As Tesla car sales faltered, Musk delivered an optimistic pivot: Tesla isn’t a car company.
This is a decent summary of the earnings call. The car sales were down and boring. Elon didn’t like talking about those. Instead, the bulk of the earnings call was on Robotaxis, AI, and Optimus (bipedal robot).
Yes, a throwaway line on Model 2 was also mentioned, but its unclear what the specific plans for that are. Cybertruck and Tesla Semi were also discussed, but not Roadster.
Did they ever have a big technology advantage in batteries? I was under the impression that while they package them a lot like the cells itself are coming from other companies like Panasonic. And I don’t think they ever had an advantage in quality of car parts.
They might have had (or still have) an advantage in software, but there they are not just competing with other car manufacturers, but also apple and Google.
And as far as self driving goes, there they imo don’t seem to have ever had a real lead. They only overpromised. Google with waymo or Mercedes among others are as far, if not further along in this regard.
Imo they have/had three distinctive advantages:
First mover advantage. Simple as that, they were the first to fully commit. But by now that doesn’t count for anything anymore.
No burdens in terms of legacy ICE business. This imo is the big difference that allowed them to rise in the first place. Just as kodak in the past didn’t go ahead with digital cameras, the established car manufacturers didn’t want to eat into their own lucrative sales and what they already have. If they wanted to I am certain that the likes of VW or BMW (or anyone else really) could have made the same or better EVs than tesla at the time.
Their charging network. That’s currently what imo still makes all the difference. Question is whether this can be maintained or eventually will go away. I am betting (and hoping) that eventually charging will be fully vendor agnostic (and without subscriptions and other shenanigans).