Tesla, Ford & VW: China-first, maintaining autonomous cars, and a new Mode T moment
- Volkswagen is executing a product-heavy, China-local strategy (30 new models in 2024!) and partnering with US and Chinese-brands for soft- & hardware - Elon Musk might get a $1 trillion if he comes back to the office and delivers robotaxis and robots as promised (Elon Musk is busy with a lot of things besides cars) - While for Tesla full autonomy is just around the corner, Ford is focusing on Level 2/3 - Ford has announced a new Model T equivalent product innovation
This week marks the IAA (International Motor Show Germany), also known in German as the Internationale Automobil-Ausstellung (one of the most imporant car trade show). To explore the strategies that OEMs are pursuing, I analyzed their recent earnings calls using our earnings calls analysis tool.
Here's the TL;DR
- Volkswagen is executing a product-heavy, China-local strategy (30 new models in 2024!) and partnering with US and Chinese-brands for soft- & hardware
- Elon Musk might get a $1 trillion if he comes back to the office and delivers robotaxis and robots as promised (Elon Musk is busy with a lot of things besides cars)
- While for Tesla full autonomy is just around the corner, Ford is focusing on Level 2/3
- Ford has announced a new Model T equivalent product innovation
Volkswagen’s 2024-2025 Strategy: Products, Partnerships, and a Renewed Push for Electrification**
In 2024, to address its ongoing crisis, Volkswagen published its “Top 10” program, which sets priorities for performance, product development, digitalization, software, platforms, battery technology, mobility solutions, sustainability, and organizational effectiveness (source). These action areas dominated Volkswagen’s recent strategy:
2024: 30 new models and China-Strategy
VW introduced 30 new models. There are many reasons for this—Chinese competition, a focus on autonomy, rebranding efforts, etc.—but still, 30 new models sounds like a lot to me. I remember when Steve Jobs returned to Apple and radically simplified their product lineup.
It is now clear that China is an important market. As such, VW has launched China-specific models and formed local partnerships, including collaborations with Chinese OEMs like Xiaopeng and SAIC, across both software and hardware development. I’m curious how their name will be perceived there. After all, Volkswagen translates to “The People’s Car.”
2025: fully autonomous, series-production vehicle
2025 is not as interesting as 2024; it is dominated by the ongoing “model offensive” and U.S. import tariffs. The most notable development, however, is Volkswagen’s progress in autonomous vehicle technology. Together with MOIA, they launched the ID. Buzz AD—a fully autonomous, series-production vehicle that has been specially optimized for use in mobility services.
Conclusion: VW the archetypal German company
With VW working to solve operational issues, expanding into China, and cautiously entering the field of autonomous driving, they seem like the archetypal German company: carefully launching new initiatives while reinforcing the core business. This stands in stark contrast to Tesla.
Tesla: $1 trillion for Elon Musk to come back to the office
As you may know, Tesla’s board has proposed a $1 trillion pay package for Elon Musk. The goal, essentially, is to incentivize Musk to remain focused on Tesla:
Seth Goldstein, an analyst at the research firm Morningstar who verified ABC News’ estimate of the potential value of the compensation proposal, said the payment plan would help ensure Musk’s continued focus on Tesla.
Among other things, this compensation package is tied to Musk delivering on promised Robotaxis and humanoid robots:
The compensation package also includes a set of production goals, including one million Robotaxis in commercial operation and the delivery of one million humanoid robots over the next 10 years. The compensation proposal requires approval from Tesla shareholders.
As a side note: Given that "Grok 4 can fix entire source code, just 'cut & paste'" according to Musk, achieving these goals shouldn't be an issue ;).
Joking aside, Elon Musk is, indeed, involved in many ventures—not all of them directly related to cars.
If you review the key topics from Tesla’s Q2 2025 calls (See screenshot), you might conclude that cars are just a side-hustle:
There was Elon Musk’s government work (including DODGE), Robotaxis, the Optimus Robot, AI hardware such as the now-discontinued Dojo 2, and xAI.
Conclusion: ambitious plans
Tesla is a highly discussed company (especially on the internet!). What struck me the most was how ambitious Elon Musk’s plans are. From the call:
The future of the company is fundamentally based on large-scale autonomous cars and large volume deployment of autonomous humanoid robots. So the value of a company that makes truly useful autonomous humanoid robots and useful vehicles at scale and at low cost—as Tesla aims to do—is staggering. I continue to believe that Tesla, with excellent execution, will be by far the most valuable company in the world.
I'll leave it up to you what you think of these goals and announcements. But in my experience, they should be taken with a grain of salt.
After that, I looked into Ford, hoping to find a more down-to-earth company. However, I was a little surprised.
Ford: A New Model T Moment
During the latest call, there was a lot of discussion about the Ford Pro line—their commercial fleet, which now comes with data services and other IoT-related improvements. I’m highlighting this because I was surprised by the naming. “Pro” implied consumer hardware, like the iPhone Pro, to me—maybe that’s just my own bias, though.
Every so often, carmakers are faced with recalls, and Ford is no exception; this was also a topic during the call.
When it comes to autonomous driving, Ford has less ambitious goals than VW or Tesla. Already in 2023, Ford exited Level 4/Robotaxi development (with Argo AI), but they still see commercial opportunity in selling, servicing, and maintaining large autonomous fleets, especially via Ford Pro. I think this is a very smart value chain decision. Developing autonomous vehicles is tricky, but maintaining them is much more straightforward. Furthermore, while the overall market may be smaller, the margins are higher. This move reminds me a lot of the meme in AI: During a gold rush, sell shovels. Just consider that OpenAI signed a contract with Oracle to purchase $300 billion in computing power.
Although Ford’s ambitions for autonomous driving are not as lofty, they still made a significant announcement. Specifically, they announced a new Model T moment:
On August 11, that will be a big day for all of us at Ford. We will be in Kentucky to share more about our plans to design and build a breakthrough electric vehicle and a platform in the U.S. This is a Model T moment for us at Ford, a chance to bring a new family of vehicles to the world that offer incredible technology, efficiency, space, and features.
Underwhelming or not?
The announced a new production line to make EV-production cheaper. Ford T kicked of mass-produced cars and was as such revolutionary for year to com. In contrast to that, Ford's latest announcement seems underwhelmingly (especially given the powerful announcement). However, many innovations seem boring at first. Consider this Multi-touch Demo by Wired. In the video they show people using multi-touch on a simple screen. The commentators were underwhelmed. However, a couple of years later multi-touch became one of the most essential features that drove the iPhone's success.
You can watch the announcement here.