Re:Tesla's solar factory is exporting most of its cells
by TeMPOraL on Wednesday May 15, 2019 @11:29AM
(#19920378)
Sure. Not saying big automakers wouldn't do it if they could, but they couldn't, so it took a different company with different structures and motivations. Ford, Toyota, and others are now entering the game, and if big automakers will mop the market floor with Tesla I wouldn't mind.
(Hell, Musk wouldn't mind either; AFAIR he's on record saying that the whole point was to get electrification of transport going, regardless of who will be the dominant player in the end.)
Re:Tesla's solar factory is exporting most of its cells
by toomuchtodo on Wednesday May 15, 2019 @11:53AM
(#19920628)
Toyota is still hell bent on fuel cells, for whatever reason.
Re:Tesla's solar factory is exporting most of its cells
by TeMPOraL on Wednesday May 15, 2019 @01:08PM
(#19921505)
Yeah, I don't understand it either. Organizational inertia? Maybe they can afford to indulge someone in the organization who's hell-bent on this?
Re:Tesla's solar factory is exporting most of its cells
by jsight on Wednesday May 15, 2019 @01:04PM
(#19921454)
I mean, there are several competing companies now and none have matched the range of a 2012 Model S. I'd say it is fair to say that noone considered it possible back in 2012.
Now they build them with profit margins that are at least as good as the ICE cars on the back end. Their problems are related to scale and retail.
Re:Tesla's solar factory is exporting most of its cells
by _Codemonkeyism on Wednesday May 15, 2019 @02:01PM
(#19922034)
What does "it" mean in "no one considered it possible"?
I beg to differ, everyone thought it's possible but there is no mass market for electric car at a reasonable price point. Volkswagen had several working prototypes in the 1970s especially after the oil shock.
I worked for eBay for some time. They could do most of the stuff that startups around them could do, they had the tech, the ideas, the money and the people. But startups can be net negative for some years, or be happy with $10M revenue, while a project at eBay being net negative would be killed and a $10M project would be thought as too small. Championing a $10M project at eBay for several years would be a career killing move.
So selling 1000 cars a year is a success for a startup (Tesla) but nothing a large company like Volkswagen (11M cars per year) can sustain as a project. Large companies are just not structured in a way (would need to be structured like a VC fund, and some try, e.g. Alphabet) to handle this small but growing opportunities. They need to find the right moment to jump in.