6 ms·

Has Elon Musk's Tesla already won?

20 points by mlacks 6y ago

Solstinox 6y ago
It's uncertain whether Tesla has won. Less uncertain is that a lot of the existing manufacturers have already lost.
- m463 6y ago
  One thing is for certain - existing manufacturers will have to compete in a different way. So the iphone came out in 2007 and pretty much wiped out the competition in phones. blackberry and nokia and even palm were pretty much forgotten in short order. But now there are alternatives. But then apple lost its founder. I wonder what things would be like if steve jobs were around.
  - staticman2 6y ago
    Tesla is the Commodore 64 of cars. (A comment that makes as much sense as arbitrary comparisons to the IPhone).
- s1artibartfast 6y ago
  I don't understand this sentiment. Do existing manufacturers even see TSLA as a threat? Tesla has about 0.5% of the global market share for autos. Toyota has 275 B revenue and 50 B gross profits Tesla has 24 B revenue and 4 B gross profits Toyota sells ~ 10,7 million vehicles/yr and Tesla sells ~400k It seems that rise and fall of various large auto manufactures are dictated more by the competition between them, than anything the upstart Tesla is doing.
  - snoshy 6y ago
    This might be true today, but will it hold in the medium/long-term future? The precise concern is that the existing manufacturers aren't paying attention to the upstart that could conceivably eat their lunch in the medium-term future. The pivotal question here is whether the existing manufacturers are simply burying their heads in the sand, or are ignoring the growth of EVs due to a principled strategy that has legs. That case has not been made sufficiently clearly, if it even has any merit, in my opinion.
    - s1artibartfast 6y ago
      My point is that I don't see any reason to believe it won't hold true in the medium/long term future? Do they have any interest in fighting for the EV market now? Are there barriers to entry that can stop them from leisurely moving in one the technology has wider adoption and maturity?
      - snoshy 6y ago
        A single data point certainly does not make a trend, but VW has actually tried to compete and had to change their tune rather quickly by admitting that Tesla has a sustainable lead in the EV space.
        s1artibartfast 6y ago
        I think that is fair evidence suggesting that tesla can hold its own in the EV space. That said, Im not convinced that this is an existential threat for any of the top manufacturers. If tesla has the entire EV market for the next 10 years, it will become on of the top manufacturers, not eliminate them. Hell, they could even be synergistic. Tesla charges a consumer premium for clean EVs, sells the credits to auto manufacturers, who get to sell high profit/ low mileage vehicles.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
> The data Tesla collects from users, their environs, interests, tendencies, travel habits and the range of behaviors will arguably be more valuable than the engines and high-performance batteries powering them. This enables Tesla to hone the customer experience, while discerning where the market will veer next. I for one, hope the companies focused on making great car hardware win this battle, not the companies that want to turn the car into a giant data harvesting platform.
- 0xdeadb00f 6y ago
  Sadly I don't know if that's possible in this day and age. Every single time there's an opportunity to harvest data it seems companies do it.
  - gpapilion 6y ago
    Volume generally beats quality for models. So the default position of anyone looking to analyze the data will be to ask for more of it. This is where I think GDPR helps since it adds cost to that data. It really gives you and opportunity to assess the value versus the liability of the data.
- m463 6y ago
  I agree with you. My one worry is - since data subsidizes things - will the private alternative even exist? A friend of mine who worked at a pc manufacturer years ago said they didn't make a linux pc because they made money on the shovelware they bundled with windows pcs. why would they make a linux pc if it were more expensive/cost them money?
- jeffnappi 6y ago
  The thing is - those go hand in hand. In order to improve the autonomous features of the vehicles they need to collect data. Tesla driving data is anonymized and data collection is not enabled by default. As long as it's opt-in, I think it's a fantastic opportunity to improve the performance of these systems. Remember you already have no privacy on the roads to begin with - traffic cameras, etc are already collecting plenty of data about drivers.
paul_f 6y ago
The article compared the market cap of Tesla to Hong Kong's GDP. I stopped reading then.
- neckardt 6y ago
  Why? It seems like a decent way to measure how valuable something is. All of the money changing hands in a city for one year could buy you Tesla. $300 billion on its own has nothing I can relate the size to.
  - pcr0 6y ago
    One is an annual snapshot of revenue and the other is number of shares * current share price. I see how it helps with comprehending the amount, but it's a very apples-to-oranges comparison. If they compared Saudi Aramco's revenue with Hong Kong's annual GDP, that would make a bit more sense since they're both annual figures.
- naveen99 6y ago
  Also, Why do economists give government budget deficits as a percent of gdp instead of Government revenue ? unnecessary indirection...
  - skissane 6y ago
    It isn’t really indirection in that government can raise taxes, thereby increasing the amount of revenue available to service debt. The government doesn’t have as direct influence over GDP, and the impact of government policies on GDP takes longer to be seen. So it makes sense to express debt as a percentage of the figure which is the harder constraint.
    - naveen99 6y ago
      It’s like startups reporting burn rate as a percentage of investor wealth. Governments already operate mostly near maximum revenue. Raise taxes anymore and Capital and labor walk away.
mlacks 6y ago
>We can debate the merits of this sense of corporate responsibility. The fact remains, though, that Musk's operation is not hampered by this galaxy of moving parts. By keeping many of these functions in-house, Tesla can innovate 24/7 and implement a new technology tomorrow, not in 2025. There is a quote I'm fond of; to paraphrase: To go fast, go alone, to go far, go together. I while I think that TSLA is doing a great job at innovation, it does seem to be leaving a lot of jobs in uncertainty. On one hand, those people can be find new, innovative problems to solve now that (theoretically) the problem their job was working on is now solved. On the other, most people in those positions aren't really in a position to find and pull resources to solve a new problem. Here in the US, there isn't much of a safety net to support them while they're just trying to put food on the table. Love the progress of Tesla, but I think there needs to be a solution to the jobs that are going to be made obsolete by reducing the number of suppliers and jobs. Don't know if this is a policy issue or a market issue to solve.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  It’s a policy issue, no bones about it. Just need politicians with a backbone and an electorate that supports them to implement. We have neither currently. As Churchill said, “You can count on Americans to do the right thing after exhausting all other options.”
- chillacy 6y ago
  The market doesn't care about suppliers and jobs going out of business (actually more cynically the market encourages efficiency, and useless suppliers are inefficient). Sometimes places try to legislate make-work jobs into existence, using laws to create jobs where none are actually needed. There's famous a milton friedman anecdote: > Milton recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which Milton replied: “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.” --- Other policies might protect the workers by providing baseline resources (UBI or services), or job retraining. There are all sorts of interesting discussions along these lines. Similar things have happened in the past, so we do have some idea of the devastation it causes.
specialist 6y ago
I remain very bullish on Tesla. Tesla is technically and organizationally ahead of their competitors. The EV market is Tesla's to lose. Reminds me of Toyota before them. Others could set out to copy everything about Toyota verbatim, and in the 18 months it takes to implement, Toyota will then be 18 months ahead. To get ahead of Toyota, you'd have to leapfrog. And while the tech will certainly percolate out to others, I can't imagine any existing player successfully adopting Tesla's organizational innovations. - Shuffling their org charts, so that octovalve and unibottles are even possible. - Implementing new stuff asap, instead of waiting for model years. - Aggressively reducing part counts. - Toyota style vertical integration, reversing decades of outsourcing. - Learning how to write software. Etc. Any way. If Elon Musk can avoid imploding, I think competitors will have to seize the future waves of disruption to displace Tesla. Solid state batteries for EV. And people smarter than me are bullish on hydrogen fuel.
- AtlasBarfed 6y ago
  Some of the core of Tesla's fundamental advantages are their lead in integration of battery technology. Their battery tech is "good", but that could disappear at any moment with the theoretical advantages of solid state / lithium metal batteries over what is used now. Their software lead isn't that great however (aside from whatever state their self-driving is in ), that's pretty straightforward software and integration and UI, and really underlines how functionally stupid the incumbent ICE companies are that "over the air update" is magical technology to them. So Tesla's lead is substantive in the moment, but still very much tenuous. Many other ICE companies could vertically integrate to match. Every new platform by a company, and EVs generally demand a fundamentally new platform, would be an opportunity to match a great deal of Tesla's vertical integration. But the mainline ICE makers have been so slow and so stody and so stupid and so corrupt for sooooo long, and that runs far deeper than just the C-suite in their management hierarchies, that they will probably still be asleep at the switch for ten years, despite the fact that nothing besides organizational malaise stops them from changing course.
  - specialist 6y ago
    To clarify: I'm only a casual consumer of geek news, so I hope someone can chime in to correct me. Whatever the quality of Tesla's software, the key point is they can write software. I've read (heard) that other car mfgs outsource most or all software development. Random notion: Your reply reminded of Apple dabbling with automotive stuff and the general befuddlement about that effort. It now occurs to me that Apple may be sizing up becoming the software stack provider to the car mfgs cannot write their own.
Andys 6y ago
I did some research on EVs for sale here in Australia and found that although they are not the cheapest, Telsa has the best recharging network. The supercharger stations along the main highways around the country are well worth the extra price of the cars, if you need to go on a trip outside the cities it will make it much nicer. They also have the best battery thermal management (in the model Y) with its air conditioner able to route warm or chilled coolant wherever it is needed on the fly inside the vehicle. They are the only ones on the market doing this. As far as I know they are also the only carmaker working on constructing future car models out of huge die casts, which will greatly speed up production and cut costs. This has nothing to do with being electric cars, any car company could have done this already, but didn't?

20 points by mlacks 6y ago

Solstinox 6y ago

It's uncertain whether Tesla has won. Less uncertain is that a lot of the existing manufacturers have already lost.

m463 6y ago
One thing is for certain - existing manufacturers will have to compete in a different way. So the iphone came out in 2007 and pretty much wiped out the competition in phones. blackberry and nokia and even palm were pretty much forgotten in short order. But now there are alternatives. But then apple lost its founder. I wonder what things would be like if steve jobs were around.
- staticman2 6y ago
  Tesla is the Commodore 64 of cars. (A comment that makes as much sense as arbitrary comparisons to the IPhone).
s1artibartfast 6y ago
I don't understand this sentiment. Do existing manufacturers even see TSLA as a threat? Tesla has about 0.5% of the global market share for autos. Toyota has 275 B revenue and 50 B gross profits Tesla has 24 B revenue and 4 B gross profits Toyota sells ~ 10,7 million vehicles/yr and Tesla sells ~400k It seems that rise and fall of various large auto manufactures are dictated more by the competition between them, than anything the upstart Tesla is doing.
- snoshy 6y ago
  This might be true today, but will it hold in the medium/long-term future? The precise concern is that the existing manufacturers aren't paying attention to the upstart that could conceivably eat their lunch in the medium-term future. The pivotal question here is whether the existing manufacturers are simply burying their heads in the sand, or are ignoring the growth of EVs due to a principled strategy that has legs. That case has not been made sufficiently clearly, if it even has any merit, in my opinion.
  - s1artibartfast 6y ago
    My point is that I don't see any reason to believe it won't hold true in the medium/long term future? Do they have any interest in fighting for the EV market now? Are there barriers to entry that can stop them from leisurely moving in one the technology has wider adoption and maturity?
    - snoshy 6y ago
      A single data point certainly does not make a trend, but VW has actually tried to compete and had to change their tune rather quickly by admitting that Tesla has a sustainable lead in the EV space.
      - s1artibartfast 6y ago
        I think that is fair evidence suggesting that tesla can hold its own in the EV space. That said, Im not convinced that this is an existential threat for any of the top manufacturers. If tesla has the entire EV market for the next 10 years, it will become on of the top manufacturers, not eliminate them. Hell, they could even be synergistic. Tesla charges a consumer premium for clean EVs, sells the credits to auto manufacturers, who get to sell high profit/ low mileage vehicles.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

> The data Tesla collects from users, their environs, interests, tendencies, travel habits and the range of behaviors will arguably be more valuable than the engines and high-performance batteries powering them. This enables Tesla to hone the customer experience, while discerning where the market will veer next. I for one, hope the companies focused on making great car hardware win this battle, not the companies that want to turn the car into a giant data harvesting platform.

0xdeadb00f 6y ago
Sadly I don't know if that's possible in this day and age. Every single time there's an opportunity to harvest data it seems companies do it.
- gpapilion 6y ago
  Volume generally beats quality for models. So the default position of anyone looking to analyze the data will be to ask for more of it. This is where I think GDPR helps since it adds cost to that data. It really gives you and opportunity to assess the value versus the liability of the data.
m463 6y ago
I agree with you. My one worry is - since data subsidizes things - will the private alternative even exist? A friend of mine who worked at a pc manufacturer years ago said they didn't make a linux pc because they made money on the shovelware they bundled with windows pcs. why would they make a linux pc if it were more expensive/cost them money?
jeffnappi 6y ago
The thing is - those go hand in hand. In order to improve the autonomous features of the vehicles they need to collect data. Tesla driving data is anonymized and data collection is not enabled by default. As long as it's opt-in, I think it's a fantastic opportunity to improve the performance of these systems. Remember you already have no privacy on the roads to begin with - traffic cameras, etc are already collecting plenty of data about drivers.

paul_f 6y ago

The article compared the market cap of Tesla to Hong Kong's GDP. I stopped reading then.

neckardt 6y ago
Why? It seems like a decent way to measure how valuable something is. All of the money changing hands in a city for one year could buy you Tesla. $300 billion on its own has nothing I can relate the size to.
- pcr0 6y ago
  One is an annual snapshot of revenue and the other is number of shares * current share price. I see how it helps with comprehending the amount, but it's a very apples-to-oranges comparison. If they compared Saudi Aramco's revenue with Hong Kong's annual GDP, that would make a bit more sense since they're both annual figures.
naveen99 6y ago
Also, Why do economists give government budget deficits as a percent of gdp instead of Government revenue ? unnecessary indirection...
- skissane 6y ago
  It isn’t really indirection in that government can raise taxes, thereby increasing the amount of revenue available to service debt. The government doesn’t have as direct influence over GDP, and the impact of government policies on GDP takes longer to be seen. So it makes sense to express debt as a percentage of the figure which is the harder constraint.
  - naveen99 6y ago
    It’s like startups reporting burn rate as a percentage of investor wealth. Governments already operate mostly near maximum revenue. Raise taxes anymore and Capital and labor walk away.

mlacks 6y ago

>We can debate the merits of this sense of corporate responsibility. The fact remains, though, that Musk's operation is not hampered by this galaxy of moving parts. By keeping many of these functions in-house, Tesla can innovate 24/7 and implement a new technology tomorrow, not in 2025. There is a quote I'm fond of; to paraphrase: To go fast, go alone, to go far, go together. I while I think that TSLA is doing a great job at innovation, it does seem to be leaving a lot of jobs in uncertainty. On one hand, those people can be find new, innovative problems to solve now that (theoretically) the problem their job was working on is now solved. On the other, most people in those positions aren't really in a position to find and pull resources to solve a new problem. Here in the US, there isn't much of a safety net to support them while they're just trying to put food on the table. Love the progress of Tesla, but I think there needs to be a solution to the jobs that are going to be made obsolete by reducing the number of suppliers and jobs. Don't know if this is a policy issue or a market issue to solve.

toomuchtodo 6y ago
It’s a policy issue, no bones about it. Just need politicians with a backbone and an electorate that supports them to implement. We have neither currently. As Churchill said, “You can count on Americans to do the right thing after exhausting all other options.”
chillacy 6y ago
The market doesn't care about suppliers and jobs going out of business (actually more cynically the market encourages efficiency, and useless suppliers are inefficient). Sometimes places try to legislate make-work jobs into existence, using laws to create jobs where none are actually needed. There's famous a milton friedman anecdote: > Milton recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which Milton replied: “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.” --- Other policies might protect the workers by providing baseline resources (UBI or services), or job retraining. There are all sorts of interesting discussions along these lines. Similar things have happened in the past, so we do have some idea of the devastation it causes.

specialist 6y ago

I remain very bullish on Tesla. Tesla is technically and organizationally ahead of their competitors. The EV market is Tesla's to lose. Reminds me of Toyota before them. Others could set out to copy everything about Toyota verbatim, and in the 18 months it takes to implement, Toyota will then be 18 months ahead. To get ahead of Toyota, you'd have to leapfrog. And while the tech will certainly percolate out to others, I can't imagine any existing player successfully adopting Tesla's organizational innovations. - Shuffling their org charts, so that octovalve and unibottles are even possible. - Implementing new stuff asap, instead of waiting for model years. - Aggressively reducing part counts. - Toyota style vertical integration, reversing decades of outsourcing. - Learning how to write software. Etc. Any way. If Elon Musk can avoid imploding, I think competitors will have to seize the future waves of disruption to displace Tesla. Solid state batteries for EV. And people smarter than me are bullish on hydrogen fuel.

AtlasBarfed 6y ago
Some of the core of Tesla's fundamental advantages are their lead in integration of battery technology. Their battery tech is "good", but that could disappear at any moment with the theoretical advantages of solid state / lithium metal batteries over what is used now. Their software lead isn't that great however (aside from whatever state their self-driving is in ), that's pretty straightforward software and integration and UI, and really underlines how functionally stupid the incumbent ICE companies are that "over the air update" is magical technology to them. So Tesla's lead is substantive in the moment, but still very much tenuous. Many other ICE companies could vertically integrate to match. Every new platform by a company, and EVs generally demand a fundamentally new platform, would be an opportunity to match a great deal of Tesla's vertical integration. But the mainline ICE makers have been so slow and so stody and so stupid and so corrupt for sooooo long, and that runs far deeper than just the C-suite in their management hierarchies, that they will probably still be asleep at the switch for ten years, despite the fact that nothing besides organizational malaise stops them from changing course.
- specialist 6y ago
  To clarify: I'm only a casual consumer of geek news, so I hope someone can chime in to correct me. Whatever the quality of Tesla's software, the key point is they can write software. I've read (heard) that other car mfgs outsource most or all software development. Random notion: Your reply reminded of Apple dabbling with automotive stuff and the general befuddlement about that effort. It now occurs to me that Apple may be sizing up becoming the software stack provider to the car mfgs cannot write their own.

Andys 6y ago

I did some research on EVs for sale here in Australia and found that although they are not the cheapest, Telsa has the best recharging network. The supercharger stations along the main highways around the country are well worth the extra price of the cars, if you need to go on a trip outside the cities it will make it much nicer. They also have the best battery thermal management (in the model Y) with its air conditioner able to route warm or chilled coolant wherever it is needed on the fly inside the vehicle. They are the only ones on the market doing this. As far as I know they are also the only carmaker working on constructing future car models out of huge die casts, which will greatly speed up production and cut costs. This has nothing to do with being electric cars, any car company could have done this already, but didn't?