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Tesla Goes to China

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This speculation about the Chinese being able to build a knock- off; I am having a hard time wrapping my head around it. A lot of what makes a Tesla a Tesla is the engineering. You can't half ass it and expect to come up with something that's a quarter as good. I would think that skimping on the charging/cooling system alone would cause some major issues with fires a la Boeing.

I could see the design being replicated, but not much of the engineering. Even if they did manage to get something half decent, does this not technically follow Elon's desire to see mass production of EV's?
 
@DanaHull - excellent piece, most interested in this part:

"Kingston Chang, who worked at Bentley China for a decade, joined Tesla in March as its general manager for China. "Mr. Chang will help Tesla navigate its entrance into the Asian market," said analyst Andrea James of Dougherty & Company in a recent research note. "Global demand is robust."

Did you get any indication of what Mr. Chang's prior approach was for Bentley? Did Bentley also have showrooms or use third-party dealerships? What was Bentley's/his strategy to penetrate the market in China... would be interesting to hear more about his past at Bentley, don't know if you got a chance to interview him but thought it would add some more insight into how he'll approach his role at Tesla.

Any additional insight you could share?
 
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@DanaHull - excellent piece, most interested in this part:

"Kingston Chang, who worked at Bentley China for a decade, joined Tesla in March as its general manager for China. "Mr. Chang will help Tesla navigate its entrance into the Asian market," said analyst Andrea James of Dougherty & Company in a recent research note. "Global demand is robust."

Did you get any indication of what Mr. Chang's prior approach was for Bentley? Did Bentley also have showrooms or use third-party dealerships? What was Bentley's/his strategy to penetrate the market in China... would be interesting to hear more about his past at Bentley, don't know if you got a chance to interview him but thought it would add some more insight into how he'll approach his role at Tesla.

Any additional insight you could share?

Good questions, I am interested in the answers as well.

Cheers mate.
 
good question. I think it would be hard for the Chinese to replicate the IP as well, particularly the power train. Was just interested that analyst Theo O'Neill had concerns about that....

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Hi there - I sent Kingston a message via LinkedIn but did not hear back from him. I think that Bentley had showrooms
 
Thank you Dana for the articles. I will follow Tesla development in China closely. Anyone has a clear date when the store will be open?

Here is Tesla store in the shopping plaza floor plan. See "20-Tesla".

It would be great if anyone can visit there and take a photo to report the latest?



PVG | About | Floor Plans-L1


PVG_FloorGuide_OP2_L1_01.jpg

View attachment 28001
 
What I found in a visit to Shenzhen, near Canton, the home of much of the pirate goods sales (there is huge multilevel mall full of stores selling pirated goods of all sorts of different levels of quality right next to the main train station from Hong Kong), is that truly high tech goods are not being pirated. For example, the "iphones" that are for sale were pretty cheesy imitations. On the other hand, the purses and suitcases, and even eyeglasses were of very high quality. I went to a building not near the train station which sold hi-fi equipment, mostly tube and all were genuine German or American equipment at prices comparable to those in the US. Those were for domestic consumption - the local wealthy people can tell the difference and have the money to pay. My guess is that Tesla will not have much problem with reverse engineering and copying. What may happen is that the Chinese develop cars similar to Tesla and eventually export them. However, this has not happened with Toyota, which does a lot of manufacturing in China. I am thinking of what has happened in Korea with Hyundai making a high end car that undersells the Japanese and European models it competes with. Customers can make a choice.
 
So this guy has apparently thought out a get rich quick scam on Tesla. Kinda like the iPad thing in China a few years ago.

I say, re-badge the car there "Feldercarp", sell it, wait til his trademark runs out (apparently a three year thing in China) and re-apply. No way this dude should see any of Elon's ingenuity on such a pitiful scam.
 
I say, re-badge the car there "Feldercarp", sell it, wait til his trademark runs out (apparently a three year thing in China) and re-apply. No way this dude should see any of Elon's ingenuity on such a pitiful scam.
Urban Dictionary: Feldercarb
An expletive used by the characters of Battlestar Galactica that refers to the putrid and crusty black grime that would accumulate on various pieces of machinery and required scraping off during maintenance. Possibly Battlestar-speak for bullshit.

Rather than associate yourself with an expletive, perhaps something simple like "Nikola Motors".
 
Thank you Dana for the articles. I will follow Tesla development in China closely. Anyone has a clear date when the store will be open?

Here is Tesla store in the shopping plaza floor plan. See "20-Tesla".

It would be great if anyone can visit there and take a photo to report the latest?

I'll be in Beijing for four days in the latter part of September. I'll check it out.
 
So, Tesla is now officially "拓速乐" instead of "特斯拉"!

The only problem is it feels like a soda name, the last character '乐' is the same '乐' as in Coca cola! See the same 'La' in the end?
Then you have 百事可'乐' for Pepsi! All soda name in china has the '乐' in the end.

Even more so, the '
乐' covers almost all recreational drink and food:

太太乐 (wife joy): Ì«Ì«ÀÖ
(Kitchen joy): ä¹￾厨食å“￾(深圳)有é™￾å…¬å￾¸
...
100 more of these
...


Man, I feel the '
乐' is really cheap. How can someone come up such a name for Tesla? The more I write this, I more I feel the whole name is bad taste. My association is

拓速 -> Toys. or Sneakers
乐 -> food

They got to come up with something more prestigious!




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At the minimum, they should drop the '乐'. Even the vanilla '拉‘is better than the soda '乐'.
 
The only problem is it feels like a soda name, the last character '乐' is the same '乐' as in Coca cola! See the same 'La' in the end?
Then you have 百事可'乐' for Pepsi! All soda name in china has the '乐' in the end.

Even more so, the '
乐' covers almost all recreational drink and food:

太太乐 (wife joy): Ì«Ì«ÀÖ
(Kitchen joy): ä¹￾厨食å“￾(深圳)有é™￾å…¬å￾¸
...
100 more of these
...


Man, I feel the '
乐' is really cheap. How can someone come up such a name for Tesla? The more I write this, I more I feel the whole name is bad taste. My association is

拓速 -> Toys. or Sneakers
乐 -> food

They got to come up with something more prestigious!




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At the minimum, they should drop the '乐'. Even the vanilla '拉‘is better than the soda '乐'.

I find the new name perfectly acceptable - except that they seem to have registered "拓速乐汽车" which literally means Tesla Gasoline Car. Electric cars are "电动车" so I don't know if this was just wrongly reported by media or for real.

Anyhow, using 拉 instead of 乐 in the new name is probably not very good.

It can easily be extended to become
垃圾 which means garbage or rubbish.

I like the new name - sounds to me like "Building up speed to happiness"