Tesla and Apple's "grudge", like Wudang and Shaolin, seems to intersect, but they are not tolerant of each other.
Of course, the so-called grudge on the table is always Tesla's "big mouth" CEO Musk, the most direct grudge between the two people is: in the darkest time of Tesla, Musk asked Apple CEO Tim Cook to discuss the possibility of Apple's acquisition of Tesla, but Tim Cook did not meet.
Of course, such an arrogant Musk will not say this kind of "ugly thing" at the time, in December 2020, when Tesla was in the global limelight, Musk turned this matter over again, "When you were a famous sect that looked down on me to finish the small sect, now, hehe." ”
The pleasure of "revenge" simply overflowed the screen.
The news that has recently made Musk more enthusiastic is that Apple has made bad news about cars.
According to Guo Mingxi, an analyst at Tianfeng International Securities, the Apple car team has been disbanded for a period of time, and Apple wants to achieve mass production of cars in 2025, so it needs to reorganize the team as soon as possible.
Some media analysis, this anecdote shows that Musk does not like Apple, in fact, this is not necessarily true. In addition to the above incident, the "competitive relationship" between the two began in 2014.
In 2014, there were media reports that Apple had determined a car-making plan called "Project Titan", so-called, peers are wrongdoers, not to mention, Apple with car-making plans has also poached a lot of engineers from Volkswagen, Nvidia and Tesla.
Musk was outraged by this naked digging, and he even said in an interview: "We fired them." We always jokingly refer to Apple as the "Tesla Graveyard." If you can't get along at Tesla, you're going to Apple. I'm not kidding. ”
This kind of provocative behavior, of course, will not get any response from Apple, or Cook.
Another example is that Doug Field, who was responsible for the vehicle engineering and manufacturing of the Model 3, was once the vice president of hardware engineering for Apple's Mac, although Musk praised him as "the most talented engineering management talent in the world", but Tesla still did not leave Doug Field, he left Tesla, and returned to the "Tesla graveyard" - Apple.
Who is digging into whose corner, it is really a Rashomon.
Musk's personal preferences and ostentation aside, Tesla and Apple seem to be more and more alike.
Taking the past 2021 as an example, compared with 2020, Tesla's deliveries have doubled from 490,000 to 936,222, exceeding the target of 900,000 deliveries at the beginning of the year.
Not only is the delivery of a ride, but also in terms of gross profit and gross profit margin, it is even more eye-catching.
Tesla achieved revenue of $53.82 billion in 2021, an increase of 71% year-on-year, and net profit of $5.644 billion, of which net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company was $5.519 billion, an increase of 665% year-on-year. This translates to about 34.76 billion yuan, which means that Tesla basically makes 100 million yuan a day.
In addition, Tesla's vehicle gross profit margin reached 30.3%, if you compare "Wei Xiaoli", then you will know how "rare" this gross profit margin is: the ideal and Weilai average 18%, Xiaopeng is affected by the price, the gross profit margin is about 10%.
Moreover, in terms of operating model, Tesla has also turned itself into a kind of "fast selling product": the average inventory cycle is only 4 days. While Weilai is 20 days, most car companies are more than a month.
The only ones that can compare with Tesla's delivery cycle are those clothing fast-selling brands.
Compared with Apple, Apple's gross profit margin is 38.4%, Xiaomi's mobile phone gross margin is 8.7%, Apple's mobile phone delivery cycle, take the iPhone 13pro series as an example, has been shortening, after two months on the market, reached 19.5 days.
Of course, the delivery cycle is definitely shorter now.
However, purely from the data point of view, Tesla and Apple's data, more close.
Not only in terms of data, but also in some behaviors, Tesla is also moving closer to Apple.
In December last year, when users upgraded Tesla's in-vehicle system to the V11 version, a customizable icon appeared at the bottom of the touch screen.
Soon, there were media reports that Tesla was developing an app store that would allow its users to download and use programs through its own app store.
Isn't this also very similar to Apple? Rejecting the Android system, and the self-built system, in the end, contributed a lot of share to the current revenue, and also ensured the user's use experience in the early stage of the smart phone.
Of course, Tesla's increasing behavior is very "like" Apple, which can also be said to be, excellent companies feel sorry for each other.
Of course, the premise is that Apple can't build a car.
But in fact, if it were not for the dissolution of the Apple car team, many people would think that the launch of Apple cars has been put on the agenda.
In 2014, for the first time, Apple began to lay out the field of car manufacturing.
In 2017, Tim Cook also said in an interview that Apple focused on developing autonomous software systems: Apple does not necessarily have to launch self-driving cars, and autonomous systems may be the basis of all machine learning products and can be used in many products and services of enterprises in the future.
In 2019, the situation seems to have changed again.
Apple's patents in the automotive field cover a wide range of technologies, including automatic navigation, charging technology, CarPlay in-vehicle system, body structure optimization, in-car safety facilities and other technologies.
That same year, Apple acquired self-driving car startup Drive.ai.
In 2020, at WWDC, Apple also introduced three new features of electric vehicle navigation, CarPlay system, and mobile phone key.
All indications are that Apple wants to build its own car.
What's more interesting is that every time Apple releases a major news about car building, Tesla's stock will fall in response.
And everyone thinks that for Tesla, Apple, which did not build a car, is the biggest threat.
Speaking of this, I have to feel a little sad about Musk: in the most difficult time, people don't even see each other, it is difficult to get out of the head, people do not even have a car, but they are their biggest potential "opponents".