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VW CEO Herbert Diess
Photo: Silas Stein / dpa
Refueling is expensive in Germany right now.
Diesel costs an average of 1.56 euros per liter, more than ever.
Petrol is approaching old highs at 1.67 euros.
The price of oil has almost doubled, making fossil fuels more expensive.
Volkswagen boss Herbert Diess used the snapshot on Monday to advertise electric cars - and indirectly advise against buying their own combustion engines.
Driving a combustion engine costs up to 50 percent more than an electric car, Diess wrote to his more than 220,000 followers on the LinkedIn portal. A VW Tiguan is 30 percent more expensive per kilometer than the electric ID.4, the fossil Audi Q5 costs 40 percent more than the Audi e-tron and a Skoda Kodiaq costs 50 percent more than the electric Enyaq . In doing so, Diess was referring to calculations by the Auto Zeitung. It was "time to change," so the conclusion.
The fact that electric cars are now cheaper than combustion engines over their lifetime is not in itself new. The purchase prices have fallen as a result of government subsidies and e-cars are cheaper to maintain anyway, because electricity is usually cheaper than fuel and e-cars have less need to go to the workshop due to their construction. The fact that the CEO of the largest German car manufacturer has publicly branded some of his previous combustion bestsellers as expensive is still remarkable - especially since he still makes a significant amount of his money with them.
Just a few days ago, Diess had caused irritation among traditionalists because he had given the controversial Tesla boss Elon Musk a stage at a management meeting of Volkswagen.
"With a new way of thinking and a revolution at our corporate headquarters in Wolfsburg, we can create the new competition," said Diess on Twitter.
Volkswagen has benefited from the boom in electric cars in recent months.
In the past quarter alone, the number of all-electric cars delivered rose by 109 percent to 122,100, the company announced on Friday.
In Europe, VW sees itself as the market leader in this segment for the year as a whole, with a market share of around 26 percent.
fww / dpa