[SIZE=7]Tesla is now doomed. Here’s how its EV dream will soon come crashing down[/SIZE]
https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/tesla-is-dying-and-this-is-how-it-will-end/?amp
The consumer automobile game is devilishly tough. The dirty secret of the car making world is that the big brands only make around 6% margin on every car they sell. That’s a pathetic amount of profit when compared to other well-known brands like Nike, Apple, or Disney. Shoes, upscale electronics, and entertainment (as well as scores of other industries) all offer double the profit margins, faster production times, less regulation, and fewer unionized workforces. Building cars is dumb. Car companies make billions of dollars in profits because they sell so many cars, not because each car is so profitable. And therein lies the rub for Tesla.
[SIZE=6]WHY TESLA IS DOOMED[/SIZE]
The only way to be successful at car manufacturing is to do it at a very large scale. You have to sell hundreds of thousands, if not millions of cars per year to be stable. In 2018, Tesla shifted a total of 245,240 cars. The Model 3 also became the best-selling luxury automobile in United States. 2018 was a fantastic year for Tesla. It has also taken the company to the very brink of imploding.
Scaling up production lines and capacity is the activity that is killing Tesla, but scaling up further is the only thing that can save it. The company is at the low point of a “production valley” where becoming capable of building 300,000 cars has made them wildly unprofitable, but the only way to get to profit is to build even more capacity to enable it to make 700,000 – 1,000,000 cars. Tesla could potentially have, or raise, the billions needed to do this. It could, that is, if the company could concentrate on doing one thing at a time.
Tesla’s worst enemy is Elon Musk. The serial entrepreneur has an affliction that many serial entrepreneurs have: Shiny Thing Syndrome. Mr. Musk loves to chase after new challenges and novel projects. Tesla is currently producing 3 different cars, wall chargers, charging stations, electric semi-trucks, photovoltaic roofs, and spearheading autonomous technology. Throw in the odd flamethrower, underground tunnels, and a new insurance product (not to mention Space X), and you see a leader not focused on doing the hard work of pushing his company through a crisis of scale, but a man obsessed with moon-shots and new projects.