According to Plan

"He doesn't need to acquire them. He just needs to wait."

[soft click of a PowerPoint advancing]

You're probably seeing the news.

Volkswagen. A hundred thousand jobs. Four plants. The largest restructuring in the history of the automotive industry.

And I want to be clear about something.

This is all going according to plan.

Jobs VW cut. That RJ didn't have to ask for.

Phase 1: Software Capture

We let VW give us five billion dollars. Which — and I want to be precise here — they did. Willingly. They walked into our office in Irvine and said, "Please, take our money, we cannot make the screen work." And I said, "We'd be happy to help." And I smiled. And they left feeling good about it.

That's the capture. They handed us the keys to the software layer because CARIAD couldn't ship a radio app without braking the car. Sometimes literally.

Phase 2: The Bridgehead

Scout. They let us build their heritage brand. They gave us the name, the logo, the nostalgia, and then they stepped back and said, "You know what? You guys are really good at this." Yes. We are. That's why you paid us five billion dollars.

Phase 3: The Flip

VW's market cap is a hundred billion euros. Rivian's is thirteen billion dollars. On paper, they're eight times bigger than us. But here's the thing about paper.

It burns.

Phase 4: Rationalization

I didn't even have to do Phase Four.

They're doing it to themselves. A hundred thousand jobs. Four plants. They're cutting off their own limbs because the body is dying and the brain — the Porsche and Piëch families — finally looked at the spreadsheet and said, "Why does every software update cost three hundred million euros?"

I'll tell you why. Because you hired nine thousand software engineers in Munich and none of them could agree on a font for the dashboard clock.

Meanwhile, in China — BYD, NIO, Xpeng — they're eating VW's lunch. They've eaten the lunch. They're working on the dinner.

We made the software in Irvine. With two hundred people. And a coffee machine.

The Call

The Porsche and Piëch families are looking at two options:

Option A: Continue watching a hundred-billion-euro company shed jobs and plants while Chinese competitors take over every market they've held for forty years.

Option B: Call RJ.

They're going to call RJ.

And when they call — I'm not going to acquire Volkswagen. That would be egotistical. I'm going to let them acquire me. At a significant premium. With stock that will be worth ten times what it is today within five years.

I don't need to acquire them. I just have to wait.

[PowerPoint click — final slide: just the Rivian logo, slowly fading in]

This has been Phase Four. And it's going according to plan.