OK what if these things is the wrong direction?
- Gigacastings
- Structural battery packs
- 4680 cell production
- Cathode plant
- Lithium refinery
- Plaid Model S/X
- Cybertruck
- Semi
- Refreshed Model 3
- Model Y
- Gen3 unboxed production method
- Megapack
- FSD
- Master Plan 3
- Starting to advertise
Elon's politics may have changed, but I have not noticed any change in his engineering ability.
The biggest mistake made is after the Y not bringing new models to market as quickly as possible.
You can’t take a big chunk of the 80 million vehicles sold every year with two models.
A more “conventional” looking truck would have got similar reservations as the cybertruck and could have been available a year or two before the cybertruck.
In parallel a smaller cheaper vehicle should have been designed and be available now.
(Elon didn’t even want to make it because he went all in on robotaxi and franz had to convince him to use the same platform)
The next mistake was not continuing to increase production of existing battery’s whilst the 4680s are being developed.
I watched battery day and didn’t understand half the technical content but I thought what’s the plan in case this doesn’t work or takes longer to mass produce?
Turns out they didn’t have a plan for this scenario.
As a result we now have at least a year, if not three years of flat or small growth in overall sales.
The existing lineups sales are not helped by many factors some of which are under the companies control.
You mention advertising, many people have been pleading for this for a long time, the leader made this decision late. Targeted advertising should have started before as soon as management knew inventories are increasing.
Another factor is doing silly things to existing models.
Like getting rid of the rear view camera and not having an adequate replacement in place.
Or getting rid of stalks. Before they did this nobody thought I won’t buy a Tesla if it has stalks. After this was done for x number people this is a deal breaker.
All these sorts of decisions result in less sales and right now every sale is needed.
The final area which is a major weakness is repairs and not increasing the number of service centres to take into account the increase in the overall vehicles and the number of vehicles out of warranty that need timely repairs.
Right now these can be expensive and time consuming.
Millions of people outside the US drive vehicles that are more than 10 years old. If Tesla’s have a reputation for expensive, time consuming repairs ( never mind the possibility of buying a car where the battery fails the day after) then second hand values will be much lower resulting in more people being unwilling to buy newer cars, dealers not buying used Tesla’s etc.
This will have a knock on effect on new sales if as well as the normal depreciation another large hit occurs to one outside warranty.
When Hertz made the announcement I remembered the story of a European taxi company getting rid of it’s Tesla’s because Tesla’s service was rubbish and I wondered if it had improved and could handle the numbers hertz would buy.
Turns out it hadn’t.
The result is no more large fleet buys, a fire sale which is great for people who get a bargain but not for Tesla which loses sales overall.
The bigger problem I see that Elon is good at long shots and start ups but when a company is a mixture of multiple start ups and a mature company, the aspects of mature company management isn’t as good.
Like he found top notch engineers for spacex and Franz for Tesla he needs to find people who can run the bread and butter of a company selling millions of vehicles a year and in time having tens of millions of vehicles on the road.
He also has a habit of unrealistic timetables and announcing products before they are ready. I notice the solar roof and the roadster aren’t on the list.
As for everything else mentioned that’s great but the problem is it’s not available right now in sufficient quantities to increase sales and profits.
Just because someone has done great in the past does not mean they will continue to do well in the future or they they are infallible which is why the board needs some truly independent people who can give Elon advice, like spacex has Gwynne Shotwell.