Tesla, Inc.
|
by Austin Cai
Tesla is an automotive and energy storage company co-founded by Elon Musk, Marc Tarpenning, Martin Eberhard, Ian Wright, and JB Straubel. Named after the electrical engineer and physicist Nikola Tesla, the company is based in Palo Alto, California, the company specializes in electric cars, energy charging equipment and is known for its autonomous driving software. It was founded in July, 2013 and has so far released three models, Tesla Roadster, Model S, and Model X. Under Elon Musk, Tesla has a master plan to fundamentally change the automobile and energy industry.
Contents
History
Christie Nicolson, a multimedia science journalist, met Elon Must for the first time at a party in 1989. The second sentence that Must said was, "I think a lot about electric cars". The reason being that the electric motor is easier, cheaper, and more sensible long-term plan for power cars. Yet, there tends to be three age-old concerns regarding the viability of electric cars: range, performance, and price. When Musk decided in 2003 to start making electric cars, there were high barriers to entry that prevented any startup car company from succeeding. However, in the Silicon Valley there were people in one little car technology company, AC Propulsion, that were experimenting and making incremental EV breakthroughs. During 2003, another Californian named JB Straubel who was also tinkering with EV and met Musk to ask for funding for a car project he was working on. Later, Straubel brought Musk by AC Propulsion. At the time, Musk was already running SpaceX but wanted to fund AC Propulsion in bringing one of their prototypes into market, but they didn't want to deal with that. Instead they introduced Musk to three guys who included Martin Elberhard and Marc Tarpenning. They wanted to use AC Propulsion's technology and bring it to market as a new company called Tesla Motors, but lacked the funding. Thus, it was a perfect match, Musk provided the money and together they formed a team and started to figure out how to start a car company.
Master Plan
Like any new technology such as the first cell phone or computer, the R&D costs drive up the price of the product. Thus, Tesla had to develop a business plan for the company on how to make and market their products.
Part One
Step 1: High-priced, low volume car for the very rich. First come out with an expensive fancy first product that is worth the price. Hence, the Roadster, a legitimate Ferrari competitor that costs over $100,000.
Step 2: Mid-priced, mid-volume car for the rich. Use the profits from Step 1 to develop a Step 2 car. A luxury car that competes with $80,000 Mercedes or BMW products.
Step 3: Low-priced, high-volume car for the general population. Use the profits from Step 2 to develop a car that is affordable to the middle class, around the range of $35,000.
Part Deux
With the master plan part one in the final stages of completion, Elon Musk wrote a Part Deux of his next master plan. In short, Musk enumerated on four major points:
1. Create solar roofs withe seamlessly integrated battery storage
2. Expand the electric vehicle product line to address all major industries
3. Develop autonomous driving capability that is far safer than manual via massive fleet learning
4. Enable your Tesla vehicle to make money for you when you aren't using it
