The boss of Volkswagen isn’t concerned with Apple’s plans to venture into the car industry.
Word about an Apple car has been swirling for years but reached fever pitch in December 2020 when it was reported that work on the vehicle was ramping up with the goal of it hitting the market by 2024. Despite the possibility of the world’s most valuable company making a car, VW chief executive Herbert Diess isn’t concerned.
“The car industry is not a typical tech-sector that you could take over at a single stroke,” Diess said in a recent interview with German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeiting. “Apple will not manage that overnight.”
Diess added that it comes as no surprise that Apple is developing a car as it has expertise with batteries, software and design, and massive cash reserves. Despite this, “we are not afraid,” he said, as reported by Reuters.
Volkswagen is looking to establish itself as one of the leaders in the electric vehicle space and in 2020, sold a total of 231,600 electric vehicles, a 214 percent increase on the previous year.
Diess also poured cold water on the idea that Volkswagen could be reduced to a contract manufacturer for technology firms in the age of electric vehicles, Business Standard reports.
In an investor note issued in December, Morgan Stanley analysts said it only makes sense that Apple is venturing into the automotive space.
“There’s just so much going on in [electric and autonomous vehicles] and connected tech,” it said. “It is perhaps a fitting time of the world’s most valuable company to play its hand in the $10 trillion global mobility market.”
