Much has been made of the floundering-at-best Tesla Cybertruck, of layoffs at Tesla, top management bailing out, and so on.
We're used to having relatively stable big car companies; Japanese automakers were disrupters in the 1970s, with Korean ones in their wake, but the dust settled and there were still just a few names making cars. You could set your watch by them. And that's how it has always been, right? That whole Tesla messiness, it's an outlier, isn't it?
Wrong. Here in Indiana, I grew up among the remains of the first --and second -- generation of car makers, and of ideas that came and went. Driven a Stutz lately? Ridden in a nice, luxy Haynes? A zippy Apperson? Jay Leno produced a segment showing off his 1920s steam car, a gorgeous piece of sophisticated engineering that made running a steamer almost as simple as a gasoline-engine car, and in quiet comfort. Indianapolis once had an entire fleet of electric taxis loaded up with lead-acid batteries. Gone, all gone; step down the row, past name after name, and marvel at the Tucker, come and gone in the blink of an eye, with a tang of shady dealing hanging in the air.
Maybe Tesla's one with them, and all it'll leave behind is a robust charging infrastructure and collectibles. Maybe it'll have a few ups and downs, like Ford did; the big, dominating car company was his second or third try.
Elon Musk is mostly a money and PR guy, and a little bit an idea guy. He didn't start Tesla or SpaceX or Twitter, he bought into struggling enterprises and they will rise and fall however they do, in part due to his input and in part based on their staff and management. It's fun to muse on the great Captains of Industry who forge the future -- but there are a whole lot of ships sailing that sea under a great many leaders, a whole horde of forge-fires flaring, and most of 'em aren't gonna run the entire course. We only know who the big ones are in retrospect. Haynes and Stutz and all the rest helped to build an industry and it wouldn't be what it is if they hadn't been there. The foundations of the future are built on a lot of crushed dreams, but they do keep on piling higher.
Someone's got to pioneer the rear view mirror; someone's got to try out hydraulic brakes or stick a Diesel engine under the hood, boil up steam or make one of the thousands of efforts at electric cars. Even the companies that first apply the ideas that last do not necessarily thrive themselves.
BUILDING A 1:1 BALUN
4 years ago
14 comments:
The last time I was in Scotland I walked through a parking lot and counted 17 cars from distinct manufacturers before I saw a repeat.You can't do that in North America.That lack of diversity is a weakness that the rest of the world sees.
The Vietnamese are building a car factory in the Carolinas,BYD is going to build in Mexico.
EV production is softening as manufacturers get a handle on what the actual demand is but the demand is there and growing.
Musk is a jerk but he's going through a phase.Jobs went through it. Gates went through it and so did Carnegie.
To be fair, Elon's the first guy so far to have avoided the old adage about making a small fortune in manufacturing cars- first you need a large fortune...
Has he?
That's a bit like the optimist who fell off the world's tallest building and was heard to yell "so far, so good!".
The current run of disappointing sales is nothing new in the car biz- the big three has been in dire financial straits on a pretty regular basis throughout the century. Even if Elon utterly blows it, the most likely fate is that the Tesla brand then gets purchased by someone else.
Tesla is making more than 25% profit on each car.
Don't know that much about cars, although I do know that brands come and go (just refer to Hunky Husband's and my record with Nash Rambler, Oldsmobile, Hornet and his dad's with Packard). My field is aviation and it has been many decades since I could keep track of who bought out whom - Stearman/Boeing/Spirit for instance. One of my own sources of retirement income comes in the names of Northrop Grumman. I had gone to work for BDM which was, during my employment, bought out by Ford Aerospace. Obviously, after I left, there was more buying out including by TRW which no longer appears in the lineage.
Glenn: [citation needed]; also, what about unsold inventory? Tesla has traded briskly in carbon credits, selling them to other carmakers; and done very well on the stock market; that's where their money really comes rolling in. Well and good -- unless the point was to make cars, which, increasingly, seems not to be the case.
Cop Car: TRW appears to be held in remarkably mixed regard by everyone who has encountered them. They changed early on into a company that made money by buying and selling companies instead of by making and selling products. Works great, I guess, until it doesn't.
"Tesla has traded briskly in carbon credits, selling them to other carmakers"
Now that so many other manufacturers have their own EVs, the bottom is falling out of that revenue stream.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/24/business/teslas-electric-vehicles-profit-price-cuts.html?ugrp=u&unlocked_article_code=1.lU0.7Qhp.dV0iovOKXM2R&smid=url-share
My choice of tense was deliberate.
Roberta,I'll get back to you on the citation. I read very little any more,my eyes don't allow it.This blog is one of the few things I put the effort into.Tesla profit/car was as high as 40%,the last earnings report I heard was in the mid 30% range.I picked 25% trying to be conservative.Tesla can slash prices, win a price war with Ford,GM and Volkswagen and still make money.Tesla makes more EVs in one plant than those three combined.
Unsold inventory.Until they start laying off production staff it's not a problem.The staff he did let go were not production people to my knowledge.
Tesla builds millions of cars a year. Three new plants in the last 2 years.they're building another in Mexico and expanding Texas. The point is to make cars.
I probably dislike Musk as much as you do but denying his achievements serves no one and distracts from legitimate criticism.
Which achievements of Elon Musk are you asserting I have denied?
Roberta,In your last response to me you seemed to say that you felt Tesla was only interested in selling credits not cars.
Tesla is a solid international car company.It makes money in Asia,Europe,Australia with or without credits.
If you go to Transport Evolved on Youtube she has the quarterly numbers for most car companies.She reports them in her weekly roundup on fridays. Last week was production numbers and I think the week before was the financials.
I feel my answers are clumsy I'm afraid my writing skills have deteriorated with my reading ability.
You may not have followed what I had written. Nor was I speaking of my "feelings."
The most succinct explanation is we have a race between Tesla learning how to make cars and the competition learning how to make Teslas. In the electric pickup market Ford and Rivian have products that work better and cost less than Elon’s stainless steel ego trip.
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