Volkswagen's CEO Herbert Diess told a supervisory board meeting in September that the company could lose 30,000 jobs if it transitioned too slowly to electric vehicles (EVs), two sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Wednesday.
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Competition from new entrants to Germany's market, like Tesla, has pushed the company to speed up its transformation, Diess is said to have told attendees.
The US EV maker plans to produce 500,000 cars a year in Germany with 12,000 employees, while Volkswagen's 25,000 produce just 700,000 cars at its Wolfsburg plant.
A company spokesperson confirmed Diess' position that Tesla and others' presence in Germany heightened the urgency of transitioning to EVs, but denied that specific calculations had been made on how many jobs could be lost in the process.
"There is no question that we have to address the competitiveness of our plant in Wolfsburg in view of new market entrants," Volkswagen spokesperson Michael Manske said, pointing to Tesla and new Chinese automakers making inroads into Europe.
