Ondrej Holzman If we want to find the company most often compared to Apple in recent years, we have to go beyond the technology industry. We can find many analogies in the automotive world, where Elon Musk is building a culture similar to that of Steve Jobs at Tesla. And ex-Apple employees help him a lot.
Apple: premium products with high build quality and great design, for which users are often willing to pay extra. Tesla: premium cars with high build quality and great design, for which drivers are often happy to pay extra. That's a definite similarity between the two companies on the outside, but even more important is how everything works on the inside. Elon Musk, the head of Tesla, does not hide that he creates an environment in his company similar to the one that prevails in Apple's buildings.
Tesla as Apple
"In terms of design philosophy, we are quite close to Apple," the founder of the car company that designs sometimes even futuristic-looking electric cars, Elon Musk, does not hide. At first glance, it might seem that computers and mobile devices do not have much to do with cars, but the opposite is true.
Just look at the Model S sedan from 2012. In it, Tesla integrated a 17-inch touchscreen, which is the center of everything going on inside the electric car, after the steering wheel and pedals, of course. Nevertheless, the driver controls everything from the panoramic roof to the air conditioning to Internet access with a touch, and Tesla provides regular over-the-air updates to its system.
Tesla also uses former Apple employees to develop similar mobile elements, who have flocked to the "car of the future" in large numbers in recent years. At least 150 people have already moved from Apple to Palo Alto, where Tesla is based, Elon Musk has not hired so many workers from any other company, and he has six thousand employees.
"It's almost an unfair advantage," Adam Jonas, an auto industry analyst at Morgan Stanley, says of Tesla's ability to lure talent away from Apple. According to him, in the next ten years, software in cars will play a much more significant role and, according to him, the value of the car will be determined by up to 10 percent of the current 60 percent. "This disadvantage of traditional car companies will become even more apparent," says Jonas.
Tesla is building for the future
Other car companies are not nearly as successful in bringing in people from technology companies as Tesla. It is said that employees leave Apple mainly because of the cars that Tesla produces and the person of Elon Musk. He has a reputation similar to that of Steve Jobs. He is meticulous, has an eye for detail and a spontaneous temperament. This is also why Tesla attracts the same type of people as Apple.
An excellent example of how big Tesla's attraction can be is represented by Doug Field. In 2008 and 2013, he oversaw the product and hardware design of the MacBook Air and Pro as well as the iMac. He made a lot of money and enjoyed his work. But then Elon Musk called and the former technical director of Segway and development engineer of Ford accepted the offer, becoming vice president of the vehicle program at Tesla.
In October 2013, when he joined Tesla, Field said that for him and for many, Tesla represented the opportunity to build the best cars in the world and be part of one of the most innovative companies in Silicon Valley. While the cars of the future are invented here, Detroit, the home of the auto industry, is seen here as a thing of the past.
“When you talk to people from Silicon Valley, they think very differently. They look at Detroit as an outdated city," explains analyst Dave Sullivan of AutoPacific.
At the same time, Apple inspires Tesla in other areas as well. When Elon Musk wanted to start building a giant battery factory, he considered going to the city of Mesa, Arizona, just like Apple. The apple company originally wanted to be there to produce sapphire and now here will build a control data center. Tesla then tries to offer its customers the same experience as Apple in stores. After all, if you are already selling a car for at least 1,7 million crowns, you first need to present it well.
The Tesla-Apple direction is still impassable
One of the first to switch from Apple to Tesla was not by chance George Blankenship, who was involved in building Apple brick-and-mortar stores, and Elon Musk wanted the same from him. "Everything Tesla does is unique in the auto industry," says Blankenship, who earned a quarter of a million dollars for it in 2012 but is no longer at Tesla. "If you look at Apple 15 years ago, when I started there, virtually everything we did went against the grain of the industry."
Rich Heley (from Apple in 2013) is now Tesla's vice president of product quality, Lynn Miller handles legal affairs (2014), Beth Loeb Davies is the director of the training program (2011), and Nick Kalayjian is the director of power electronics (2006). These are just a handful of people who came from Apple and now hold high positions at Tesla.
But Tesla is not the only one trying to acquire talent. According to Musk, offers are also flying from the other side, when Apple offers $250 as a transfer bonus and a 60 percent salary increase. “Apple is trying hard to get people from Tesla, but so far they've only managed to pull a few people over,” says Musk.
Whether the technological advantage that Tesla is currently gaining very quickly against other car companies will really play a role will be shown only in the next decades, when we can expect the development of electric cars, such as those currently being produced in Musk's empire.
They see the possibility of progress and change in Tesla. That's not in Apple anymore. Just AppleMoney.
Ono can easily see progress and change when finances are not involved, because I work for taxpayers' money.
Where did the idiot come up with that...
If you're asking for those loans of 500 million dollars, then Musk has already repaid it 7 years earlier than he was obligated to...since then he's only been making money, he's been paid for cars by people who will see them in about six months...lots of jobs, and the biggest gigafactory on batteries and on top of that, a car where the only liquid is the one for the washer... not to mention that for a few bucks, superchargers are built everywhere for these cars... compared to others, the car company is serious about a cleaner future...
When you learn to behave, I'll answer you, otherwise keep looking. They are still pro-business, trading with allowances and the like.
so from the beginning it was definitely the main source, but the question is to what extent it still has a share today and to what extent it can sustain itself :)
So far it's still in the red. Of course, if it wasn't for investments and the like, it's better. For 3Q it was in the black after cleaning, but not much for turnover (turnover around USD 900 million, profit USD 3 million). And it's also not true, as Hangar wrote, that Tesla builds something for free. Nothing is free and the price of the stations is included in the price of the vehicles. Here is a recent article, but, I'm writing straight away that it needs to be taken lightly with a view, there is sometimes an exaggerated aggressiveness towards electricity on that server :-)
http://www.autoforum.cz/zajimavosti/musk-priznal-ze-se-tesle-nedari-ziskova-nebude-jeste-roky-akcie-padly/
Elon is like Steve. You can tell he's not doing it for the money. Apple should team up with Tesla and not screw up everything that can have electronics.
It can be seen that Musk is not like car companies (which present their electric car at trade fairs, but will put it on sale in X years), but that he simply acts. It already has an extensive network of charging stations in the USA and, I suspect, in Europe as well, cars are already being sold normally (although they are still quite greasy, but I believe it will be evened out in a few years). New models already have an autopilot system (I don't know how much, good quality). And if car companies don't do something quickly, including Google and their own autopilot system, then Musk and Tesla will flee this segment, like Apple once did in the mobile market. I'm a fan of him, you can see that he's a visionary and that he doesn't delay electric cars like other car companies.
Tesla or Apple? It's deciding between testosterone and estrogen. Apple used to be testosterone too :'(