Tesla-Benz? With Whom Could Tesla Merge?

This year’s Axel Springer Award went to Elon Musk for “Great visions and the indomitable will to achieve them”.

This year’s Axel Springer award honors Elon Musk. Through his inventive and innovative spirit, Elon has revolutionized several industries, from electric vehicles and battery storage to space travel.

The award was handed over today and Elon Musk came to Berlin to receive the award, but also to answer questions. One statement caught the attention of listeners:

We are definitely not going to launch a hostile takeover, but if somebody said it would be a good idea to merge with Tesla, we would have this conversation.

Tesla itself has already had two carmakers as partners in the past, Toyota and Daimler. In the meantime, however, the start-up and junior partner has become a giant in its own right. The share price quintupled this year and Tesla is now the most valuable car company in the world, more than twice as much as the German manufacturers combined. Tesla will also be included in the S&P Index in December 2020. And several Gigafactories are under construction, including one in Berlin-Brandenburg.

In this respect, the statement about a readiness for a merger is interesting, because Tesla could relatively easily not only merge with a traditional manufacturer, but simply buy it up. Who would make sense? And Daimler-Benz is the first company that comes to mind. The Model S and Mercedes S-Class are certainly the direct competitors, and both companies would be able to contribute complementary features. Production quality and tradition here, innovation and speed there. And they already have some experience of cooperation, after all Tesla supplied the electric drive train for the Mercedes B-Class.

Given the Gigafactories currently under construction, Tesla itself will probably be able to manufacture about 2 to 2.5 million cars by 2025. In order for Tesla to continue to grow at an above-average rate, the takeover of existing factories would be considered. Daimler-Benz, with a current production capacity of 2.5 million vehicles per year, would double Tesla’s capacity and thus accelerate the goal of converting the world to sustainable energy sources.

Volkswagen? Despite the sympathies between Herbert Diess and Elon Musk, the companies operate in rather different market segments and would probably have been out of the question in the past. The VW ownership structure is also a story in its own right with a lot of traps.

BMW? That requires a little too much imagination.

Here is the video and from 13:58 Elon is on stage together with Axel Springer boss Mathias Döpfner.

This article was also published in German.