VW CEO touts upcoming “Power Day” in Tesla-like battery play

Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess is continuing his efforts to build himself a social media platform akin to that of other clean technology leaders, and this week took it to another level by promising a Tesla-like battery announcement day.

Herbert Diess was elevated to CEO of Volkswagen back in early 2018, a move intended to unite an oft-times fractured company through the consolidation of six business areas plus a special portfolio for China, and three brand groups.

What has become apparent in the last several months, however, is that Diess is looking to position himself as a clean technology leader with a social media presence to back him. Only joining Twitter in December 2020, and with his first Tweet in January began dishing out some light trash talk with Tesla’s Elon Musk.

The two have been friendly for some time, and only a few months earlier Musk took a meeting with Diess and grabbed headlines with a test drive of Volkswagen’s upcoming ID.3 electric hatch.

This week, in a very Tesla-like play, Diess took to Twitter to announce an upcoming Power Day event taking place on March 15.

The short digital video accompanying the Tweet seems to suggest that the day will be about Volkswagen’s battery technology, as Diess and the video were certain to clarify that the event was “not a car presentation.”

Volkswagen has also taken aim at Tesla’s EV dominance earlier this month, teasing its plans for an autonomous, software-based “dream car”, Project Trinity, which not only hopes to bring an EV sedan to market in 2026 but which also seeks to unite a new electronics platform with state-of-the-art software, a simplified supply structure, and an automated and “intelligent” networked manufacturing process.

“We are using our economies of scale to make autonomous driving available to many people and to build a learning neural network,” said Ralf Brandstätter, Volkswagen brand CEO. “In this way, we are creating the conditions for the continuous exchange of data from our vehicle fleet—for example, on the traffic situation, on obstacles or on accidents.”

While announcing an upcoming presentation is not in and of itself all that revolutionary, Volkswagen’s “Power Day” nevertheless looks a lot like Tesla’s own “Battery Day” from September 2020, which garnered innumerable headlines for months in advance as Musk and the company continued to hype the event.

Exactly what we’ll be hearing from Volkswagen’s Power Day is uncertain, but with Volkswagen and its subsidiary brands all beginning to offer EV options – including the popular ID.3 electric hatchback and ID.4 electric SUV – battery technology must become an increasing priority for VW.

Volkswagen announced in February that it hopes to deliver over 100,000 VW ID.4 SUVs in 2021, and that they had already received 17,000 orders for the vehicle. Volkswagen unveiled the ID.4 SUV back in September 2020, at the same time that deliveries for the ID.3 electric hatch began, both of which are built on the carmaker’s modular electric drive kit (MEB).

The company’s Power Day may also bring us news of battery supply, which is becoming an increasingly fraught concern for many automakers as they scale up their EV offerings. But, even if Volkswagen’s Power Day doesn’t deliver the same headline-grabbing hype as Tesla, the trends nevertheless highlight the impact