Volkswagen AG may reach e-car target earlier than 2023, Osterloh tells WamS

Osterloh also expects the “Artemis” engineering task force under Audi CEO Markus Duesmann to catch up with Tesla’s technological edge.

A logo of German carmaker Volkswagen is seen on a car parked on a street in Paris, France, July 9, 2020.  (REUTERS)

Volkswagen AG is in a position to overtake Tesla Inc., both in terms of e-car manufacturing numbers and software development, works council chairman Bernd Osterloh told Welt am Sonntag in an interview.

“If Tesla sets up three factories where 300,000 to 500,000 cars can be produced, then we are talking about a number of units between 900,000 and 1.5 million. We want to achieve the same in 2023, probably even earlier,” Osterloh told the newspaper. VW's modular electric-drive matrix platform gives the carmaker a “huge” advantage,” as it can build any vehicle of any brand on it, Osterloh said.

Osterloh also expects the “Artemis” engineering task force under Audi CEO Markus Duesmann to catch up with Tesla's technological edge. The new Car Software Organization, where all the carmakers' software operations are bundled, is the right step in this direction, Osterloh told WamS.

“Their advantage is that they already have their software in the cars and use it to collect data,” he said. But if we get our system into our cars, we will have much more data within a short time.”