Skip to main content

Is Tesla the new blackberry?

 In the late 90s the blackberry pagers took over the finance world, and eventually their phones dominated the business landscape.   Then 2008 happened, first was the iPhone and the financial crisis and then the CEO thought they could ignore competition.

2008 was important because it showed the bankers the limitations of the blackberry,  First the web browser was terrible and more importantly your employer knew exactly what you did in every minute of use.  Many bankers were fired for cause because of how they used their phone, maybe not appropriate but a convenient way of kicking out bankers.  In 2007 every banker on Wall Street or in the City was using a blackberry as his constant companion, by 2009 the blackberry was often spending the evening and weekend in the office, as most bankers had a second private phone with great applications.

The crime that Blackberry committed was then try to emulate the iphone badly with terrible products that didn't function.   They owners and leaders became complacent assuming that bankers would not move away.  A very bad call.

Tesla was the end all and be all of the electric car market until 2023 when new offering was made available.  Tesla biggest error was to promise, and sell features that 5 years on still don't work.   Several friends bought the self drive 10,000 package and it still doesn't work.  Since 2023 Tesla has been promising a cheap electric car..2025 and no trace of anything.  FYI BYD launched a $15,000 electric car two weeks ago.   Range is limited, but its $15,000.   

Mr Musk's biggest problem over the past five years. is not keeping promises.   The promises are the reason that Tesla's stock is still trading at a 190x level compared to Ford at 8x.  At one point the promises have to be delivered.  The Cybertruk was pitched to a segment of the market that doesn't buy electric vehicles.   Over the past 100 days, Musk has gone out of his way to antagonize his primary market - rich guilt ridden upper middle class democrats.   He also managed to piss off the rest of the planet by associating his brand with the President of the United States.   

This indicates that Musk is disconnected from reality, which is partly the reason he was so successful in creating the Tesla to start with and Space X, which has reduced the cost of cargo launching by nearly 90%.   

However, the shine is slowly coming off, sales are dropping fast globally for the Tesla something will have to be done there soon, my guess is that Musk will take a back seat, and only remain as a board member.   



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

what people get wrong about tariffs

 The issue is simple. What percentage of the economy is dependent on tariff goods? The truth, is that the US economy is far more closed than people understand. People genuinely believe that all manufacturing has ceased to exist in the United States all given to China on the altar of woke policy the truth can be further from That statement. Only about 15% of US GDP is related to foreign trade. Of that amount, slightly more than half is from Canada in Mexico. And half of that is energy. What that means, is that about 7% of US GDP is tariff dependent. The proof in the pudding, is how little money tariff generates. People think that 30 or 50 billion is a lot it’s not in an economy that has $3 trillion. The impact on the US economy will be less visible but not absent. Inflation hasn’t occurred yet first because tests have hardly started to bite, but more importantly it’s such a small percent of the economy. Now certain things are critical. The rare earth metals from China were critical....
Post a Comment
Read more

The end of Tesla?

 it takes a special kind of idiot, to think that he can antagonize his entire customer base, and think that it will not impact his business. When Elon Musk went to work for Donald Trump, and created the doge department, he antagonized every liberal, and these people represent 90% of his client base.That’s not a brilliant move. Now Elon Musk is worth hundreds of billions of dollar, so he shouldn’t care a great deal, however, he needs to care because of several other issues. The cyber truck has been a disaster, most have had to be recalled because of defective glue, it’s not a truck, it’s not a car, it’s noisy, relatively uncomfortable, but great as a development platform. What Tesla has learned in making car manufacturing more seamless is truly amazing. The problem was that Elon Musk was so pissed with the Democrats, and with Joe Biden, in particular because of some slight, which were just plain stupid too. By the way, that he decided to support with hundreds of millions of dollar, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Demographics

 I am preparing a kind of family tree for our children so that they know where they came from.  In my family I am the only survivor, although my brother and sister died recently they were both in their seventies (a story I told already).    It was a fun process, but it provided more than that.  First, I married relatively young I was 26 when I married and nearly 30 when our first child was born.   I was looking at my ancestors.  On my mother's side, she had 6 siblings, Four died before the age of 30, two in war, and two from illnesses.  Only she and a single sister survived.   The two boys had a child each but they died in WWII, and the other sister died as an infant.   what is interesting is that every one of my mother's siblings had children in their early 20s.   I know that my mom was hardly 20 when my brother was born.    What is remarkable is that among our friends, we are the only ones to have fou...
Post a Comment
Read more