German here as well. In general, I share your pessimism.

One thing to point out about VW is that their CEO, Herbert Diess, seems to get it. To name two anecdotal pieces of evidence, Elon had asked him to become CEO of Tesla back in 2015 [1] and he had conversations with Chinese battery supplier CATL about car batteries as far back as ten years ago [2].

[1] https://electrek.co/2021/04/13/ceo-elon-musk-reportedly-hire...

[2] https://www.teslarati.com/volkswagen-herbert-diess-ev-cell-p...