How will Elon Musk be viewed a generation or two in the future?
Terry, I guess that depends on whether he finally succeeds or whether it all falls flat on its face.
I think there are some things to look at though when trying to look into the future.
The Jaguar iPace is being held up as a Tesla killer. A quick look at Jaguar sales v Tesla sales tells an interesting story. Tesla has sold over 160,000 vehicles so far this year. Jaguar sells less than 200,000 vehcles each year. Jaguar and Land Rover sell less than 700,000 vehicles per year and Tesla is likely to come close to exceeding that next year, if not actually exceed it.
The possibility that JLR will kill Tesla with ONE model is, on the face of it, unlikely. The very real competitors who are emerging are the Japanese manufacturers and, if they can ever get their act together, the European manufacturers.
A lot is being said about JLR getting GBP1bn from the UK government and they are adding another billion themselves to build an EV factory in the UK. Tesla are spending around $5bn on Gigafactory3 at Chinese build and labour costs.
The scale is not comparable. But the echo chamber just won't quit.
As for SpaceX? The incumbents in the Space business have allowed SpaceX to race so far ahead of them that the SpaceX cost of launch is, essentially, unassailable and SpaceX keep on pushing profits into R&D and products which reduce the launch costs even more. Whilst also creating ever larger and more re-useable launch vehicles.
The legacy Musk leaves behind will be fairly large. Whether it is, in the end, positive or negative, will take a decade or two to play out.
However the next set of financial results will be telling.
When we do get these financial results, we have to remember that, regardless of how good or bad they are, Tesla has enough money and committed finance to operate to the end of the year and fully complete the build out and ramp up of Gigafactory 3.
The operational profit will be critical in H2 of 2019 as it will pave the way to funding the 2020 agenda and the releases of all the new models in the pipeline. Or at least providing the solid foundation for going back to the market and funding it.
We should also see functional ride hailing in 2020 and the first FSD with Robotaxi around 2021.
By which time the only close scrutiny of Tesla manufacturing numbers will be to see how much more R&D they can fund.
All of which completely ignores solar roofs and energy generation and supply.
Well that is how I see it being played out. I doubt whether anything really significant will happen in the next 6 months but the stock will continue to roller coaster as the bears and bulls play with it for their own ends.
As Archimid says, EV's are here to stay and are the target everyone is aiming at.
If you think back, what was the last truly ground breaking innovation in the ICE world?? Personally I think it was the integration of electronics into the engine itself and the self tuning features that went with it. i.e. physical timing adjustment during runtime and the ability of valve followers to change the profile of the valve lift and dwell dynamically within the rev range.
Since then? Small incremental changes. All the R&D money is heading for EV.