“To ensure that our cars are within the reach of the market, we must spend intelligently”. It is one of the passages of the letter that Elon Musk addressed to Tesla employees. Twenty days after debut of the stock in the S&P 500 index, after having passed the ceiling of 24 billion dollars in value on 500 November (+560% since the beginning of the year), the South African builder, the second richest man on the planet, confirms Bill Gates' dictum: "only the paranoid will win". And paranoid Musk certainly is: “Investors – he writes – attribute us a high valuation because they bet on our future profitability. But if they change their mind, our stock will be crushed like a soufflé under a hammer."
Hence a new bet: to produce, within three years, an electric Tesla for $25, thus replicating Henry Ford's exploit at the beginning of the 900s. And to achieve the goal, in addition to new types of batteries and other technological innovations, it is necessary to count on the creativity of the employees. Naturally paid. “It's up to you to guide the process – he continues – which is made up of continuous progress. A novelty that can save us $5 is extraordinary. But I expect a lot of ideas for half a dollar each”.
This is the makings of a leader who is never satisfied, not at all satisfied with the revolution imposed on the automotive world, in great turmoil after the tsunami of the pandemic which has already imposed epochal changes to our way of understanding the car. Too slow, according to several protagonists. This morning, for example, the CEO of Volvo, Hakan Samuelson, has suggested banning the sale of combustion cars to speed up the transition to electric.
Difficult that the idea is successful. But the T effect like Tesla has now invested the capitals of the car, starting with the giant Volkswagen, the colossus with 664.000 employees and twelve brands that the CEO Herbert Diess tries to bring closer to the model T amidst a thousand resistances. The road is obligatory, he repeated, "if we don't want to end up like Nokia". For this reason, the manager has requested a meeting of the supervisory board of the Wolfsburg groups to overcome internal resistance to abandoning the hitherto effective model of co-management of the product with a decisive role of the union. We can no longer afford complicated structures that suffer from a gap in competence and culture with respect to the digital world. Hence the development of the Artemis project at Audi: a team of computer engineers detached from the rest of the production that will have to build a new electric crossover from scratch. An extreme bet to recover the lost ground for having underestimated Tesla for too long.
Not just Volkswagen. Even Carlos Tavares, the number one of stellantis, the brand that will bring together Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot from January 4, has changed its opinion on Tesla, until a few months ago considered "a competitor like the others". But a few days ago, on Bfm business tv, the manager said that "Tesla is the fiercest competitor, which it does not carry the weight of a long tradition upon itself which makes it more difficult to adapt to today's world”. A historic weight that hangs over the shoulders of Peugeot and Fiat, on the eve of the industrial challenge that Tavares, reading the 372 pages of the prospectus, wanted more than anyone else.
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