Why am I posting a picture of my Beetle?
I just watched a short video of Tesla Lead Designer, Franz von Holzhausen speaking to the Tesla mission of sustainability. But he also spoke of design. I found out he also was one of the lead designers for the New Beetle, which was my previous car pictured above and one that I thoroughly enjoyed for a dozen years.
In his speech, he kind of alluded to leaving VW in part because of ICE manufacturers getting in to the EV realm largely for marketing and not as a core value in their mission statement.
This brought back two memories; one recent and one from around 2006, which was about the time Franz left VW.
My memory of 2006 was at a time in our lives where we had a 2001 VW Passat and a 2003 VW Turbo S Beetle. We loved our cars. The styling, the drive, the whole concept. Around that time, we also had committed that our next car would be an EV.
So, being the VW fans we were, I contacted VW about when they planned on making an EV. I explained we absolutely loved our VWs and wanted to stay in the VW family.
I wish now I had saved their email response. It was a very terse “we have no plans to make an electric car.” This was in 2006.
Fast forward to 2012 and the upstart Tesla, who now has a new lead designer and a new Model S. Designed as an EV from the ground up; not a converted ICE. Beautiful car.
Over the last 5 years, Tesla has dominated the EV market and changed the entire paradigm of the way we think about automobiles. And guess who is joining the momentum? Just about every auto manufacturer out there: Audi, Porsche, BMW, Chevy, Ford.
Even VW.
For me, it’s too little, too late with VW. Had they responded more diplomatically, I might feel different. But I struggle with such nasty, dogmatic statements. I also struggle with ugly cars; I put the Leaf and the Bolt in that category.
Which brings me to my more recent memory. It was of two MSNBC reporters interviewing a former VP for GM. They schooled him in that interview in many categories related to EVs, including the question that if, as he claimed, GM could “easily duplicate everything Tesla was doing and do it better,” why they weren’t doing it? Boom.
But the clincher for me was the observation from one of the interviewers when she remarked, specifically related to design, that Tesla made cars “that people really really really want to buy.”
And that’s where I have immense respect and appreciation for Franz and his team and Tesla in general. It’s also why we waited almost two years to own a Tesla.
We’ve not regretted a single day of that wait.