I admire Tesla as a company. If you focus on what Elon Musk does as a businessman and work hard to recreate some of them, you will find success in markets. Musk provides orthogonal competitive positioning where what you think that makes his companies great is not just the full story.
Case 1: How can someone sell you a car, and then tell you that if you resell it, the next person must still come back and pay license fees to use it legally?
Case 2: If you buy his car, it does not end there – you need to be sending small fees once in a while for updates. If you check carefully, Tesla is a “software company” even though it sells mainly cars.
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I drove through Ohio yesterday and in one of the service areas (where you rest on the highways), I saw one of the key reasons why Tesla is the king of cars (not just electric vehicles) in the world. Its market valuation can compete with the top 20 leading car companies combined.
In all the leading service centers, you will see Tesla charging stations. I did not see any other car company. What that means is, as you drive across America, you are sure that Tesla charging stations are available to ensure you never run out of electrons. That is exponential execution as Tesla is even faster than the US government there!
Yet, I also noticed one big challenge ahead: the world needs to harmonize the standards for charging stations so that Tesla charging stations can support Toyota, Ford, etc. If we do not do that, we will be in a mess. We cannot afford to have ten brands in that service when one can do. The universal charger model for mobile phones may be in play here.
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Comment: Sir, I saw a documentary of a newly launched Mercedes-Benz electric car, Mission xxx, yesterday. I was blown away. In 1 full charge that car will go over 1100Km. The best electric car ever. And I see it a big threat to Tesla…. While watching it Tesla was the first thing that came to my mind…
My Response: Concorde Airline did not kill all airlines. In this business, the one with optimized pricing will win. EV will have luxury brands like Mercedes but I am not sure that will do it. It is not really about technology in totality, it is about the pocket of buyers. Mercedes Missionxxx is not reducing cost but increasing it. Would you like to save 20 mins per charge but pay extra $30,000 to buy the car?
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