While many domestic new energy vehicle companies are still racking their brains and finding a reason to prove that they are better than Tesla, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been selected as this year's Time Magazine Person of the Year.
Tesla has received mixed reviews as a fast-rising car in recent years, but it's interesting that most of these disparaging voices come from peers. Some people ridicule Tesla's price reduction as "only worth the money", and some people ridicule Tesla for not setting up a public relations post because of its public relations ability. Especially in the domestic new energy vehicle companies, the rhetoric of "overturning Tesla" is very loud.
However, with Tesla's expansion in Shanghai and the completion of the German Tesla Gigafactory, there are not many car companies that can say such things as "dry tesla". But in the past, many car executives have publicly expressed their "hostility" to Tesla.
First, why are domestic and foreign new energy vehicle companies "unable to get by" with Tesla?
John Krafcik, CEO of Waymo, Google's self-driving company, said in an interview: "For us, Tesla is not a competitor at all. John's confidence stems from two different systems from Google and Tesla.
First, Google has developed a system for fully autonomous driving.
Tesla has developed only a driver assistance system. In John's view, driver assistance systems and fully automated driving systems are two completely different concepts. And the fully automated driving system developed by Google is far more technical than Tesla's driver assistance system.
Second, the research and development capabilities of Tesla sensors are weak.
Only when new energy vehicles are equipped with powerful sensors can they meet the requirements of fully automatic driving. In the research and development of the anti-interference ability and accuracy of the sensor, Tesla is still insufficient.
But Musk is not impressed, in the public comments, Musk also complained: Google's technical path for new energy vehicles is "too specialized", and questioned whether Google's strength can reach the level of mass production. In the past, when there have been accidents in fully intelligent autonomous driving, Musk is still optimistic that Tesla's fully autonomous driving technology will meet consumers in the near future.
Not only is the American Internet giant like Google "stepping on" Tesla to increase its own value, even the day after The launch of Nio Motors in its ET7, Li Bin, the founder of Weilai Automobile, announced in a high profile that Weilai will not regard Tesla as a competitor, but will benchmark more high-end German cars such as Mercedes-Benz and BMW. For these outside noises, Musk's tie Tesla did not pay much attention to it, continued to concentrate on research, and spoke with data and strength.
Second, Musk - the "Columbus" who opened up the continent of new energy vehicles
If the new energy vehicle market is a new continent, then there is no doubt that Tesla is the "Columbus" who discovered the new continent, and Musk almost single-handedly opened up this blue ocean market. Tesla is like a roc bird, taking advantage of the "global carbon neutrality" shareholder wind and skyrocketing. In the whole of 2020, Tesla's global sales were 499,000 units, and as of the end of September this year, Tesla's sales had reached 627,000 units, and tesla has now firmly occupied the "top spot" in global new energy vehicle sales.
Unlike other new energy vehicles, for a long time, Tesla opened up sales, did not worry about orders, but did not have enough production. So in recent years, Tesla has been looking for new factories around the world. At the end of 2019, Tesla began new car deliveries at its gigafactory in Shanghai.
In 2020, construction of Tesla's gigafactory in Berlin also began. However, due to the restrictions of tesla's Berlin factory in Germany, which was limited by local environmental protection and other policies, the construction was suspended for a while. Considering the cost optimization strategy, Musk finally decided to shift the global export center from the Fremont factory in the United States to the Shanghai Gigafactory, which has also become the lifeblood of Tesla's production capacity.
Nowadays, among the cars that come off the production line in Shanghai, only the production of the second half of the quarter will be released to the Chinese market every quarter, and the products in the first half of the quarter will be supplied to the world. In order to take into account the substantial increase in demand for Tesla in both the Chinese market and overseas markets, since the beginning of this year, Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory has increased production from 150,000 vehicles in 2020 to 450,000 vehicles. With Tesla investing $1.2 billion in expansion and capacity increase in the Shanghai Gigafactory some time ago, it is expected that in 2022, the Model Y and Model 3 produced from the Shanghai Gigafactory will exceed 1 million.
According to statistics, in the third quarter of 2021 alone, Tesla's revenue in the Chinese market broke through the $3 billion mark, an increase of more than 78% year-on-year. With the german factory completed and put into operation, there is no need to wait until 2022, Tesla's global production will also exceed 1 million units. With such mass production, Tesla is ready for the "small goal" of achieving 20 million vehicles worldwide by 2030.
And those opponents who once despised Tesla are now either sinking into the sea or not worth mentioning. According to statistics, in the first nine months of this year, Weilai automobile sales were only 67,000 vehicles, Xiaopeng and Ideal did not squeeze into the top 20 of the industry, and only BYD could match Tesla. It was really in response to that sentence, saying the most arrogant words and being beaten the most poisonously. So why is Tesla always regarded as a "thorn in the eye" by its global peers?
Third, the high-profile Musk, the price-cutting Tesla
In fact, Tesla is often threatened by public opinion, mostly caused by its CEO Musk. Because of his high-profile life style, Musk is on the hot search 74 times a year, and his words and deeds and even his private life have been magnified, and Tesla, who naturally made him the world's richest man, is not spared.
For example, some time ago, in the face of Subsidies for Tesla by EU countries such as Germany, Musk announced in a high-profile manner that "Tesla does not need it", and even proposed to "cancel all subsidies". Why does this make many domestic new energy companies that still lose money with subsidies? How can Tesla not be the "target of everyone"? Then Musk helplessly wrote a poem on social media that read, "He is too anxious to fry."
In fact, putting aside the prejudice against Musk personally, tesla really impresses consumers with its cost performance. Tesla successfully used the brand effect, so that global consumers recognized the logo of Tesla, such as Tesla's acceleration and endurance to kill a number of supercars, in the hearts of many consumers, Tesla is a high-end car that is not lost to BMW and Audi. And a car company that can let consumers buy "famous brands" at a low price, do they still have to worry about sales being blocked?
Through Tesla's repeated price cuts in the past 2 years, it can also be seen that Tesla is also testing the acceptance of prices by global consumers, especially Chinese consumers. Tesla uses the grouping method to further refine the market, which not only clarifies the market acceptance, but also earns a lot of money.
In the field of self-driving, the fully automated driving system that was once ridiculed by Google was also broken by Tesla. Tesla's advanced position lies in the construction of the electrical and electronic architecture and the OTA built on top of it. Tesla chose to use the computer operating system as the underlying logic, and installed the previous driver assistance system on the computer, thus realizing the use of software to control the car, rather than hardware.
At this point, Tesla has completely solved the problem of intelligent driving. Although it has not achieved what Google calls fully autonomous driving, it has also created its own driving system. Google's fully autonomous driving system has long since disappeared, and its president, John, resigned as CEO in April.
IV. Conclusion
History is always moving forward, consumers expect technology to provide new ideas, and Musk is the leader of technological change today. His new energy vehicle company Tesla, space transport company SpaceX, and solar storage company Solar City are all opening up the future world to people.
Also because of the exploration of the earth and the universe, in 2021, Time magazine gave elon Musk the annual figure and promised: The influence is unmatched. We are fortunate to live in a great era, and it is likely that it is a great era because of Musk.