[vkou]

> I don't think of tesla as a "car and battery" company but as a "portable battery (the supposed car) and a home battery" company.

If they really want to be in the business of making batteries, they should get out of the business of making cars as quickly as possible. It's an expensive distraction.

It's extremely difficult, the R&D costs are enormous, scaling up is difficult, thousands of little things can sink you, and once you sell a product, you will be on the hook for it for the next decade.

To me, it seems that they are a car company with a battery side business - it makes a hell of lot more sense then being a battery company with a car side business - for the same reason that Exxon-Mobil isn't an oil company with a jumbo-jet-manufacturing side business.

[GauntletWizard]

I think they're a vertically integrated Energy company - Think if ExxonMobil merged with GM.

[vkou]

Which would be a terrible idea. since both energy, and energy storage is a commodity. GM may as well merge with United Fruit Company.

The only two gains I could see would be diversification (But then why not merge with Bank of America? Or Google?), and an integrated logistics system (Except that logistics for electricity and gasoline are long-solved non-problems - and have nothing to do with auto manufacturing.)

[politician]

It's a brilliant idea if you consider that all of this knowledge work is reusable and necessary on Mars.

The IP for this tech will be only minimally encumbered through a relationship with a friendly entity.

[avn2109]

It's worth noting that in practice, the management of GM and EM coordinate so closely that they might as well be a single entity.