Elon Musk and Tesla swerve on the business model? Will they become suppliers for other brands?
Elon Musk wants to share (for a fee, the times when he spoke of open source) Tesla's technology: he started with columns and could soon be on autopilot. Meanwhile, Spain is sniffing for the construction of a second European gigafactory
When Elon Musk is driving, you never know where you'll end up (there are those who will malign that it's more unpredictable than Autopilot which has caused quite a few problems for the Group in the last period… ). But it is clear that something is moving and that sharp turns towards the electric car business model par excellence are on the way. Not only B2C, but also B2B.
ELON MUSK'S NEW TESLA
While everyone is waiting for the new models, the histrionic South African entrepreneur prepares a new line of business: the one that will make Tesla a supplier of technology to other manufacturers. In the USA, for example, it has just signed an agreement with Ford to allow customers of the Blue Oval to access over 12,000 Superchargers (the fast Tesla-branded columns) scattered between the United States and Canada.
The agreement provides that Tesla provides specific adapters for the Ford F-150 Lightning, Mustang Mach-E and E-Transit with CCS connectors. At the moment, in fact, the vehicles of the brand that made automotive history are not equipped with a NACS charging port: sifting through Ford's industrial plans, the situation will remain unchanged until 2025.
And in all likelihood Musk will sign other agreements with various manufacturers, useful not only to scrape together the necessary to extend his network of columns, but also to maintain it. Furthermore, according to the new course that Musk has decided to give in recent weeks, Tesla will not limit itself to sharing its hitherto exclusive columns, but also the technology that makes it unique.
NOT ONLY COLUMNS…
The owner of the most talked about electric car in the world has in fact said he is ready to license Autopilot and Full Self Driving (the latter in the beta test phase). Here too it is a win-win bet for the CEO, who needs not only money, which is never enough considering the investments in autonomous driving made so far (and the high number of accidents and complaints, as evidenced by the documents recently published in Germany : 2,400 complaints about sudden accelerations, more than 1,500 braking problems and 383 phantom stops related to false collision warnings), but also the possibility to train one's AI on a greater number of cars. In short, the more cars that are in circulation with its software, the more data Tesla will put in its belly: data useful for enhancing the autopilot programs, of course, but potentially also suitable for other commercial purposes…
WHEN MUSK TALKED ABOUT OPEN SOURCE
If you've been following Musk for some time, you'll probably remember that this isn't the first time the former startupper has offered the world to share his technologies. In 2014, he even proposed to offer the key elements of Tesla technology in an "open source" mode, i.e. without gain for anyone. But it is clear that the new initiative will be paid for and that certain outbursts of generosity belong to a bygone era.
NEW TESLA GIGAFACTORY IN EUROPE?
According to the business daily Cinco Días , Tesla is negotiating with the Generalitat Valenciana to build an assembly plant in the capital's metropolitan area. The masthead even reports the signing of a confidentiality agreement.
It would be a pleasure and an honor
For you the doors of my ministry are always open. https://t.co/LYZSU6iXjK— Matteo Salvini (@matteosalvinimi) November 19, 2022
If this were the case, the Spaniards would have cheated the French on time (in pole position, according to analysts, to obtain the second European gigafactory after the one on the outskirts of Berlin) but also the Italians (remember the tweets of mutual appreciation between the infrastructure minister, Matteo Salvini and Musk, beyond which, however, we never went).
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/elon-musk-e-tesla-sterzano-sul-business-model-diventeranno-fornitori-per-altri-marchi/ on Fri, 09 Jun 2023 06:19:24 +0000.