with this valuation, I would instead sell half of company and acquire GM and Ford for that money, then it would definitely be 600B company, as a bonus I might as well add some smaller companies just in case like Hyliion
Wow, really? Wouldn't a merger dilute his ability to control the company and make ambitious bets? I can't image Musk going for something that lets his BoD fill with old-school auto industry types.
A merger of a $600B company with a $60B company should have minimal impact on board seats.
But it's hard to tell how serious he is. All he's really said is that he'll read any offers that come in. I doubt he'll do much more than read them, but who knows? One thing Musk does not lack is hubris, so I'm sure he thinks he has the ability to absorb and turn around a legacy automaker.
But why turn around a legacy automaker, even if he thinks he could? It would have to fit into his greater strategy, e.g. providing branding for his EVs or providing auto workers that would otherwise be hard to find, etc.
I took this as just an offhand comment saying "we might be willing to do this if they can convince us it will benefit Tesla" not a statement on how likely it is to happen.
The benefit would be the manufacturing expertise they would gain. I believe he’s on the record saying mass production is a much harder problem than the type of technical challenges with building rockets.
I used to program robots that made body panels. I think people get fixated on the “electric vs. combustion” part and can lose sight of how much other manufacturing is involved. The traditional auto companies have decades of lessons learned related to quality. To their credit, Tesla seems to learn fast but has had a lot of growing pains related to areas like quality control. There’s a surprisingly large amount of issues to prepare for when you make a seemingly straightforward design change like changing the material composition of an component to save money or weight, for instance.
because they really produce lots of cars every year, they do have facilities to produce as many cars as you want and their respective revenues are 130B and 150B, +Boeing 75B.
Producing ICE cars isn't the same as making EVs. A good example of this is Tesla's Fremont factory (which used to be a GM/Toyota facility) and their Shanghai Gigafactory. The layout of the Fremont one contributed to significant inefficiencies in manufacturing compared to GF3 which was built from scratch for EVs.
Buying Ford and GM would also mean taking on the baggage of hundreds of billions in debt, pension obligations, employees with minimal experience in building batteries/drivetrains/EVs, a dealership network that doesn't want to sell EVs and the old guard that has no desire to innovate.
Tesla uses manufacturing methods no other OEM does (e.g. Giga-press casting machine for Model Y/3 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giga_Press). The facilities they are currently building are massive compared to Ford/GM's factories. They vertically integrate, soon going all the way down to cell manufacturing/lithium mining. Buying an incumbent OEM would end up a burden.
EVs are not something only some companies or people can do, they can be replicated by any car company at this moment, look EU companies, Renault and Volkswagen are already in top by selling electric cars across Europe. Also GM is working on EVs, their Electric Hummer maybe released soon as well
They have been saying that for years now. The electric Hummer will have its niche buyers. But in terms of specs, it is very lacking compared to Tesla's offerings.
Tesla has figured out how to manufacture EVs at scale with a ~20%+ gross margin. This will only go up as their numbers go up and they start producing their own 4680 cells. No other auto-maker has even tried to come up with their own cell chemistry. They still rely on suppliers like LG-Chem. Most automakers make single digit margins on ICE cars and lose money on EVs.
At this point, OEMs like GM and Ford are too far behind IMO. VW is probably the closest to Tesla right now. Their CEO recently said they are probably years behind.
Tesla sends its cars to Germany by ship right now (previously from US, now from China). It arrives once a quarter resulting in lumpy numbers. Once their Berlin gigafactory is operational next year, the numbers will climb significantly and costs will decline. They might also release a EU-only model, possibly a hatchback, built in Berlin.
The downtrend for Tesla is clear though, if you compare the quarterly sales.
I doubt the Tesla factory in Brandenburg will change that. Tesla would have to release a new, smaller model for the European market. Now that buyers have a choice, they apparently choose the smaller, cheaper models available.
Disagree, it's crap with all the phantom breaking. I rather drive a car equipped with Mobileye.
I think Tesla are good cars and the model 3 has a good value in its price range and provides the best package overall. The network is also a big advantage in some countries.
Why not support the android of driving assist, openpilot. It's nearly as good as Tesla's software, and it has a driver facing camera for behavior monitoring, which for whatever reason Tesla doesn't have.
UPD: will acquire Boeing as well