Elon uses long-term thinking but unfortunately our economic system tends to favour short-term returns. In my mind there is a huge difference between Tesla losing money versus Twitter losing money - But to an economist, it's the same kind of beast.
Elon uses long-term thinking but unfortunately our economic system tends to favour short-term returns. In my mind there is a huge difference between Tesla losing money versus Twitter losing money - But to an economist, it's the same kind of beast.
Tesla makes good cars with very low reliability and I see it as conscious choice. They add performance features and cool factors at the cost of reliability. Bigger car makers could have done the same but they protect their brand and bottom line. Tesla can't continue like this when production numbers ramp up.
Tesla: Growing rapidly, huge customer interest & pre-orders, positive margin on product, easy to see that it may grow big enough to overcome fixed costs.
Twitter: Not growing rapidly, hard to see that they'll become profitable without cutting out a lot of expenses.
Not at all the same kind of beast.
Twitter revenue is growing very rapidly, just like Tesla's: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ATWTR&fstype=ii&hl=en...
Economically speaking, they're very similar.
Twitter revenue is growing much slower than Tesla's, especially if you take into account the pre-orders for Model 3.
I agree that some economists/financial people see it the way you describe. That's not the only point of view out there.
Their reputation has also taken a heavy hit after investigations into their autopilot discovered major issues with it, and it was deemed unsuitable for even testing (For example, it will always stay behind the car ahead of you if it can’t find lane markings – even if the car ahead of you switches lanes, but you can’t switch lanes because the lane besides you is occupied – the car will crash).
Long-term, it looks as if the traditional car makers will win again.
Objectively they absolutely are.
Did they invent any new batteries? No. That IP belongs to Panasonic.
Did they invent any new technology for electric motors, or any gear technology, or even chargers? No, there are even older, and better, and more widely deployed supercharger standards, and they are doing nothing unusual regarding the rest.
Does Tesla do anything new regarding self-driving cars? No, the teams from Sony and VW, Here, Google, etc are all further ahead, and every competitor has more reliable lane assist technology already in production.
So what is it where Tesla is doing something new? What did they invent, or create?