
Has Elon Musk's Tesla already won? - mlacks
https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Has-Elon-Musk-s-Tesla-already-won
======
mlacks
>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.

~~~
chillacy
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.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
> 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
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
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.

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

~~~
naveen99
Also, Why do economists give government budget deficits as a percent of gdp
instead of Government revenue ? unnecessary indirection...

~~~
skissane
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
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.

~~~
skissane
> Governments already operate mostly near maximum revenue. Raise taxes anymore
> and Capital and labor walk away.

Look at OECD data on tax revenue as percent of GDP [1]. France is at the top
at 46.1%. OECD average is 34.2%. US is near the bottom at 26.8%.

Given the big differences in tax rates, it seems implausible every government
is at maximum revenue - that might be true for the highest taxing countries
like France and Denmark, but is unlikely to be true for a below-average tax
country like the US.

The “Laffer curve” determines maximum government revenue - the point at which
raising taxes any further would cause overall government revenue to fall.
Nobody knows exactly where that point is, but most experts believe the US is a
fair way below it (see e.g. [2])

[1] [https://data.oecd.org/chart/63TM](https://data.oecd.org/chart/63TM)

[2]
[https://www.jstor.org/stable/23269968?seq=1](https://www.jstor.org/stable/23269968?seq=1)

~~~
naveen99
I wonder if the us numbers are misleadingly low because they may not include
state and city taxes. [https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-
breakdown...](https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-breakdown-
revenues-among-federal-state-and-local-governments)

~~~
skissane
The OECD website says [1]:

> This indicator relates to government as a whole (all government levels)

"all government levels" means
state/provincial/territorial/regional/county/city/town/etc, the whole lot

So I see no evidence it is “misleadingly low”, I think the OECD’s statistics
are generally accurate. (More accurate than the UN’s, because the countries
whose governments are most likely to commit statistical fraud are not OECD
members.)

[1] [https://data.oecd.org/tax/tax-revenue.htm](https://data.oecd.org/tax/tax-
revenue.htm)

~~~
naveen99
Thanks. Agreed.

------
Andys
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?

------
specialist
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
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
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.

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

~~~
s1artibartfast
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
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
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
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
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.

