For years, two knocks against Tesla were that a constant churn of executive turnover would catch up to Elon Musk, and that an onslaught of electric models from Volkswagen Group and others would put him in his place.
Now, the tables have turned.
VW's electric offensive has sputtered, with software issues plaguing its full-electric ID3 model.
And it's the German giant whose executive suites are turning over: in a matter of days, its trucks chief resigned, the leader of its van unit was demoted, and its head of software was reassigned.
Even CEO Herbert Diess's job looked insecure for a moment before VW's supervisory board settled on stripping him of responsibility for the company's namesake division.
The circumstances of each individual's cases vary, and VW continues to have a massive advantage over Tesla in many respects. But some investors are concerned it might not be coincidence that all four VW executives in question were external hires installed to push through deep changes at the automaker.
Their struggles of late cast a pall over the structural and cultural changes VW vowed to make after its diesel-emissions scandal a half decade ago.
"VW risks being perceived as a large, slow-moving entity that is resistant to change in an industry where the pace of change is accelerating," said Timm Schulze-Melander, an industrials specialist at the equity-research firm Redburn. "How will such a group manage to attract and retain the software engineering skills that may prove be so critical to its future?"
