Tesla is accused of abandoning its electric car business
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Founded in 2003, Tesla has become a leader in the global electric vehicle industry after just 11 years of development. The company's market value once exceeded 30 billion US dollars, becoming a legendary company in Silicon Valley. And just recently, Tesla set another record. With more than 6,000 employees, it surpassed Toyota to become the largest employer of automobile manufacturers in California. Technology media IBTimes recently wrote an article to disclose and analyze some unknown things in Tesla's development process. The following is the main content of the article. When talking about Tesla, perhaps people will think of its legendary boss Elon Musk and the electric car Model S that sells well all over the world, but the company's growth history, related businesses, and the reasons why it is not welcomed by other automakers seem to be little known. Battery pain Unlike other electric vehicles that use large battery packs, Tesla's electric vehicles use small cylindrical batteries similar to laptop batteries. Take Nissan's electric car Leaf as an example. Because it uses a large flat battery, it is very convenient to arrange the design. The small cylindrical battery used by Tesla is a great challenge for the design team. How to connect them to work like a large battery is not an easy task. Tesla's innovation in battery packs has also attracted the attention of General Motors. The company's CEO Dan Akerson even set up a team to reverse-engineer Tesla's battery pack design and try to build an electric car with a better price advantage in the future. Although the number of employees at Tesla's California factory has reached a relatively large scale, the sales of its main model Model S are not very impressive. This car, which was launched in 2012, has set off a wave of electric vehicles around the world, but in 2013, the global sales of Model S were only about 40,000 units, which is obviously far from Musk's goal. The main reason for this is not only limited production capacity, but also the high price. The starting price is $70,000, and the mid-to-high-end models are more than $100,000, which is like a "rich man's toy." Although Musk claimed that he planned to build an electric car that ordinary consumers could afford, he also said that it would take about three years. In view of this situation, some investors believe that Tesla and Musk may abandon the electric car business in the future and do what they are best at: fast charging and super batteries. Jeffrey Gundlach, founder of the US investment institution DoubleLine Capital, said that if Musk decided to stop getting involved in the car manufacturing business and focus on providing batteries to other automakers, he would consider long-term cooperation with them. "In the future, Tesla may completely transform into a battery and electromagnet supply," Gundlach said in a recent interview with Bloomberg. Battery production capacity has always been the main problem restricting Tesla's rapid development. In order to completely solve this problem, Tesla announced in February this year that it plans to raise $5 billion to build a super battery factory to meet its own and other companies' demand for lithium batteries. The direct sales model is resisted. For Tesla, it is not only the field of car manufacturing that it wants to change, but also what it wants to achieve is to allow consumers to avoid middlemen and buy cars directly. In traditional car sales, salespeople will accompany potential customers to test drive and perform "high-pressure sales" during the test drive. Tesla adopts a completely different direct sales model. Salespeople in retail stores are mainly responsible for conveying specific electric vehicle knowledge to customers, and these customers can also log on to Tesla's website to obtain relevant information, and then go directly to the direct sales store in California to place an order and pick up the goods. This direct sales model obviously makes those car dealers unable to make a penny, so they hope to suppress Tesla through some measures. According to a report from Wired magazine, lobbyists in the car sales industry are currently doing their best to maintain the status quo, including promoting a legislation that stipulates that car sales must go through "intermediate dealers." And New Jersey Governor Chris Christie directly pushed the State Motor Vehicle Commission to introduce relevant policies in March this year to prohibit Tesla from conducting direct car sales activities in the state. "The state government has not yet introduced corresponding laws to support Tesla's direct car sales in New Jersey, so Tesla must be aware of its position from the beginning," Christie's spokesman Kevin Roberts said in an interview. It is also understood that in addition to New Jersey, Colorado, Texas, Arizona and Virginia have all listed the "direct sales model" as an illegal business activity. About SpaceX For Musk, what annoys him is not only the prohibition of Tesla's "direct sales model" by the above five states, but also the current development of SpaceX, his commercial rocket manufacturing company, has been repeatedly frustrated. Musk invested in and founded SpaceX in 2002. He hopes to produce and manufacture space launch vehicles through private enterprise operations. In addition to sending astronauts and supplies to outer space, it will even help humans achieve the great goal of migrating to Mars in the future. It is also under the guidance of this goal and Musk's operation that SpaceX has achieved rapid development in the field of rocket technology research and development, and in 2012, through the "Falcon" rocket, the space capsule named Dragon was successfully docked with the International Space Station, which also made SpaceX the first private enterprise to deliver space supplies to the International Space Station. However, SpaceX is trying to obtain fair rights to become a supplier in the US Air Force satellite launch project through legal means. SpaceX believes that the launch system they developed can save the US Air Force $1 billion a year, but the latter eventually chose the United Launch Alliance as the only service provider for the project. "The current system of the US Air Force infringes on the rights of companies including SpaceX to compete for national security launch projects, which should be subject to fair market competition rather than being monopolized by a service provider," Musk said later. As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity. |
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