[panick21_]

This is kind of crazy, Tesla at peak spent 4 billion $. And they used spend less then 2 billion $. And remember, Tesla is far more vertically integrated. Tesla has large spend in research for their battery and battery materials manufacturing. The make all their own chips, including even some on the data center. They also build robots. And do much of their own AI work.

I must be that Tesla prefers to have some research simply be considered as part of product development. While Mercedes does the opposite.

[Cumpiler69]

Well, Tesla is way more streamlined than the large, old, over-bloated ship that is Mercedes. Love or hate Musk, he knows how to run a very tight ship.

While a lot of Mercedes's budget goes to armies of overpaid managers who do nothing except waste time in endless meetings where they either argue and backstab each other, or high-five and backstab each other, in order to advance their careers. Not an environment that breeds innovation and creativity at a high pace.

Whatever is left goes to engineers that do actual work.

[alphabettsy]

Mercedes might be bloated, but they also make over a dozen different vehicles including some commercial vehicles. They also, in my opinion, make vehicles at a level of quality and experience that Tesla can’t match especially at the mid to high-end.

[panick21_]

Quality has to do with production and checking. Mercedes uses much the same methods and tools as everybody else. And in terms of interior quality, are you gone tell me they spend billion on research on how to make the interior nice? That literally makes no sense.

More different vehicles doesn't really make sense either. If you go watch some teardowns on YT, you will see that most vehicles are on the same platform, and use very similar methods. More vehicles increases your cost, but not that much in R&D.

What does cost if they are pushing, ICE, PHEV, EV and HEV at the same time.