[Introduction: The acquisition of Twitter, and the release of a bold promise to take down Coca-Cola, Elon Musk, this self-employed entrepreneur, with Tesla as the fulcrum, his rights are shifting from the technical dimension to the human dimension, has begun to touch the upper limit of rights that ordinary people cannot reach. What is the logic behind this wave of operations? What impact will it have on the global automotive industry? What kind of imprint will Musk's expansion and efforts leave in future history? 】
Written| by Zhang Dachuan and editor | Kangqiao
For Tesla now, even if the construction of a second gigafactory will officially start in Shanghai in the future, from its previous acquisition of Twitter and its threat to take down Coca-Cola, it can be seen that Musk's focus may no longer be on Tesla.
As the most influential media communication platform in the United States, Twitter plays an important role in American social culture, and although Twitter's function is similar to China's original Weibo, what really impresses the Chinese people is the Twitter governance of the Trump era. At that time, Trump expressed many of his personal opinions through Twitter, and as the president of the United States, his opinions can often determine the direction of many policy formulations. On April 14, Musk made a high-profile announcement that he would buy a 100% stake in Twitter at a price of $54.20 per share, a 38% premium to the day before he publicly announced his investment in Twitter. After a series of consultations, on April 25, Twitter's board announced that it had reached an agreement with Musk, who pocketed Twitter for $44 billion.
For Musk, the acquisition has gone beyond the definition of entrepreneurship in the general sense. His ambitions and dreams are reaching a border that no one can match.
Tesla's earnings report is eye-catching but the stock price is consolidated
Recently, Tesla announced its first quarter 2022 earnings report. This earnings report data is very eye-catching:
In terms of sales, Tesla delivered 310048 new cars in the first quarter, an increase of 68% compared with the same period last year, of which Model 3 and Model Y models accounted for 95% of deliveries. The hot sales of these models will also be maintained for a long time, in the domestic market, the Model 3 pick-up cycle is as long as 5-6 months, and the Model Y pick-up cycle is also about 3 months.
In terms of financial data, Tesla's total revenue in the first quarter increased by 81% year-on-year to $18.8 billion; according to GAAP (Us General Accounting Standards), Tesla's automotive gross margin was as high as 32.9%. This value not only far exceeds that of traditional car manufacturers, but also means that Tesla still has enough space to fight a price war in the future.
But in stark contrast to the beautiful sales and financial data, Tesla's stock price has been consolidating for half a year. Among them, not only Musk and his brothers and many hedge funds began to continue to sell Tesla stocks, but the lack of core in the global market and the sharp rise in raw material prices are greatly threatening Tesla's future growth space. In particular, it is worth mentioning that as major car companies have launched competitive electric vehicle models, Tesla's first-mover advantage will gradually catch up. Therefore, although Tesla shouted out the goal of achieving an annual output of 20 million vehicles by 2030, judging from the situation in which the target Elon Musk is blooming everywhere, this goal may only stay on the target.
With Tesla as the fulcrum, attack on all sides
From Tesla's playing style, it can be clearly found that this enterprise is completely different from the traditional car company. The vehicle integration technology that vehicle companies attach importance to is not worth mentioning in Tesla's view. On the contrary, those parts or related software systems that were not valued by traditional vehicle companies and were originally directly purchased from suppliers have become areas where musk must achieve self-research and master the underlying core technology. It can be found that tesla or Musk recently announced less and less new technologies related to the whole vehicle, on the contrary, satellites, rockets, space tourism, chips, humanoid robots, supercomputers, etc., which can not be said to be completely unrelated to electric vehicles, but the relevance is decreasing in the new field of progress. Perhaps Tesla is just a fulcrum for Musk to pry other dreams.
And this time, whether it is the acquisition of Twitter or the plan to buy Coca-Cola, Elon Musk's series of actions has not much to do with Tesla itself or electric vehicles. Musk is hoping that his empire is not limited to high-tech, and that infiltrating the daily lives of ordinary Americans is becoming a reality.
For Tesla's competitors, this is actually a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Musk has focused more on a lot of new areas in recent years, so Tesla is significantly slower, whether it's in the $25,000 entry-level electric car or the update of model like the Mode X/S. For traditional car companies including Volkswagen, Toyota, and GM, relying on their own vehicle architecture, they can quickly launch models based on the same chassis but with different bodies to the market, so as to better meet the personalized needs of consumers.
However, Tesla, on the other hand, does not actually have a pure electric platform with strong scalability, and it is more difficult to launch more models in the future based on the existing platform. We have not seen more information about Tesla's engineering plans, and it is not known whether Tesla has invested a lot of resources in the development of a new generation of pure electric platforms. But now that porsche Taycans are selling more than Model X/S worldwide, it can be found that if Tesla does not accelerate the renewal of its own models, it is not a difficult thing to be surpassed by other brands in terms of sales. Both GM and Ford have made grand plans to surpass Tesla in overall electric vehicle sales in the near future.
Where are the boundaries of Musk's rights?
On April 22, Musk registered "X Holdings" holding company in Delaware as the main body to acquire Twitter. In the future, the company will become a super-business empire that includes Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, tunneling company Boring Company, brain microchip startup Neuralink and other companies, helping Elon Musk to storm trillions of dollars in personal wealth.
In the near future, if Musk and Trump run for the us of the United States, everyone will not be surprised. After all, whether it is his business performance or his appeal in the world, it is far better than trump before him and any politician in the current American political arena, so he can be more popular with the general public in the United States. To some extent, the power of the US president still has boundaries, and the Musk business empire across technology and humanities has touched the upper limit that ordinary people cannot reach, and what Musk needs to think about is where the bottom line is in the process of pursuing the upper limit of power? Where are the boundaries?
Comments
For the global automotive industry, Musk's ambition is not in the automotive industry, which is undoubtedly good news. If Musk continues to invest a lot of energy in Tesla and continues to promote the renewal of technology, then the pressure on the world's traditional car giants will be great. The next step is to see how Musk chooses and whether he can bring us greater surprises. For traditional car companies, it is imperative to do a good job in the work at hand. As for catching up with Tesla or surpassing Tesla, the initiative is not in the hands of traditional car companies.
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