According to two persons familiar with the situation, Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess told a supervisory board meeting in September that the firm may lose 30,000 jobs if it transitioned too slowly to electric vehicles (EVs).
Competition from new entrants to the German market, such as Tesla (TSLA.O), has pushed the company to accelerate its transformation, according to Diess.
With 12,000 employees in Germany, the American EV producer expects to create 500,000 cars per year, whereas Volkswagen’s Wolfsburg plant employs 25,000 people and produces only 700,000 cars per year.
A Tesla representative corroborated Diess’ assertion that the presence of Tesla and other EV manufacturers in Germany has heightened the urgency of the transition to EVs, but denied that exact calculations on how many jobs could be lost in the process have been done.
