Tesla Is Not A Car Company — Kyle Samani

ARK believes that the companies owning the autonomous technology stack and successful electric vehicle platforms will capitalize disproportionately on the economic benefits.

Tesla’s cell constraints are likely to continue over the medium term. Because its most profitable use of cells is likely to be in electric vehicles, we do not expect Tesla’s energy storage business to drive enterprise value meaningfully during the next five years.

Over time, the Gigafactory will grow and hopefully fulfill Elon Musk’s dream: achieving complete vertical integration for all Tesla products.

The future success of Tesla doesn’t depend so much on their products but rather on one thing: the Tesla Gigafactory.

Tesla has an in-house construction unit building out its factories. This enables a radically new and optimized manufacturing process. Historical analogy: Amazon built its own distribution centers to reinvent e -commerce logistics.

In subsequent years Tesla has broadly followed through on this plan, with the introduction of the “sporty four-door” Model S in 2012 and the Model 3 in 2017 (though even the cheapest Tesla model, at about $40,000, cannot yet be described as affordable). It has become the world’s leading maker of electric cars, and in July 2020 it overtook Toyota to

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Since 2017, Tesla’s capital expenditure per incremental unit of capacity has improved from ~$84,000, when the Model 3 was ramping, to ~$7,700. While these improvements indicate that Tesla could continue to increase margins, the more important takeaway is that capital no longer is a bottleneck limiting its growth. Instead, Tesla should be able to gr... See more