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A 1B Beats acquisition can be excused as a vanity play for Apple plus when they did that deal the company was still closer to “can do no wrong” status. A tens o
by jshaqaw 8y ago
A 1B Beats acquisition can be excused as a vanity play for Apple plus when they did that deal the company was still closer to “can do no wrong” status. A tens of billions investment into a money losing capex intensive industry would be a lot harder for Apple to sell to its shareholders.
- Spooky23 8y agoTesla seems like a company that is poorly operated. Apple is arguably the best manufacturer on the planet.
- testrun 8y agoAre they a manufacturer? I am under the impression it is mostly outsourced to Foxconn.
- MBCook 8y agoIt is, but obviously Apple designed everything to be extremely easy for them to manufacture at high volumes. That’s the kind of thing that Tesla seems to be having a lot of problems with.
- greglindahl 8y agoTesla appears to have industry-leading battery packs, according to Sandy Munro. It's the whole car thing that appears to be more difficult for them.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y agoI work in automotive. One VP of a fairly large company I was having dinner with remarked “Tesla is about to find out just how difficult it is to build a car”
- microtherion 8y agoWhile I share some of those concerns, in all fairness it should be pointed out that this is literally what cell phone manufacturers said about the iPhone.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y agoExcept that CLEARLY wasn't the case. Cell phone mfgs were making garbage, Apple came around and without question revolutionized the industry overnight. Let's be honest that Tesla hasn't revolutionized the car, they have a clone of existing cars but with an electric powertrain.
- Spooky23 8y agoVery different situation. Remember that initially Apple sold the iPhone for $600 or something. The big revolution was that the initial buyer wasn't the carrier, but the end user, not only for the iOS ecosystem, but for the phone as well. iPhone devalued the billions of capital investment that Verizon had made when high-end users ran to Cingular to get the iPhone in the face of a slower, less reliable and less available network, and took the best customers. Tesla is a very different story. They have to balance the elitist cachet with the fact that relatively consumers actually want an electric car, and that they cannot meet demand of those who do.
- MBCook 8y agoI’m not saying this is likely, but imagine white Toyota or Honda could do with Tesla’s battery/platform technology. I’d say there’s a lot of outfits who would be better positioned/more likely than Apple.
- rangibaby 8y ago> I’m not saying this is likely, but imagine white Toyota or Honda could do with Tesla’s battery/platform technology. Tesla's batteries are made by Panasonic, who also makes them for Toyota
- ebikelaw 8y agoAnybody who wants “Tesla’s” battery technology need only pick up the phone, call Panasonic, and order it.
- ams6110 8y agoThe raw batteries yes. But didn't Tesla develop a lot of technology to manage charge/discharge, temperature, etc? Or was all that from Panasonic too?
- SlowRobotAhead 8y agoThere have definitely been news articles and press releases that talk about that. But that type of media is directly related to what someone wanted the stock price to do. Know that when you see it next. Hard to say how much of that was legit. Maybe Tesla has designs that although Pana makes aren’t available to anyone else. Maybe they’re fairly normal components.
- stephengillie 8y agoToyota's been developing their own battery management technologies for 21 years. Almost half of their cars & SUVs have a hybrid variant available today, each with 1-3 kWh of NiMH battery capacity and ~200 fl-lbs of additional torque.
- imron 8y ago