Can Volkswagen crush Tesla?

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Volkswagen ID.3 - Tesla killer? © BoJack / Shutterstock.com

“What Volkswagen is really showing is that we've reached the limit of what's possible with diesel and gasoline,” said Elon Musk in 2015 in response to the Dieselgate scandal which nearly tore the world’s largest auto manufacturer apart.

It’s fair to assume that Musk didn’t imagine then that just five years later the Diesel-villain would be his fiercest competitor in the fight for dominance in the electric vehicle market.

Mr Musk’s many missed deadlines and over-optimistic promises on Tesla’s path from obscurity to becoming the world’s most valuable automotive-company have driven Wall Street mad. But the PayPal co-founder has delivered on the plan he set out when he took over Tesla a decade and a half ago: start with high-margin luxury cars and work downstream towards an affordable mass-market electric vehicle.

Only around two million plug-in cars were sold globally last year, but even the crustiest of  German auto executives grud…