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by mudetroit
2009 days ago
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I think you are drastically misunderstanding the Nikola/GM deal. It is absolutely no lose for GM. If somehow Nikola takes off then they are supplying them with batteries and some other expertise they have. If it doesn't then the monetary investment, at GM's scale, was nominal. (Basically, if GM makes a mistake on a new car model) I think the market is drastically underestimating how seriously the entrenched automakers are taking electric. They are coming from behind for sure, but I think one of the things you see consistently with Tesla is they are still very much trying to figure out the manufacturing and logistics pieces of building cars (rolling out new lines, scaling them, etc). The existing automakers know how to do all that. Are they going to make mistakes? Sure, but in 5 years you will see dozens of electric models spread through out them, and that will hurt Tesla. |
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I have to disagree to some extent with that. I think by now Tesla has figured out the logistics of assembling cars at least as well as other manufacturers, but they still nees to build more lines however.
However Tesla is not stopping there and is continuously improving its logistics past the industry standard, it's not catching up anymore, it's pulling out. For example a lot of effort right now is invested into streamlining battery making and integration, this is something no other OEM is really doing right now. Tesla is willing to take on battery production and even potentially mining, allowing them to fine-tune and optimize the process end to end as much as possible, while traditional OEM rely on suppliers for everything and any improvement needs to be negotiated and takes forever.
Tesla last battery day had an extremely interesting presentation about battery making and logistics that illustrates just how deep the stack they are willing to go for the sake of optimization.