Is There a Tesla 2.0? A Movie Most Of Us Are Not Watching?
Remember March 2020? While most of us were stockpiling toilet paper and figuring out Zoom calls, I wrote about Tesla's seemingly unstoppable march toward automotive dominance in an article titled Tesla’s Insurmountable Advantages (Disclosure: I was a Tesla shareholder then. I no longer own Tesla shares today). One thing seemed clear to me then. Tesla wasn’t just another automaker. It was becoming something different: A company that might reshape transportation entirely.
The Plot Twist I Did Not See Coming
If you've been following TaaSMaster, you know I've had my share of doubts about Tesla since writing that article in 2020. Chinese EV makers are innovating, exporting, and dominating their own market at breakneck speed, while Tesla’s own EV sales growth has hit some speed bumps.
My views on Tesla have shifted, swayed, and evolved a lot over the past five years. Yet, there's one insight from my 2020 article that keeps nagging at me: What if we’re all watching the wrong Tesla movie?
It’s like everyone - particularly legacy automotive people like me - is watching a racing movie, analyzing lap times and pit stops, while Tesla is actually filming “Iron Man” in the background. In my March 2020 article, I argued that viewing Tesla as just another car company - even a revolutionary EV maker - was like calling Apple just a fancy smart phone company back in 2007.
I wrote then, “It’s easy just to focus on Tesla’s vehicle production, deliveries, revenues, and losses [losses during at that time]. However, doing so overlooks that Tesla is building expertise in AI and machine learning which will be more valuable to its business than just selling large volumes of EVs.”
The Road Got Bumpy
The past few years haven’t exactly been a smooth ride for Tesla. As several of my TaaSMaster articles have covered since that March 2020 piece, there have been many Tesla potholes to discuss.
Price wars that made Wall Street nervous
Chinese automakers bring their A-game in their home market as well export markets
The autonomous driving promises that always feels delayed - again and again
Elon Musk seeming to be more interested in other endeavors not connected to running Tesla day-to-day
But Here’s Where It Gets Interesting
While legacy automotive folks and analysts continue to count Tesla’s market share like cards at a poker table, something bigger has been brewing. Those AI and machine learning capabilities I mentioned in 2020 might not just be about making cars drive themselves.
Tesla is building computers on wheels. Every one of its vehicles is a data-gathering machine in what could become one of the world’s most sophisticated AI network.
The Bigger Picture
When Musk talks about Optimus robots and custom AI chips, many people (particularly automotive people like me) file it under “Elon being Elon.” But what if these are not just side projects? What if they’re glimpses of Act Two in a much bigger Tesla show?
Unfortunately, automotive folks like me only consider the future of automotive endeavors from a traditional automotive perspective. However, the real story for Tesla might be about a technology company that started with cars, but is developing something much more significant - like how Amazon started with books, but was actually building the future of cloud computing.
Are many of us still watching a car race movie when we should be watching a technology revolution?
I’ve written plenty about Tesla’s automotive struggles lately. Those concerns are real. The competition is fierce. The market is tough. And the road ahead is not as clear as it seemed in 2020.
But maybe that's because we're still trying to judge the outcome of a chess game by counting captured pawns. Tesla's true endgame might be several moves ahead of where most of us are looking.