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Musk Confirms Record Tesla Sales, Provides Exec Updates
SEP 7 2018 BY ERIC LOVEDAY 124
In his own words, even the mighty Ford Model T is no match for the Model 3 sales ramp, says Musk.
In a wide-ranging congratulatory email sent to Tesla employees, CEO Elon Musk confirmed record sales for Tesla and provided a rundown of executive changes underway.
More Model 3 Sales New
Some highlights include:
- We are about to have the most amazing quarter in our history, building and delivering more than twice as many cars as we did last quarter.
- We also have the most exciting new product lineup of any company in the world. There is the Model Y, the Tesla (pickup) Truck, the Semi and the new Roadster.
But really, the main point here is the sales ramp, not only of the Model 3, but the S and X, too. Of which, Musk previously Tweeted:
Tesla 1st, 2nd & 3rd in August sales https://t.co/npDKC9QEpP
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 6, 2018
Here’s the email in its entirety:
Company Update
September 7, 2018
The following email was just sent to Tesla employees:
First, I’d like to thank you for your incredible efforts and contribution as we enter the final few weeks of this quarter. This is a very exciting time for Tesla, to say the least, and you are the reason for the tremendous progress we’ve made in a relatively short period of time. It is easy to forget that our company was almost unknown 10 years ago and didn’t even exist until after the start of the 21st century!
We are about to have the most amazing quarter in our history, building and delivering more than twice as many cars as we did last quarter. For a while, there will be a lot of fuss and noise in the media. Just ignore them. Results are what matter and we are creating the most mind-blowing growth in the history of the automotive industry. Even the Ford Model T, which held the world record for the fastest growing car in history, didn’t grow as fast in sales or production as the Model 3.
Moreover, we also have the most exciting new product lineup of any company in the world. There is the Model Y, the Tesla (pickup) Truck, the Semi and the new Roadster. Then there is the Solar Roof, which is spooling up in production, and continued advancements in Powerwall and Powerpack. And that’s just what people know about …
To help achieve our goals, after discussing this in-depth with the Tesla board of directors and executive staff over the past several weeks, I am excited to announce a number of management changes:
Jerome Guillen has been promoted to President, Automotive, reporting directly to me. In his new role, Jerome will oversee all automotive operations and program management, as well as coordinate our extensive automotive supply chain. Jerome has made major contributions and acquired deep knowledge of Tesla’s operations over the past eight years at our company, from being the first Model S Program Manager to managing all vehicle programs, then all vehicle engineering and worldwide sales & service. Recently, Jerome played a critical role in ramping Model 3 production, leading what almost all thought was impossible: creation of an entire high-volume General Assembly line for Model 3 in a matter of weeks. Before coming to Tesla, Jerome was responsible for creating and running the most successful semi truck program in history at Daimler’s Freightliner division.
Kevin Kassekert has been promoted to VP of People and Places, with responsibility for Human Resources, Facilities, Construction, and Infrastructure Development. Kevin has been with Tesla for 6 years and was previously VP, Infrastructure Development. Kevin led the construction and development of our Gigafactory in Nevada, turning what was a pile of rocks in the Sierra Nevada mountains into a factory employing 12 thousand people with greater output than the entire rest of the world’s battery factories combined, in roughly three years. That is insanely badass. Prior to joining Tesla, Kevin engineered and built multi-billion dollar production plants in the semiconductor industry. As many of you know, Tesla’s Chief People Officer Gaby Toledano has been on leave for a few months to spend more time with her family and has decided to continue doing so for personal reasons. She’s been amazing and I’m very grateful for everything she’s done for Tesla.
Chris Lister joined Tesla last year and was key to solving our production problems at the Gigafactory and ramping Model 3 production. He is being promoted to VP, Gigafactory Operations. In this role, he leads our production and manufacturing engineering at Giga. Before Tesla, Chris ran several ultra high volume factories at PepsiCo.
Felicia Mayo, Sr. HR Director and head of our Diversity and Inclusion program, has been promoted to VP, reporting to both Kevin and me. Felicia has done great work promoting the importance of having one of the most diverse workforces in the world and ensuring fairness across hundreds of roles and Tesla operations in over 50 countries. She previously worked in senior HR roles at PwC and Oracle, and, most recently was Vice President, Global Talent Acquisition and Diversity for Juniper Networks.
Laurie Shelby, Tesla’s VP, Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) will also report directly to me. Your safety and just generally making sure that you love coming to work is extremely important, which is why EHS will report directly to me. We are working hardcore on having the safest (and most fun) work environment in the automotive industry by far. Laurie came to Tesla last year after a 25+ year career at Alcoa, where she made tremendous progress in workplace safety. Since joining, she has already overseen a reduction in our employee injury rate, as well as major improvements in our EHS program.
Cindy Nicola, VP of Global Recruiting, will report to both Kevin and me. Cindy has overseen the company’s global recruiting efforts since 2015, bringing on tens of thousands of highly talented people. Prior to Tesla, Cindy led worldwide Corporate Recruiting at Apple, and before that was VP, Global Talent Acquisition at Electronic Arts.
Finally, Dave Arnold has been promoted to Sr. Director, Global Communications, overseeing Tesla’s communications team. Dave was previously Director of Corporate Communications at Virgin America.
Thanks again for your incredible work in making Tesla successful. What you are doing is vital to achieving an amazing and sustainable energy future for all of humanity and life on Earth.
Elon
Categories: Tesla
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124 Comments on "Musk Confirms Record Tesla Sales, Provides Exec Updates"
Good stuff !!!
I retract my prior comments.
A reasonable assessment. The Model T was playing to a much smaller crowd.
All that Elon covered, nice work zeroing in on that factoid.
Buy Tesla stock!!!
Listened to the Joe Rogan interview.
To listen to these two intelligent people have an excellent conversation with smart ideas, and then the morons on Wall Street pick out a sip of Whiskey and a puff of MaryJane shows a level of incompetence and moral bankruptcy never seen in America.
This “interpretation” proves the financial media is a Corrupt Fraud on America.
Joe Rohan is not the brightest and don’t tell me Elon didn’t know weed was legal
Will, thanks for confirming you don’t actually know what happened in the interview, but we sure look forward to you trollsplaining it to us.
ROTFLMAO!!
I love it! “Trollsplaining”, that’s an absolutely dead-on perfect description of his comment.
😆 😆 😆
+1
😂
I am bothered by the marijuana. It is sending a bad message to the children that look up to him. I also thought Tesla has a drug-free workplace policy. Shock jocks are all alike: they “loosen up” their guests on camera and that draws in viewers or listeners. Or are there two sets of rules, one for the CEO, and one for everyone else? Some of us toe the line every day of our lives, and we are a role model to maybe our own kids. I hope the new director of HR sticks him with a drug test. I wonder what his own kids thought of daddy taking drugs on camera. I hope the employees don’t look the other way. Imagine the QC issues if the assembly workers show up to work with a drug habit. Imagine Tesla roadside assistance calls under a purple haze. It is a slippery slope, and this will be scrutinized by the board of directors and share holders. I am going to catch heat for my views, but that is du jour here anyway.
This just in,
Message from Tesla HR to CEO “Puff Master Musk”,
Urgent:
Get down To Human Resources, and “Drop a Bottle” right away! We need Lab results ASAP, to make sure that you are still committed with complying to your $4:20 shareholder pledge, to “burn some shorts” (Blunts).
/s.
He didn’t inhale. I mean really there is all this smoke, but no fire.
You realize the musician friend posted an apology in an open letter to Musk and admitted that the posts were not true, right? And that Rogan’s studio is not located at the Tesla workplace, so there was no workplace consumption.
Nevermind, it doesn’t fit your narrative, so little things like facts wouldn’t matter to you anyways. Go ahead, troll on.
And this is why we need to BAN TROLLS.
This turns this site from informative to TMZ Stupid.
I don’t know exactly what’s all the fuss about marijuana.
But hey, look at my username where I live 😉
I am more bothered by the whiskey. Although the other guy was playing it down, it’s a well-known fact that it’s a way more dangerous drug.
Of course nothing about this involves double standards, since he was not at work. There is no rule saying Tesla employees, CEO or otherwise, can’t use recreational drugs in their free time.
Vexar, didn’t watch the video we all see.
Elon took a virgin puff, didn’t inhale and then Joe and Elon did 5 minute PSA that Marijuana wasn’t his drug, was bad for productivity, and that coffee was probably more his style.
And this is why you’re a troll.
Maybe it’s a personality disorder, but you might be able to fix it with education at a community college and 1/2 hour of study a day.
You could have a bright future with smart people, in a real job.
Only a mental midget would pass judgement on this weed episode without reviewing the context and ideally watching the whole podcast. I watched to whole episode simply looking for signs of wear and tear on Musk. I was slightly concerned after two minutes in, but by the end I was totally comfortable- and I know now that only a moron would be upset by that one polite, curious puff.
I feel really bad for Musk having to live on a planet over run by idiotic Homo Sapiens.
Idiotic Homo Shortis.
Then call me a mental midget. Tesla, Inc has a worker policy and Elon just violated it.
Tesla has no worker policy that applies to what legal activities Tesla workers do away from the workplace. You are right about identifying yourself as a mental midget, I agree with you completely on that part of your post. It is 100% accurate. +1
Remember this was taken at 10 PM after an Elon day.
The guy was obviously tired.
But, still, full of excellent ideas.
With a realistic view of the world and the only one offering solutions.
It’s not just the Financial Media.
I just did, a truckload. I also sold a bunch of Puts. Long Tesla!
Tesla delivered 40,740 cars last quarter, “more than twice as many” for this quarter? hmmm
Assuming X and S are similar to last quarter worldwide… ~15k Model 3s in sept would put them comfortably over double 40,740.
Somehow I think they can manage that. 🙂
Since when is 70k “comfortably over double 40,740”?
32k US Model 3 July/Aug
15k US Model 3 Sep
0.7k Canada Model 3 entire quarter
22.3k Global S/X entire quarter
=====
70k Total entire quarter
Delivering 81,500 in Q3 is borderline possible. But producing 106,700???
I’m not so sure on your math. Seems conservative.
They were Wade’s “low-ball numbers”, not mine.
106,700 is 2x Q2’s production.
But Musk didn’t say he would double production. He said he would be “building and delivering more than twice”.
The key part being “and delivering”. You seem to be ignoring the “and delivering” part, which clearly refers to their number of cars delivered in Q2, and not just the number produced. You can’t just yadda-yadda the “and delivering” part of the quote and pretend it doesn’t exist.
If this is an honest mistake, you can simply reply “my bad, I confused production with delivery, and 106K would be doubling production, without accounting for delivery”. It’s ok, it is a common mistake. By the way, what site is promoting the 100K fake meme? Because you aren’t the only person to post the same mistake.
And it seems like you are conflating “Produced” with “Produced and Delivered” as if they were the same thing. They are not.
+11k “in transit” m3’s from the end of June.
“In his own words, even the might Ford Model T ” proofread.
“Moreover, we also have the most exciting new product lineup of any company in the world. There is the Model Y, the Tesla (pickup) Truck, the Semi and the new Roadster.”
Umm, none of which exist yet. Put down the marijuana cigarette and get to work…
Marijuana Cigarette? 1950 called they want their jargon back.
Russian bots can’t be perfect
Scott has been around forever, just like you and I.
Clearly he is not a bot.
They ARE coming. Musk & Co. seem to have started the first new successful automobile company in the US in many, many decades. Their achievement is great but NOTHING like the model T if you look at it as a % of the total car market. In 1964/5 the Mustang went from 0 to 450k/year rate very quickly and without any tax credits or incentives.
The Mustang was an interesting variant on the venerable sports coupe, but manufacturing it did not require Ford to come up with any particularly new tech, nor did it require Ford to create any new supply chains. By contrast, Tesla generally and the Model 3 in particular are stuffed with new tech. And the reason they’re able to produce 6k per week is that purpose-built battery factory Musk mentioned. The rest of the EV industry can only put out a fraction of Tesla’s output, because they can’t get the batteries.
Indeed, and thanks!
It’s quite odd that so many EV advocates posting comments here can’t grasp the fact that nobody except Tesla and BYD are going to be able to ramp up EV production swiftly, because only they control their own battery cell supplies.
Tesla building Gigafactory 1 to supply batteries certainly does have echoes of Ford building the River Rouge industrial complex so it could ramp up Model T production swiftly. In both cases such vertical integration was not merely useful but necessary at the time, because production by then-existing suppliers was/is totally inadequate for the volume needed.
Ford was an evil company, that contributed to the pollution of the world with its introduction of mass produced ICE vehicles, and was led by a racist Nazi. Their hatred of human life was demonstrated in the Ford Pinto cases of 1978. I don’t understand why anyone would celebrate them or want to compare to them.
Mercedes is going to slow roll it’s new electric, complaining about suppliers. Remember when they were going to “destroy” Tesla?
Every ICE unit gets a massive tax credit, and the taxpayers have to pay for the wars necessitated by oil and pay for the health consequences both to us and the planet. I should charge a 1 cent on every ICE car that pollutes my space- and every homeowner should do the same.
It is hard to know how to deal with this type of ignorant comment- but clearly the semi and the roadster does exist, and who knows where they are with the Y – but we do know that you know nothing
His mind is made up; don’t confuse him with the facts!
“Put down the marijuana cigarette…”
Did you get all your info about smoking pot from “Reefer Madness”?
Join the 21st century, in which it’s understood that smoking Mary Jane is less debilitating than drinking booze… and it’s not as bad for your health, either.
In the 21st century, the THC content in a bio-engineered cannabis plant can be 100x as high as in a 60’s era plant. The rule I live by is this: if it isn’t safe for a child, it isn’t safe. How many people wait until they are of legal age to consume controlled substances? When we turn to a substance to deal with the struggles in our life, we put our trust in something imperfect, that will let us down. I think Elon has done great things, same as everyone else. I also think that 2018 marks his fall from grace. His behavior has become increasingly erratic, he is being sued for multiple, unrelated public comments, and now his new HR director is faced with a worker policy violation that nobody missed.
I wonder whether his use of Ambien, alcohol and marijuana has any bearing over his increasingly erratic behavior. I hope he gets a suspension and spends some time in a clinic.
Medical cannabis is safely administered to children for the the treatment of a number of maladies. Some of which have so far only been successfully treated by cannabis, and modern medicine has no other treatment.
I’m sorry you’ve failed to keep up with the advances of modern medicine.
An the slow dance finally begins…. The face-saving measures are being carefully introduced.
Tesla announced Friday that Jerome Guillen has been promoted to president of its automotive division.
In an email to employees, CEO Elon Musk said Guillen would report directly to him and oversee all of Tesla’s automotive operations, including the coordination of its supply chain.
Cramer on Musk pot stunt: This is ‘behavior of a man who should not be running a public company’
– CNBC’s Jim Cramer says Elon Musk’s marijuana “stunt” was ill-advised and casts serious doubts about his ability to run Tesla.
– “[This is] the behavior of a man who should not be running a public company,” the “Mad Money” host says
Cramer shows his utter incompetence.
To listen to that interview and come away with that comment imply’s Cramer didn’t actually see or listen to the interview, and doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Bringing into question Cramer’s competence.
His quote is OUTRAGEOUS.
Cramer should be FIRED.
And everyone else of focused on the puff instead of the deep rich set of ideas presented.
Someone should do a summary for the lazy.
No wonder markets are inefficient, this level of stupidity and poor judgement can’t possibly correlate to competence in picking stocks.
What was really outrageous was the amount of wasted smoke.
We’re not in Jamaica, mon.
Crammed was approving the Tesla private deal. Ydkwyta
Not sure, but objectively measured, I don’t think Cramer has a very good track record. Fundamentally, Cramer is an entertainer.
Cramer is flip flopper , he would praised the company when stock is at 52 week high, most of the time exactly wrong time to buy stock.
Cramer has been entertaining lately.
Looks like some lazy A on the staff fed him they short 3 minute clip and didn’t tell him the interview was 2 hours long.
Who you hire and trust are important.
Another ding on Cramer’s judgement.
Cramer?!!!
Are you fricking kidding me?!!!!!!!!!
Doesn’t Cramer know, that all his antiquated button pushing on his show, is so “Pre Model 3”!
Come on Cramer, get a friggin’ touch screen already. His button cluttered studio effects dash board, belongs in an ICE Clown Car!
Dirty secret: clown cars have no engine.
And the shorter FUD from TeslaPlease begins in this new thread.
This exactly the sort of thing Cramer has been told to say for for a while now. The fact that he hasn’t alway’s, well shows how much of a loose canon he is.
How nice to see someone use the word “loose” when they actually mean “loose” and not “lose”! 🙂
“Cramer on Musk pot stunt: This is ‘behavior of a man who should not be running a public company’ ”
Cramer? You mean, the guy who Jon Stewart (my hero!) reduced to a quivering apologetic mess in just a few minutes during an interview in which Stewart pointed to Cramer publicly admitting he had committed stock price manipulation multiple times? Cramer, the guy who is no longer allowed to trade stocks because of his criminal behavior? Gosh yes, that’s my go-to guy for prognosticating the future of cutting edge tech companies like Tesla. 🙄
News flash: Elon Musk takes one (legal) hit off a doobie offered to him during a late-night podcast interview; serial Tesla bashers ignore everything said during interview and tell everybody to set their hair on fire!
Hmm, did they ramp up production of S and X, a little bit ti improve profitability?
Tesla is now allowing early lease returns.
The used Tesla market is hot, and owners of S and X want the latest product improvements.
So, yes, they ramped up demand for the S and X.
Sorry, I may have missed it in the long email on filling many executive positions left open by mass departures.
But which part of the email confirmed the insideevs sales numbers for Q3?
Second chapter “” building and delivering more than twice as many cars as we did last quarter “”
Now this requires a little arithmetic to double the Q2 numbers to get the Q3 expected qty.
It also requires a little delusion.
Doesn’t say anything about if it’s less or more than InsideEV has reported as sales so far in Q3.
Deleting double post.
This guy with his company is going up in smokes with no money left. Believers should start looking up for some other idol to worship next.
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/09/07/is-tesla-going-up-in-smoke.html
Air Force is looking if his security clearance should be revoked.
“it is hard to keep a car company running” – yeah indeed.
They might cancel his contracts with Air Force
Hey look, a couple of long-time anti-Tesla posters are trying to start a new rumor.
Gee, I wonder why they would do that?
I doubt it. Space X provides reliable (by rocket launching standards) and economical launch services (they are reusing their boosters).
Yeah, but serial Tesla bashers never let reality intrude on their ongoing FÜD campaign! 🙄
But we should keep this in mind: Tesla won. The FÜDsters lost. The Model 3 is a runaway success! The anti-Tesla brigade needs to sell their shorts and get over it already!
I think you mean cover their shorts, selling short, is what they are currently doing.
Agreed, but Elon should end up under investigation for his clearance. Let’s hope Ms. Shotwell doesn’t suffer the same problem with indiscretion.
Russian Trolls.
There should be a policy here. ONE and DONE.
ONE LIE and Your Out.
That would exclude more than three quarters of the actual articles.
It would certainly exclude about 98% of your comments, including that one.
LOL!
No worries, he can always get contracts with the “SPACE FORCE”!
Yes it’s so hard that maybe we should look at the EV scoreboard again and compare it to the fool cell’s numbers .
You know, the fool cells that you constantly insist are the “future”?
A dangerous game, that. It might lead to comparisons of BEV sales to ICE sales.
Then you should be REALLY afraid of BEV vs. ICE vs. fuel cell sales numbers…..
You mean how Tesla’s exponential sales are increasingly eating into sales of its ICE competitors?
The best selling sedan in America.
What is the Model 3? (an ev), Alex, for one thousand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHUYfWp7UPo
That thump you hear is the FUD hitting the wall again to see how much sticks.
Good way to put it.
Between that and constantly moving the goalposts they are only trying to negatively spin every impressive accomplishment and progress made but Tesla.
The really sad thing about this is many of these cretins are Americans happily trying to sell out the future for their profit or to support their twisted ideology.
With Russia cancelling it new Rocket program that’s highly unlikely.
The Air Force is run by competent people.
Only a mental midget would post that comment without watching the interview- and we all know that you did not watch it . Additionally what type of human being (especially any American) would root against Tesla
Good catch about the security clearance. Elon has a higher standard to live by than a ditch digger, or anyone else who doesn’t have a drug test as a condition of employment. I hope he gets the book thrown at him for such a public violation. Everyone else who lives by higher standards needs to be vigilant. Why should Elon get an exception?
And on a different note, Jaguar have made total of 140 I-Pace EVs since the production started in March. That is an astonishing rate of 0.75 EVs per day.
Now I know why Jaguar claimed to be in “Production Heaven” during their I-Pace production kick-off extravagance.
Who could have known that making cars was hard.
The 140 units were for Aug-2018, ytd is more than 500 (exact figure is somewhere down in another article here)
Jaguar are just beginning the production ramp now with the first production versions. The first deliveries of the I-Pace to customers will start at the end of this month (September 2018), and will ramp up from there. They also say they’ve received even more orders than expected.
The I-Pace is only just starting its production ramp. The first deliveries are the end of September. They will produce at the numbers Tesla does for the Model S or Model X. Batteries will become a bottleneck for them from January, they’ve hinted – as they have had more orders than they expected.
Elon needs to appoint a professional CEO & board and put his faith in them while sticking to being the company visionary, this latest incident of weed smoking on pd cast does the Tesla brand no good for the majority of EV fans.
Tesla need a good management team and not the current musical chairs, I do hope Elon gets himself “together” as a lot of people are dependant on his visionary brilliance.
So if your version of Tesla is true then how do you explain the Tesla dominance of the EV scoreboard?
While I agree that Musk unfiltered obviously takes some getting used to and is quite unconventional, I don’t think you can argue with the results in the EV world he has produced especially when compared to the laggard, legacy LICE companies.
Circuses are highly organized. The cliche is naive and I wish people would stop using it.
Typical short thesis you put forth there, very Reeking Alpha as a matter of fact.
COMPLETELY ignores the tens of billions of dollars in Model 3 orders that Tesla is rushing to fill and at 25&-30& margins on those cars they will have plenty of cash to pay their obligations.
I won’t argue results, but would you argue the man isn’t having personal problems? Unchecked, I can see this bridling his leadership. He sure has a spotty home life. He needs help and I hope to God that he gets it, because his leadership means a lot to me.
The cocaine snorters on Wall Street have to take a good long look in the mirror before they freak out over Elon Musk smoking a joint.
Musk takes ownership of a problem and solves it.
He hands it over when the problems are solved.
So, yes, now is the time.
Except that there are 2 additional assembly lines to be built I believe.
Stop thinking that Musk lives in your world
Approx 65 percent of Americans support legalization. California just passed legalization, and that is where the majority of EV sales are made.
Are you under the false impressions that “the majority of EV fans” are somehow a statistical abnormality who get uptight about a single puff and all the sudden become verklempt and forget all about their values for revolutionizing the automotive industry.
Statistically, it is more likely that more supporters of legalization will reactive positively, than there will be anti-pot reactionaries who get uptight about it. You are on the wrong side of popular culture.
“…this latest incident of weed smoking on pd cast does the Tesla brand no good for the majority of EV fans.”
Maybe you should actually watch the entire wide-ranging podcast interview, and not focus — like the serial Tesla bashers are — on the 3 seconds when Elon took a (legal) hit off a doobie that was offered to him.
Then if you still want to criticize Elon, at least you’ll have an informed opinion.
Who is Tesla Bashing ?
I want them to succeed even better !
Some don’t take constructive practical suggestions when it slaps them in the face & yes I want Tesla to be the best it can.
I see some are 1 eyed fan boy’s club & that is not helping the EV cause is it.
How is bringing up a completely unrelated controversial incident anything but bashing?…
Cindy Nicola sounds like a good name for Tesla.
I would definitely use this email signature just to mess with people. *grin*
C Nicola Tesla VP of Global Recruiting
Classic “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” example.
Go tesla go
I think it could mean the need to revise the Tesla production model. Existing prediction models use VIN to guess. Tesla has twisted the VIN, and if can believe that statement as it is, Tesla will produce more than 100,000 units in this quarter.
You are confusing production numbers with delivery numbers. They are not the same. Don’t feel bad, it is a very common mistake.
Ford didn’t have to ramp up against the Japanese.
Alas these days in the JDM only Nissan seems interested in BEVs, barely.
Still, there’s the Koreans, well LG, with their apparently quite nice 64kWh system.
Chinese too I suppose but they’re mainly just playing defense in their home market.
Germans are the wild card next decade. VW/Audi, BMW, Mercedes . . . a lot of BEV competition if they ever pull their thumbs out.
The German automakers are too busy twiddling their thumbs up their… to get serious about true EV’s. When they finally get battery Gigafactory’s build then they will show they are serious about entering the EV market. Until then Korean and Chinese manufacturers will just take the profits.
Right. All too many EV advocates are ignoring what Tesla realized years ago; that before you can get serious about high-volume EV production, you have to first get serious about high-volume EV battery cell production.
To date, only BYD and Tesla are serious about it.
And Volkswagen has at least publicly admitted it’s a serious issue:
https://insideevs.com/lithium-ion-battery-shortage-looming/
They have LG Chem, which can delivery batteries to them. There will be bottlenecks in battery production in the coming years though, as demand will outpace supply, especially as BEVs will take off with consumers.
In case you haven’t noticed, there are at least four leading battery makers right now building large battery factories in Europe, mostly for the German car makers.
Let’s not judge Elon before we know what’s in them Bob Lutz cigars.