The interesting thing that jumps out to me in that piece is: > In the United States, Diess could be remembered as the executive who brought back the beloved VW

The interesting thing that jumps out to me in that piece is: > In the United States, Diess could be remembered as the executive who brought back the beloved VW microbus as a stylish EV, and revived the Scout truck brand. But Diess irritated U.S. Volkswagen dealers with talk about selling Scouts directly to consumers. Shareholders generally don't care about labor issues (some of them love it when unions are angry), and shareholders probably don't really know/care about software issues (other than related quarterly timeline slippages), this almost buried factoid about Scout to me almost sounds the like the most obvious reason for this shareholder-lead coup. There's probably still plenty of dealer representation among shareholders. That very public hint that Scouts could possible be sold direct to consumer was released so recently that it doesn't seem likely to be coincidence.