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Tesla & software

At the massive Tesla investor conference last week, the company stated that all of it's software had been developed in-house!  From sales, Human resources, management, and inventory, everything has been developed specifically by Tesla for Tesla!

A few months ago, Tesla's senior management came to Quebec, looking for a place in Canada for something (I suspect the battery business -- there's a lot of Lithium ore here).  Now, I am sure that they were courted in the "national capital" (that's what Quebec calls the province's capital -- Quebec City) and that there was a fun talk about what Quebec could bring to Tesla (great labor force and cheap energy).

I know most of the guys from the Quebec Government who would be part of these conversations, worked with them years ago, good solid, and bright but they probably didn't foresee the problem of software as an issue.  Tesla discussed, at its investor conference, that all its software, including management, was developed in-house replacing things such as Human resources or sales or other types of software because the stuff didn't meet Tesla's requirements.

Most people don't know this but the province of Quebec is monolingual French-speaking, everything has to be in French, and French alone.  Therefore it would be unacceptable that Tesla's computer systems to be in English.  Politically, it would be impossible for the Government to give an exception to Tesla -- because it has been hammered into our psyche by several pro-French groups that French is in trouble and needs to be further re-enforced (more so that it is now) and protected.

There you have it, the reason Tesla will NEVER set up in Quebec, it makes no sense for them to have to translate all their system into French, so once again Ontario will win out.  Years ago there was a joke when Visa did its IPO (the credit card people) there were two palaces in the world where it would be illegal to sell the IPO, North Korea and the Province of Quebec...

Now, Quebec has made a hard choice, this is not a criticism of the province's language policy.  In fact, I would really like it if French was better taught in schools and if vocabularies were more substantial and it does give the Province a little something.  But, there are consequences to this.  At no point will the issue of software be raised as an issue, it is only one of several issues that would make Quebec unattractive (this is true for any location), still it means that for a lot of the high-tech stuff, Quebec will always be passed over.  

Quebec's population, its politicians (who are a mirror of the will of the people) have made a choice and will have to live by that choice.  Tesla could have been great in Quebec, it would have been a fabulous engine to push the province's interests in North America, maybe it will but not via Tesla.  There is no lesson here, but rather a constatation that there are costs to actions and policies.

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