Elon Musk Tells Tesla Willing to Buy Idle GM Plants

Maybe he could leverage it the other way. He could say that Tesla is willing to save the factory but the evil GM, who previously saw no value in the factory and was going to close it, now wants an outrageous price. Tesla should be able to get it for a fire sale price.

I don't think GM would take that risk. They would draw the ire of the largest private-sector union in Canada and also the provincial and federal governments. They have 2 factories in Canada that don't have closures announced and sell cars here so they can't have a PR disaster like that.

My guess is they will sell them the battery they develop for their car.

Having recently been in the market, to choose between these two, I don't believe that the Jaguar is clear-cut the better car. Disclosure, I chose the Tesla Model S!

The Jaguar does have advantages. The Matrix headlamps are awesome, it has a heads up display, the interior _is_ nicer, and IMO, it looks like the ant's pants!

However, the Tesla is faster (at least the Model S), and the P100D of either the X or S blows it out of the water. The Model S has a longer range, more space in the back, both for passengers and luggage. The X has _even more_ space, and the Tesla has a nicer screen, with better software. The adaptive cruise, and lane keeping features also work better IMO.

However the three big winning points for the Tesla: 1. Charge time: The Tesla can just charge faster, and it uses a lot less energy per km (or mile), so you end up needing to charge it less often, and when you do charge it, it can charge faster. 2. OTA software and map updates. This is just an awesome feature, particularly the map updates! They are just pushed to your car, no need to get it serviced to get the new maps, which also means that your maps tend to be more up to date. 3. This one is probably temporary, but still important for now: The Charging Network. The Tesla superchargers are in a lot more places than CCS-2 100kW chargers, which makes the Tesla more convenient for longer road trips.

If you _never_ do long trips, then 1 and 3 won't make any difference to you, since they both have enough energy for most people for day to day running, particularly if you have a charging pole at your work and/or home.

So, as I said, it's not clear cut which is better, since different needs could tip the above scales different ways. Which is just great IMO, since real competition is the only way forward.

> How will Tesla be competitive with the Mercedes, BMW, Audi, VW, Porsche, Lexus, etc. electric cars coming out in the next few years? It may not be a good idea for Tesla to buy more plants. Maybe they should look for a buy out.

That all depends on how successful the continued ramp-up of Model 3 is, and how fast they can ramp up Model Y.

Once the production line for those two are running smoothly, I'm sure they can continue to bring the price down, and I'm sure they'll stay ahead of the others in this regard. I think the heavy focus on automation was a mistake in the short term, but they'll still gain from it in the long term once they've de-automated the things that don't make sense. Trying for something hard like that always leaves you with some new innovative methods that actually work.

Once they have one truly mass-producing production line, they're safe as far as I'm concerned. Once the bring-up and capital costs of it starts to be written down, they can at least make a couple of model just as cost-effectively as other manufacturers.

Once the Model 3/Y is stable I'm sure they'll bring some of the development in battery cells/packs back to the S/X. Perhaps the motor as well. If they came out with a new model right now I'm sure it'd be cheaper and more profitable than the Jaguar I-Pace. But that's not their focus atm.

There's still some uncertainty for Tesla ahead, but I think they're over the worst of it. There's good reasons to be optimistic.

The I-pace is smaller than the model Y is rumored to be, let alone the X. Different market, different prices.

The only real competition for Tesla right now is BYD and maybe Nissan. Everything else has essentially vaporware until they get to version 2 production models and it is questionable if they will find sufficient takers for their version 1s Tesla BYD and Nissan will have mature products by then. This is exactly why Tesla is trying to ramp up so fast. The complexity of optimizing battery discharge and cooling in a wide variety of environments is a very real moat these companies have.

The American companies have good talented software engineers that can convert any engineering or social competition in to -who got better software engineering talent and win. With all hardware being same or even better, how will they are going to compete on autopilot, over the air update and upgrades etc ? Ultimately user will be going to decide on user experience which Tesla no doubt winning right now.

Any yet, few carriage makers made the transition to automobiles successfully (Buick was one that did.) Being able to make the body is one thing, being able to make a very different drive train is something else.

Jaguar I-Pace both infotainment center and climate control screens have trouble keeping up and drop frames during animations. Stuttering UI in almost 100K car.

>How will Tesla be competitive with the Mercedes, BMW, Audi, VW, Porsche, Lexus, etc. electric cars coming out in the next few years? It may not be a good idea for Tesla to buy more plants. Maybe they should look for a buy out.

It is clear that the market for EV's is going to explode, and so there will be plenty of room for Tesla plus various competitors. I think the real questions are which new companies will be in the new market, and which of the incumbents will make the transition and which will fail.