Tesla Is Not a ‘Real’ Car Company, Toyota President Says
forbes.com
forbes.com
I don't think the kitchen/chef analogy is questioning if Tesla can make a car. He's questioning if the company can scale to compete in all markets Toyota currently dominates.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gigafactory+tex...
Tesla reported $14.5 billion in cash on hand in Q3 2020. More factories are coming :)
In the meanwhile, Toyota has no EVs, no FSD software business, no network of EV chargers, no solar panel business, no energy storage business, no insurance business. It faces serious disruption and their statement is actually an act of desperation. It takes years to pivot in the auto industry, and they are many years behind.
They don't have a network of EV chargers because they implemented the industry standard, so their EVs can charge at any charging station except Tesla's.
Tesla doesn't have much of a solar panel business either; SolarCity went from being the world-leader to one of the smallest non-regional solar panel businesses in the country.
No other automaker has an insurance business. This is because it's not a competitive advantage to have an insurance business. The reason Tesla has one is because their cars are so expensive to insure due to parts shortages and labor costs that their cars would be prohibitively expensive to insure if they didn't step in as insurer of last resort.
And probably most importantly, as many industry observers have noted: Tesla's market position is extremely fragile. Now that they have actual competition in Europe, Tesla is no longer dominating EV sales. It's pretty much being kept alive solely because the big U.S. automakers are keeping it alive so they can buy clean car credits from it. (Tesla has never come close to posting a quarterly or annual profit with selling these credits.)
You'd think that executives at established companies are well versed in "politics" and communication, and have learned that disparaging a new entrant has the opposite effect. Time and time again, you witness they haven't grasped that all it communicates is fear and, for the new entrant, this is as sweet as the scent of fresh coffee in the morning.
The question is, why would any of us long-term TSLA investors trust that? We simply see these articles as mere attempts to scam people out of their shares. The legacy media is not saying this stuff for the benefit of retail investors. We know what an S-curve is...
I think Toyota will always lag Tesla, because of the batteries. Either Toyota invent their own and build a plant, which will cost billions. Or they use Tesla batteries. Either way Tesla is ahead.
Two swings and misses in one statement.
It is true that a big breakthrough could occur in solid state batteries to close the gap or leapfrog Tesla's plans, but it may turn into the various RAM alternatives like MRAM and the like: they just couldn't compete with a constantly improving technology with billions behind it making steady incremental improvement.
That may still not justify their high valuation, but a valuation based only on their auto portfolio is going to miss a large amount of what goes into expectations.