Given Musk's legal jujutsu w/ SpaceX and ULA I think Tesla is much less susceptible to similar issues.
It's just anecdotal evidence but it seems like Telsa has plenty of momentum and real tangible products.
It's just anecdotal evidence but it seems like Telsa has plenty of momentum and real tangible products.
That's the biggest difference.
Toyota, Honda, BMW, Daimler, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Nissan, Mazda - the combination of those companies effectively neutered the old GM / Ford political monster. It sucked the money out of the old Detroit political machine, making it far less fearsome and influential in DC.
The GM / Ford that Musk is facing off against, is a joke compared to what it used to be able to bring to the table in terms of abusing the system to stop competition.
I suspect Ford could as well but their leadership isn't as willing to change direction as GMs does.
If I want to buy a reliable, high-quality car that I know is going to last 10 years and not have the interior plastics all looking nasty and faded and falling apart after a mere half-decade, GM is one of the last brands I'd think of. No one thinks that Cadillacs are serious competition to real luxury cars like Mercedes.
I think Tesla would do much better partnering with a Japanese automaker. They know how to build high-quality cars in high volume, and they have great reputations too, which is important if you're trying to sell $100k cars.
From the armchair.
What record is that? Musk has shown he's willing to sell his companies in the past. Between starting PayPal and selling to Ebay was only 3 years.
He owns less than 30% of tesla. So if another company wants to take it over, he may not have a choice.
I could see Ford merging with Tesla in a few years after Elon isn't running the day to day and is just on the board of Tesla (and running space x) vs ceo of both
In terms of Elon's long term goals, I think a merger and revitalization of Ford would win him huge political points which he can then use for cutting through red tape for SpaceX.
You must be thinking that Ford would help with "scaling expertise" and whatnot, but Tesla doesn't need to be acquired to do that. It just needs to hire a few good people to set that up. Also, I think Elon Musk even said in a recent interview that Tesla's cars use like 5% of the components of other cars. Musk prefers to "rethink" everything from scratch, and he has done the same with SpaceX.
In that context, Ford would be more of a hindrance, and not in any way helpful. What Tesla needs most is resources, so it can build its new models faster, hire workers faster, pay them more, install 10x more superchargers, start building 2 more gigafactories (which it will probably need by the time they are finished) and so on. It can't do all of that right now because it requires tens of billions of dollars, which it doesn't have.
I'd much rather see Apple acquire Tesla in 10 years. Then Tesla would have all the resources it needs to accelerate the growth of its car sales, infrastructure, and the Tesla Energy business.
If Elon stays as CEO of Apple after Tim Cook, even better, because he'd probably actually use Apple's cash reserves instead of keeping them in the bank.