<story><title>To Understand the Future of Tesla, Look to the History of GM</title><url>https://hbr.org/2018/04/to-understand-the-future-of-tesla-look-to-the-history-of-gm</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>thewopr</author><text>I am a huge Tesla fan (and Elon fan). I own stock (shortly after IPO). I have a model 3 reservation. I have been singing their praises for a long time. Elon is an incredible visionary and probably an incredible engineer. This is a great combination for making the impossible possible.&lt;p&gt;And I totally agree with this article. If not a new CEO, Tesla needs a good COO. They need excellent, consistent execution, not novel, groundbreaking execution. They have 100&amp;#x27;s of thousands of reservations for the 3 (and I don&amp;#x27;t know how many powerwall and solar roof reservations). If they can just execute on this, the world is theirs. But if they continue to have delays and major, public mistakes like the model 3 ramp, my stock purchase may have been a poor choice.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>martythemaniak</author><text>There will come a time when Musk needs to step away from Tesla, but that  day is not today. He&amp;#x27;s publicly mused about stepping away (SpaceX is his real fav), but had his tenure renewed recently.&lt;p&gt;If all Tesla did was sell pretty good cars, they&amp;#x27;d probably get crushed by the incumbents. Tesla, is selling way more than that - they&amp;#x27;re selling the idea of a brighter, better future. You&amp;#x27;re not just buying an EV, but you&amp;#x27;re helping climate change, you&amp;#x27;re reducing pollution, you&amp;#x27;ll be reducing human death and suffering and ending traffic jams and hey - it all comes in a exclusive, technologically-advanced, aesthetically pleasing package.&lt;p&gt;Now, some might object that this is largely a bunch of marketing&amp;#x2F;PR bullshit, and you will likely be technically correct, but would still miss the point. If people wanted a nice, efficient EV, they&amp;#x27;d buy the Bolt, which by all accounts, is pretty damn good. But Tesla sells this &amp;quot;bullshit&amp;quot; because it&amp;#x27;s what people actually want to buy, and EVs happen to be the delivery vehicle. So as much as you might dislike this &amp;quot;bullshit&amp;quot;, it&amp;#x27;s a core reason why Tesla even exists in 2018.&lt;p&gt;Where does Musk fit into this? He happens to be the personification of this idea today. In the popular mind he is &amp;quot;cool&amp;quot; so when you buy a Tesla, you&amp;#x27;re also implicitly buying part of this cool, much like buying an iPhone back in the day got you a part of Jobs&amp;#x27; cool. Eventually Tesla will become it&amp;#x27;s own thing (as Apple is today) and outgrow Musk, but that&amp;#x27;s still years away.&lt;p&gt;OTOH, if you want to know what&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;actually&lt;/i&gt; going on at Tesla and what they need, this will probably give you the best idea out of any material on the internet:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=CpCrkO1x-Qo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=CpCrkO1x-Qo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s an in-depth interview with a guy who owns a consultancy which disassembles, analyses and sells reports on vehicles, both for manufacturers looking for research on their competitors and at improving their own products. His findings are extremely interesting - he&amp;#x27;s downright astounded at how incredible parts of the car are (battery, electronics) and thinks established companies should be quacking in their boots. OTOH, he thinks they&amp;#x27;ve made a number of blunders in other parts, such as their production line design or parts of the car (for example, he thinks the body is 20-25% heavier than it needs to be, with parts that serve no discernable purpose)</text></comment>
<story><title>To Understand the Future of Tesla, Look to the History of GM</title><url>https://hbr.org/2018/04/to-understand-the-future-of-tesla-look-to-the-history-of-gm</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>thewopr</author><text>I am a huge Tesla fan (and Elon fan). I own stock (shortly after IPO). I have a model 3 reservation. I have been singing their praises for a long time. Elon is an incredible visionary and probably an incredible engineer. This is a great combination for making the impossible possible.&lt;p&gt;And I totally agree with this article. If not a new CEO, Tesla needs a good COO. They need excellent, consistent execution, not novel, groundbreaking execution. They have 100&amp;#x27;s of thousands of reservations for the 3 (and I don&amp;#x27;t know how many powerwall and solar roof reservations). If they can just execute on this, the world is theirs. But if they continue to have delays and major, public mistakes like the model 3 ramp, my stock purchase may have been a poor choice.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>carlivar</author><text>They only have delays from their CEO&amp;#x27;s promises. Had he set expectations more realistically the stock might not be such a roller coaster and deposit holders would have had more accurate estimates.&lt;p&gt;If you eliminate every time table Musk has said and evaluate Tesla only what they&amp;#x27;ve done so far, which is a simple Model 3 ramp up from  scratch, perhaps they look more impressive.</text></comment>