, things often change, and CATL is now supplying some batteries for Tesla at Giga Shanghai. CATL’s ability to supply large volumes of batteries, paired with its tendency to innovate, makes it one of the industry’s powerhouses.
And while Diess, who has buddied up with Tesla frontman Elon Musk in the recent years, realizes that batteries are “typically supplier products,” he knows it doesn’t have to be like that. Tesla, which has already established itself as the global leader in electric vehicle development, is beginning to supply its own cells. This not only gives the company an advantage to control the way the batteries are made and the quality of the product itself, but it also reduces prices by a significant margin, 69% in Tesla’s eyes.
Diess realizes that if electric vehicles continue to surge in popularity, Volkswagen will need more, and it will likely have to take the route that Tesla is taking. If the Green Deal goes through, Volkswagen will need an estimated 40 large battery factories on the continent of Europe alone.
“If the EU’s Green Deal goes as it is, the battery factories announced so far in Europe will only cover around five to ten percent of demand. If the Green Deal comes, we will need 40 large battery factories in Europe,” Diess explained.
The Green Deal would maintain that the EU would have around 13 million EVs on the road by 2025. This will bring one million public charging stations to various European markets, solidifying the continent as the most friendly place to drive an electric vehicle globally. That all sounds great and wonderful, but Diess is right: companies are going to need cells.
(Credit: Herbert Diess/LinkedIn)
Volkswagen is in the process of building a battery factory in Salzgitter, Germany, together with Sweden’s Northvolt, Diess said. “This is an innovative, young, and still relatively small company,” and Volkswagen is still in the process of trying to solve the logistics of the whole operation. “That would be a manageable task for the large German suppliers,” Diess added in an interview with WirtschaftsWoche.
Diess’ approach for Volkswagen’s electric future is undoubtedly one that a company with the experience and dedication to automotive manufacturing can figure out. However, transitioning away from what legacy automakers have used for 100 years is proving to be a difficult task, and VW is no exception to the issues that come with building EVs. Although its ID.3 is due to roll out with fully functional software, it wasn’t always like that. Early buyers didn’t have simple functions like Apple CarPlay when they picked up their new EV from the German automaker.
But past the infotainment system, Volkswagen knows that batteries are really the bread and butter of this industry. Build a good cell, or source one, and you’re on your way, as long as you are committed to focusing purely on EVs for the future.
H/t: @Alex_Avoigt on Twitter
Tesla engineers deflected calls from Apple on a daily basis while the tech giant was developing its now-defunct electric vehicle program, which was known as “Project Titan.”
Back in 2022 and 2023, Apple was developing an EV in a top-secret internal fashion, hoping to launch it by 2028 with a fully autonomous driving suite.
However, Apple bailed on the project in early 2024, as Project Titan abandoned the project in an email to over 2,000 employees. The company had backtracked its expectations for the vehicle on several occasions, initially hoping to launch it with no human driving controls and only with an autonomous driving suite.
Apple canceling its EV has drawn a wide array of reactions across tech
It then planned for a 2028 launch with “limited autonomous driving.” But it seemed to be a bit of a concession at that point; Apple was not prepared to take on industry giants like Tesla.
Wedbush’s Dan Ives noted in a communication to investors that, “The writing was on the wall for Apple with a much different EV landscape forming that would have made this an uphill battle. Most of these Project Titan engineers are now all focused on AI at Apple, which is the right move.”
Apple did all it could to develop a competitive EV that would attract car buyers, including attempting to poach top talent from Tesla.
In a new podcast interview with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, it was revealed that Apple had been calling Tesla engineers nonstop during its development of the now-defunct project. Musk said the engineers “just unplugged their phones.”
Musk said in full:
“They were carpet bombing Tesla with recruiting calls. Engineers just unplugged their phones. Their opening offer without any interview would be double the compensation at Tesla.”
Interestingly, Apple had acquired some ex-Tesla employees for its project, like Senior Director of Engineering Dr. Michael Schwekutsch, who eventually left for Archer Aviation.
Tesla took no legal action against Apple for attempting to poach its employees, as it has with other companies. It came after EV rival Rivian in mid-2020, after stating an “alarming pattern” of poaching employees was noticed.
There are a lot of Tesla bulls out there who have astronomical expectations for the company, especially as its arm of reach has gone well past automotive and energy and entered artificial intelligence and robotics.
However, some of the most bullish Tesla investors believe the company could become worth $100 trillion, and CEO Elon Musk does not believe that number is completely out of the question, even if it sounds almost ridiculous.
To put that number into perspective, the top ten most valuable companies in the world — NVIDIA, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, TSMC, Meta, Saudi Aramco, Broadcom, and Tesla — are worth roughly $26 trillion.
Will Tesla join the fold? Predicting a triple merger with SpaceX and xAI
Cathie Wood of ARK Invest believes the number is reasonable considering Tesla’s long-reaching industry ambitions:
“…in the world of AI, what do you have to have to win? You have to have proprietary data, and think about all the proprietary data he has, different kinds of proprietary data. Tesla, the language of the road; Neuralink, multiomics data; nobody else has that data. X, nobody else has that data either. I could see $100 trillion. I think it’s going to happen because of convergence. I think Tesla is the leading candidate [for $100 trillion] for the reason I just said.”
Musk said late last year that all of his companies seem to be “heading toward convergence,” and it’s started to come to fruition. Tesla invested in xAI, as revealed in its Q4 Earnings Shareholder Deck, and SpaceX recently acquired xAI, marking the first step in the potential for a massive umbrella of companies under Musk’s watch.
SpaceX officially acquires xAI, merging rockets with AI expertise
Now that it is happening, it seems Musk is even more enthusiastic about a massive valuation that would swell to nearly four-times the value of the top ten most valuable companies in the world currently, as he said on X, the idea of a $100 trillion valuation is “not impossible.”
It’s not impossible
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 6, 2026
Tesla is not just a car company. With its many projects, including the launch of Robotaxi, the progress of the Optimus robot, and its AI ambitions, it has the potential to continue gaining value at an accelerating rate.
Musk’s comments show his confidence in Tesla’s numerous projects, especially as some begin to mature and some head toward their initial stages.
Elon Musk
Celebrating SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy Tesla Roadster launch, seven years later (Op-Ed)
Seven years later, the question is no longer “What if this works?” It’s “How far does this go?”
When Falcon Heavy lifted off in February 2018 with Elon Musk’s personal Tesla Roadster as its payload, SpaceX was at a much different place. So was Tesla. It was unclear whether Falcon Heavy was feasible at all, and Tesla was in the depths of Model 3 production hell.
At the time, Tesla’s market capitalization hovered around $55–60 billion, an amount critics argued was already grossly overvalued. SpaceX, on the other hand, was an aggressive private launch provider known for taking risks that traditional aerospace companies avoided.
The Roadster launch was bold by design. Falcon Heavy’s maiden mission carried no paying payload, no government satellite, just a car drifting past Earth with David Bowie playing in the background. To many, it looked like a stunt. For Elon Musk and the SpaceX team, it was a bold statement: there should be some things in the world that simply inspire people.
Inspire it did, and seven years later, SpaceX and Tesla’s results speak for themselves.
Today, Tesla is the world’s most valuable automaker, with a market capitalization of roughly $1.54 trillion. The Model Y has become the best-selling car in the world by volume for three consecutive years, a scenario that would have sounded insane in 2018. Tesla has also pushed autonomy to a point where its vehicles can navigate complex real-world environments using vision alone.
And then there is Optimus. What began as a literal man in a suit has evolved into a humanoid robot program that Musk now describes as potential Von Neumann machines: systems capable of building civilizations beyond Earth. Whether that vision takes decades or less, one thing is evident: Tesla is no longer just a car company. It is positioning itself at the intersection of AI, robotics, and manufacturing.
SpaceX’s trajectory has been just as dramatic.
The Falcon 9 has become the undisputed workhorse of the global launch industry, having completed more than 600 missions to date. Of those, SpaceX has successfully landed a Falcon booster more than 560 times. The Falcon 9 flies more often than all other active launch vehicles combined, routinely lifting off multiple times per week.
Falcon 9 has ferried astronauts to and from the International Space Station via Crew Dragon, restored U.S. human spaceflight capability, and even stepped in to safely return NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams when circumstances demanded it.
Starlink, once a controversial idea, now dominates the satellite communications industry, providing broadband connectivity across the globe and reshaping how space-based networks are deployed. SpaceX itself, following its merger with xAI, is now valued at roughly $1.25 trillion and is widely expected to pursue what could become the largest IPO in history.
And then there is Starship, Elon Musk’s fully reusable launch system designed not just to reach orbit, but to make humans multiplanetary. In 2018, the idea was still aspirational. Today, it is under active development, flight-tested in public view, and central to NASA’s future lunar plans.
In hindsight, Falcon Heavy’s maiden flight with Elon Musk’s personal Tesla Roadster was never really about a car in space. It was a signal that SpaceX and Tesla were willing to think bigger, move faster, and accept risks others wouldn’t.
The Roadster is still out there, orbiting the Sun. Seven years later, the question is no longer “What if this works?” It’s “How far does this go?”
Tesla engineers deflected calls from this tech giant’s now-defunct EV project
Tesla to a $100T market cap? Elon Musk’s response may shock you
