I think Elon saw the writing on the way a long time ago.
So he's in the process of trying to pivot Tesla to a self-driving taxi, humanoid, energy company. In addition, he's trying to buy as much time as possible by lobbying for huge Chinese tariffs in the US.
That's not it. He did that stuff to frame it as a tech company not as a car company. WeWork did the same thing. If you are seen as a tech company. Not just another normal company then you can justify the ludicrous evaluations you are getting. While dismissing questions about why your company is worth more than any of your competitor with saner financial statements.
Maybe I'm naive but I don't think you need to construct an argument of ill intent/deceit to explain Tesla's actions and marketing. Nothing Tesla has done is in conflict with the strategy laid out at the beginning which was to first sell expensive cars, and then selling increasingly cheaper cars.
FSD is not in the strategy to frame it as a tech company, but to make use of software margins. If you can sell a car that cost 30k to manufacture for 40k instead of 35k because it has software on it, that greatly improves your margins because the software doesn't have manufacturing cost beyond the initial R&D.
There's a lot about Elon to dislike, but his business ideas are sound. At the same time I fully believe his behavior is going to run Tesla into the ground which will be a real shame. He really took the incredible amount of goodwill they got for being the first to make a car that could be both cheaper and better for the environment in the face of both established car companies and the oil industry, and he just flushed all that goodwill down the shitter.
Tesla's saving grace would be to produce cars at a competitive price point, I think money always trumps politics, and with tariffs on Chinese imports that might be achieved, but they'd still be losing the European market and any extra margin they might have gotten from their previously good reputation.
>Maybe I'm naive but I don't think you need to construct an argument of ill intent/deceit to explain Tesla's actions and marketing.
Yes -- given who Musk is, it's naive to construct an argument of what Tesla is doing that doesn't include malicious intent.
> There's a lot about Elon to dislike, but his business ideas are sound.
If his ideas were sound, the valuations wouldn't be sky high. His ideas are anything but sound, so the valuations are sky high because he has such a small chance of pulling them off.
That strategy is just for raising money, as far as I know Tesla doesn't raise money from investors anymore. Although you do have to keep stockholders happy and framing as a tech company helps with that.
No it seems he really wants to pivot tesla away from cars to services like Apple. Sell the hardware but have the massive profits on services. Remains to be seen if the strategy will work out, it is a very risky bet.
And Canada, which has, as I recall, a one hundred percent tariff on something like a BYD or any other car made in China, even if they did submit them for federal road safety compliance testing.
Nope. There's no way to disguise or explain away his recent actions: Elon's actions are clearly those of a person who has grudges against certain segments of society and wants to use political power to fix them.
If he just wanted tariffs on China he could have just imitated Miriam Adelson: give the Trump campaign $200M & state your demands without mincing words. Or, split the amount between both parties and ride whichever horse that comes out on top.
So he's in the process of trying to pivot Tesla to a self-driving taxi, humanoid, energy company. In addition, he's trying to buy as much time as possible by lobbying for huge Chinese tariffs in the US.