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Comment by rurban | Hacker News Reader

I think only Audi would make sense to be bought by Tesla. That would be VW, Audi and Porsche then.

Why not Nissan? It has a market cap of about $20BN, or less than 4% the market cap of Tesla. VW by contrast has a market cap of more than $90BN. Nissan is not unionized and they already have a lot of experience building electric cars.

Although, it's much more likely Musk would like to acquire some Chinese manufacturer.

The government of Saxony owns a substantial stake in Volkswagen AG and would never allow them to be purchased by a foreign entity.

The federal state of Lower Saxony actually, and it's only about 12% [1].

[1] https://www.volkswagenag.com/de/InvestorRelations/shares/sha...

Well, VW is owned by Audi. Tesla could just slurp them at ease.

What they would do with the bean counters, I can not predict. Tesla hates beancounters, but you need them. The software part of VW, which is now their most important asset, could be of some value, but I doubt that that it would be of value to Tesla. VW is now mostly a SW company, and far behind Tesla.

Audi would make technical sense, because they have the most advanced engineers and have the best assembly lines. They are also much better than Tesla in every aspect. Esp. SW, powertrain and battery tech.

And Seat, Skoda, Lamborgini, Bugatti and Bentley?

I’m betting Ford. They have great China penetration and have been teetering on the edge of bankruptcy for over a decade. Plus Tesla has pride in being an American automaker

Just to point out that VW group have quite a complex financial structure designed to prevent a buy-out. They were quite worried about this in the 90s, so it's mostly owned by Porsche AG (not the car company).

You don't deal with the kids, when you can get the big ones. The ones of value.

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