For everything that actually matters about owning a car, things like service network, whether the brand will exist in 20-30 years, parts availability, crash safety, driving characteristics and comfort, manufacturing quality, I would trust VW about 5x more than Tesla or any Chinese brand.

VW is nowhere near the top of my trustworthy brands list but they’re still in the “massive sales volume legacy automotive group” category where they generally know what they’re doing and have the fundamentals of their business in order.

If you want to really get me going about legacy automakers that are a safe buy we can talk about Toyota.