Automotive

patrick_y
[PuristSPro Moderator]
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Tesla is not selling well in Europe indeed. And all of this doesn't matter...

I don't want to get into the politics part nor sound like a conspiracy theorist - but there is a lot of irrationality on all sides. There are also politically-motivated groups whom are intentionally damaging Elon Musk, pandering to simple thinkers and portraying him as something he is not on social media - making accusations with little evidence. And not to sound terribly conspiracy theorist, some of those groups have even tried to partner with car companies competitive to Tesla.
I am not a big Elon Musk fan, but he is being falsely accused of many things in Europe and across the world. And surprisingly, social media has made many people very shallow thinkers. If they thought slightly more deeply, they would probably realize that many of the accusations against Musk fail under any logical scrutiny. But all of this doesn't matter. You know why? Chinese cars will soon dominate the landscape. VW Group, BMW Group, Mercedes-Benz Group will all become slowly weakened by the Chinese car brands, and eventually large percentages of shares of these groups will be bought by Chinese banks and Chinese car companies - some possibly becoming subsidiaries of Chinese car brands.
Some people have said that the European car companies will follow the Swiss watch company trajectories in the 1970s and 1980s - that trajectory is shifting from a practical tool object to a luxury status object. Those people have a cool opinion, but they don't likely have any true experience in the car industry; that doesn't work in the car industry. The analogy doesn't work in real life. In order to make a great car, there's billions of Euros required in R&D. There's trickle down and trick up economics. Rolls Royce is a great machine today because it has access to BMW's suppliers, resources, and technology. But, back when RR and Bentley were tiny producers, making cars on their own, they made a beautiful cars that drove very poorly. And they made 1200 cars in a good year. Today, those brands make 20,000 cars a year, having real scale. In other words, you need tremendous scale, technology partners, and a huge R&D budget to create a good car with its own platform.
Having worked in the automotive space, there's a lot of noise out there, a lot of theories. Either way, the future looks rough.
Musk is one of the many executives who realize the writing is on the wall for the car industry - the big picture guys all see the Chinese dominance scenario. But few executives are making drastic changes to keep their firms relevant in the next generation, as few are invested to the same extent Musk is. Musk is slightly younger and he owns a higher percentage of a car company than almost any other executive. Thus, Musk is stuck in this business for the long-haul; whereas the other executives are already near retirement. Musk wants to pivot his Tesla company into something else, into an AI/Robotics/Robotaxi firm - who knows if he will be successful. Nobody can say this is right or wrong - too early to tell. I would say that the other Western car firms might not be pivoting fast enough. The Western car firms are still trying to figure out how to cut costs - when they need to be thinking about new products.