"What do you think of giving up my job and transitioning to a full-time opinion leader?"
Elon Musk, the "man from Mars," once again used his ability to replace the PR marketing department's Twitter, setting off a monstrous wave of public opinion.
"Musk can't go, he's the soul of Tesla." Fans are nailed down.
"He's really going to transform into an Internet celebrity." Tesla blacks simply interpret "opinion leaders" as "internet celebrities".
When Elon Musk became the Silicon Valley technology idol after Jobs + the world's richest man, when Tesla's brand influence swept the global market including China like a storm, when "words must be called Musk, afraid of Tesla like a tiger" has become a trend of many people in the automotive and even aerospace fields, the impression of "Musk and Tesla crushing everything" with huge inertia rushed into the minds of countless consumers, and it is precisely the "disdainful and unheard of" in the original Yanlu Blue Wisp period that constitutes the subjective two extremes.
"Everything tesla is good, everything Musk is right," most passers-by began to think so. And the attitude of the centrist is far more important than the piety of extreme fans and the hatred of extreme sunspots.
Musk tweeted his intentions
So this time, did Martian + Iron Man really move the idea of retreating or changing careers, or did he make a few jokes on his mouth?
It's easy to guess that Tesla, who lacks Musk, has no soul and is incompetent for his position, but have you ever thought that there is indeed a force to push Musk to find another direction?
Tesla without "Cook"
In the first sentence of Drake Baer, author of Tesla, the origin story, "Tesla should probably not have existed."
Of course, this sentence requires a strange perspective of understanding, in fact, it does not mean that Tesla should not exist, or just a very accidental event contributed to the birth of the first car company in the market value; we should interpret it as Tesla's difficult journey all the way, and Musk's personal factors are the key to its success.
The "Martians" certainly think differently than the Earthlings.
"I prefer to look at the world from a physics perspective. Physics taught me to reason using first-principles thinking, rather than analogous thinking. ”
Many of Musk's quotes are taken as the norm, especially this discussion about "first principles".
And Musk is indeed in the pursuit of change, so Tesla chose a completely different track from the traditional car companies, the starting point of "making the car into consumer electronics", the operation mode of direct sales, the boss with goods, technology, innovative brand design... It's like avoiding head-to-head combat in battle and stabbing the traditional giants from behind.
As the American writer Deutsch put it, the greatest power in today's world is the power of change. Coupled with the macro demand of China and the United States, it is not surprising that Tesla enjoys the dividends of the times.
However, the connection with Musk is too strong, which is a great risk for Tesla, although it is the biggest dividend at the moment, even the brand public relations costs can be saved, and the boss alone can stir up the global storm on Twitter.
The key word for the left hand is "succession".
Apple has Cook, musk has no one behind him
Jobs also has a Tim Cook, after the former died, at least Apple can still "defend the country". Tesla is really extremely short of possible successors.
Musk was more tyrannical than Jobs.
According to the statements provided by current and former Tesla executives, if employees disagree with Musk, most of them will end up leaving; as for those who cannot complete Tesla's ruthless high targets, it is even more natural to be fired. "Give you an impossible mission, you're done, you're going to get a big bonus, and if you're done, you're leaving."
Let's not say that this arbitrary, overly centralized/personal model is morally good or bad, at least it can be confirmed that "Tesla is deeply bound to Musk", the brand and the boss are far more related than any other company in the past, and the difficulty of choosing a successor is also doubled.
Musk is not without "threats of stepping down", including the "Tesla privatization" crisis, and he has even been stripped of the title of chairman. But the question is, who really has the ability and seniority to take over the wheel of Tesla's helmsman?
Auto Pilot is a Tesla plus, but it also comes with risks
In 2015, some media counted tesla's possible successor to Musk at that time, but six years later, you can see where they all went:
JB Straubel, then chief technology officer, was one of the co-founders of Tesla, and many of Tesla's ideas were laid by his participation, and he left in 2019 to be replaced by Drew Baglino;
Chief designer Franz von Holzhausen ,Who is still in Tesla, and new cars such as the second-generation Roadster are from his hand, but the designer is the leader of the car company + technology company, and he can't think of it;
Diarmuid O'Connell, then head of commercial development, left in 2017 after 11 years at Tesla;
Deepak Ahuja, then chief financial officer, left in 2019.
……
Musk also admitted at least five years ago that Tesla had no succession plan. Can't a person from within the union or designate an executive to control Tesla's wind direction? Don't think that Cook's innovation is far less than Jobs, in contrast, when will the "Cook" who helped Tesla defend the country and the mountains surface?
The key word for the right hand is "risk".
Tesla under Musk has chosen a radical, avant-garde and pioneering development path. We all know that this path has both innovation dividends and huge risks. To use the analogy we have made before, that is, Tesla "stabbed from behind", and at the same time stabbed the auto industry (with technology and concept innovation), consumers (with specious models and technology supremacy indifferent concept), then eventually will also stab Tesla itself.
The "Tesla concept", which is very kind to the science and engineering men in the field of electronics, cannot be equated with all the laws of manufacturing, let alone cover every corner of human nature. In China, the most important market, Tesla has repeatedly "cut leeks", and defects at the manufacturing and product levels have caused frequent failures such as "sudden acceleration".
Tesla has had many fatal accidents on autopilot
The sharp blade thrown from behind can not only destroy the rule of the old powers, but when used improperly, it will also point at consumers in the distortion of operation, and eventually fall on Tesla itself. Then only when Musk sits in Tesla, it is possible to resist this kind of "knife stabbed at himself", once he hangs up the seal and leaves, Tesla will fall apart not only by the influence of word of mouth, but also by the ability to resist risks.
Can't stop the "giant hand"
Musk has been increasingly "leaning toward China" lately.
In addition to the prediction video that "China's economy will reach 2 to 3 times that of the United States", which has been turned over and widely disseminated, what many people do not know is that the original "ban" on Tesla by various institutions has been canceled, and slowly Tesla vehicles have been allowed to enter those "inside the compound", and the premise of all this must be that Tesla will hand over the data to China.
In stark contrast, the United States has repeatedly attacked Tesla in the recent past since the New York Times, and even brought to some other Western countries has also criticized the phenomenon of discounting the mileage of Tesla vehicles.
Why does China hold Tesla and The United States black Tesla? Sandwiched between the two largest and strongest countries in the world, Musk and Tesla tasted the dividends of the "two giants jointly" in the last round, and this round will eventually have to make a choice with the collision of the two giants.
Contrary to the conclusions of many first reactions, I think musk has a high probability of finally choosing China "theoretically". This is determined by their personal thinking and the characteristics of the two major markets.
Navigant Research's 2021 self-driving strength ranking, Tesla is behind
Let's first trace the macro trend of the automotive industry on both sides.
It is precisely because of the West's pursuit of the extreme that its three major industrial patterns have undergone drastic changes. The overall proportion of manufacturing has declined, and it is more inclined to the tertiary industry service industry, especially the finance that can "make quick money"; even within the manufacturing industry, it is more favored to represent high-tech ICT/semiconductor/Internet, aerospace, biological engineering and other fields.
Since the bankruptcy of Bethlehem Steel, the U.S. manufacturing industry has undergone earth-shaking changes, Silicon Valley has replaced Detroit as a manufacturing mecca, and the ICT field represented by chips has occupied the core position of the manufacturing industry of steel machinery in the past; reflected in the American car body, it is today's scene - GM and Ford are second only to Waymo in the field of automatic driving, and GM is even the same as Volkswagen in new energy ALL-IN pure electric, but the US fuel vehicle sector has given its advantages to German cars and Japanese cars.
According to the data of the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, in 1950, 1970, 1990 and 2010, the GDP of the US secondary industry accounted for 35.21%, 30.87%, 25.39%, and 19.39%, respectively, while in 2016 it was even as low as 17.91%, and there has been a slight rebound since then, but the overall "deterioration". The share of manufacturing employment plummeted from 13.0% in 2000 to 8.5% in 2017; in the list of the top 500 companies, the manufacturing industry reached more than 80% in 1955, compared with less than 50% in 2019.
When the automobile industry enters the era of intelligent electric vehicles, the momentum of the East surpassing the West is more significant.
For example, although the U.S. auto industry is still trying to increase production value, and electric car stars such as Tesla and Rivian have emerged, the fundamentals of the U.S. auto manufacturing industry have been shaken.
In the field of autonomous driving that the U.S. auto industry is most proud of, although the current real champion is Google Waymo, followed by Cruise, NVIDIA, AI Argo, etc. are also American companies, but autonomous driving attaches great importance to data accumulation iteration, and the richness and difficulty of the scene also determine how fast enterprises can progress at the algorithm level and how thick the accumulation of data can be.
From this point of view, the particularity of the Chinese market determines that after the timeline is infinitely stretched, the balance of autonomous driving will inevitably fall to the east. So, "capitalists do not have their own motherland" as a premise, do you think Musk chooses between China and the United States who is better?
From the perspective of interests, China is more suitable as a "vision home" for Musk and Tesla. But "taking money to leave the scene and continue to preach" may be a better path for Musk personally.
After all, he himself has set his sights on Mars, and the United States is not his motherland at all, is it?