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... See more
History is littered with examples of incumbent leaders who do not adapt to shifts in innovation from its competitors. Nokia’s failure to respond to Apple’s smart phone technology is an example.
Tesla doesn’t want to limit the scale of battery manufacturing to the number of cars it can produce. So Tesla is selling its batteries to other car manufacturers. This is pretty astonishing. Tesla has developed a material technology advantage over its direct competitors. Rather than using that to differentiate its product, Tesla is selling that... See more
We estimate now (April 2022) they have over 5 billion miles of data – up from 3 billion miles in April 2020. 1.5 million+ vehicles on the road today collecting data. By end of year 2022, we expect this to increase to 3 million. 1 00,000+ FSD Beta testers on road today. Competitors: Comma AI (50 million+ mi), Waymo (20 million+), Cruise (2... See more
Jobs showed all of the other major smartphones in the industry to the audience, and in hindsight their cluttered, fixed, physical keys have not aged well.
Resiliency is DERs killer app. I’d like to do a study of how much search traffic from users asking “how can I install a battery in my house?” spikes after wildfires in CA, hurricanes in NY, or big freezes in Texas once again knock out the power grid. This is a now universal problem and overtime, resiliency benefits will lead to more and more users... See more
Adjusted for inflation, the cost of owning and operating a new vehicle hasn’t budged since the Model T rolled off the first assembly line in 1934: $0.70 per mile.