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Frankfurt / Wolfsburg (dpa) - The light figure Elon Musk has done it Herbert Diess - not only technologically, but also financially, the VW CEO emulates the Tesla boss.

Several hundred billion euros in market value still separate the two automakers.

But the Germans caught up in the past few weeks, which should also have to do with lofty plans to expand e-mobility and build their own battery cell plants.

VW wants to demonstrate: If the Americans in Berlin put one of their “gigafactories” right in front of our noses, we will add five additional cell factories.

The price of the VW share soared immediately.

Even before that, the paper had already gone up significantly, although the gap to the Californians remains large for the time being: On Friday, Volkswagen's so-called market capitalization was 135 billion euros, Tesla almost quadrupled with the equivalent of 517 billion euros.

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Nevertheless, has the knot now burst for Diess' plan to significantly increase the value of the world's second largest car maker?

Since the beginning of November, the preferred shares of Wolfsburg, which are listed in the Dax, have increased by more than 80 percent, calculated by half as of the turn of the year.

With this, Volkswagen also overtook the most valuable company in the upper house of the German stock exchange, the software group SAP.

The Tesla course, on the other hand, has fallen a little since January - before that, however, it had also had a very special rally, almost eightfold since early 2020.

When it comes to the market value, the German car companies VW, Daimler and BMW looked more and more like dwarves all together.

And that despite the fact that they sell many times more cars than what Tesla has been putting on the road so far.

At Volkswagen, there is also: the ordinary shares have gained even more than the broadly diversified advantages.

The former are the class of shares with voting rights.

A good 53 percent are controlled by the powerful Porsche / Piëch clan, another 20 percent by the state of Lower Saxony, and 17 percent belong to a state fund from Qatar.

Only 10 percent are free float.

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These “tribes”, as they are called at VW, were now worth twice as much as at the beginning of the year, and they are currently posting a plus of around three quarters.

At the beginning of March, the group had once again passed the 100 billion euro market value mark for a long time.

Diess has set a target of 200 billion euros.

It is said that US investors in particular have recently bought into VW.

The German carmaker is said to be a bigger issue there also for private investors.

According to media reports, quite a few organized themselves in Reddit forums, which gave the Gamestop share a wild up and down.

In the meantime, Tesla is also making profits after the financial hype was, in the opinion of some critics, not covered by the real economic basis for a long time.

With all its economies of scale, VW now also wants to lead this into the era of the electric and fully networked car.

The last financial plan in November already estimated 73 billion euros for new technologies - China not included.

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And the VW boss has increased the rate.

Since mid-2020 - not without the rumbling that is common in Wolfsburg - he has largely turned the top management of the brand and group upside down according to his ideas.

He wants to get started in various fields and save costs, even if that brings chronic trouble with works councils.

At least on the stock market, such maneuvers are well received.

Despite Corona, VW also made a billion profit again last year, which should signal: The attack on Tesla is in full swing.

In the search for additional funding, old speculations emerge fresh that an IPO of the highly profitable subsidiary Porsche could raise additional money.

Their CFO Lutz Meschke showed sympathy for corresponding business games when the balance sheet was presented on Friday.

One cannot ignore the advantages of such a step when one deals with the subject.

The decision, however, lies in Wolfsburg alone - Porsche can only provide arguments here.

© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210319-99-892427 / 2