The Electric: Will VW’s $21 Billion Investment Spree Produce Winning EVs?

In 2022, Volkswagen’s board fired chair Herbert Diess after a rocky tenure in which, while pushing employees to move fast into the electric vehicle age, he reportedly angered powerful German labor leaders and regional government officials. The last straw, analysts said, was the failure of a core Diess project—internally designed software that would run its EVs and, Diess said, set the company apart from its competition, including Tesla. After Diess boasted that he would turn VW into a “software-driven mobility company,” VW EVs suffered delays, chronic connectivity glitches and screens that abruptly went dark and froze.