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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 b

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.

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.