Elon Musk Says Drop VW Dieselgate, Focus on the Future

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is about as highly regarded as any CEO today, and maybe even history. The people seem to love having an icon, especially in the years since Apple’s Steve Jobs has passed. Musk’s company produces popular electric cars that you see on the road today. Its most recent model is an SUV, the Model X, and it was unveiled just a few months ago. Musk is one of a number of executives and investors that have put together a letter to the California Air Resource Board (CARB) that says Volkswagen should not have to fix its diesel cars that were implicated in the Dieselgate scandal.

Part of the argument in the letter is based on the proposition that diesel technology has hit a sort of efficiency limit, where efforts to meet restrictions are becoming too costly to produce a solvent technology. It also goes on with the position that Volkswage be released from obligations to fix the models due to the small number of affected vehicles. It also statested that the board should require the company to push its development and release of fully electric zero-emissions vehicles, as well as other elements designed to get Volkswagen fully into the electric game.

It’s an interesting departure from standard logic on the topic. It would make sense for Tesla to support fines against Volkswagen. That is until you consider that Volkswagen is an automotive giant, and it has recently already announced accelerated efforts at landing contenders in the electric automotive arena by the year 2020. Perhaps the thinking is that a popular automotive giant could pave the way for the much smaller Tesla, perhaps it is a way to push the larger peripheral industry of suppliers to ramp up production of parts and resources, or perhaps Musk is indeed a visionary that wants a competitive market and is truly concerned about the environment, no matter what company dominates. Time will tell.