> Is Telsa much better for its reinventing the car from first-principles? Not really, it was for a bit, but the vertical integration has so far borne out fairly low quality cars relative to their price.

And yet, Tesla makes like 10x the profit of German car makers per vehicle sold [1].

The established car makers still, over a decade after the first Tesla rolled on the streets, haven't come close to realizing just how screwed they are... the biggest threat to Tesla isn't the established car makers, it's Chinese BYD.

Don't get me wrong: Musk is despicable as a person. But those working under him have truly created awesome things.

[1] https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/elon-musks-guerilla-taktik...