Being in the EV business means having to compete with China. This market is dictated by manufacturing costs and so it is not where you want to be.

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peri-cl an hour ago | parent | next [-]

It's sort of Tesla's core thesis that they want to attain the world's lowest manufacturing costs, by doing novel things with robotics and AI that automate away humans.

Everyone gets this backwards. Tesla isn't abandoning their low-margin auto manufacturing in order to switch to high-margin robotics tech; they want to capture the margin of robotics for themselves first. If their manufacturing half fails, that means their robotics half also failed at its primary task.

Techworld has an inductive bias towards expecting successful products to be luxury lifestyle products, because so much of past tech successes came from that. Most likely the first successful AI robotics aren't going to be iPhone-like consumer luxuries, laundry-folding novelties for bored techies. They'll rather continue the trend of robotics to focus on industrial processes in controlled settings, capturing value by lowering the costs of doing banal things.

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amelius an hour ago | parent [-]

But is a low-margin business really the one where you want to bootstrap your robotics industry?

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peri-cl an hour ago | parent [-]

It stops being low-margin if suddenly you can build things much cheaper than your competitors can, and they can't replicate what you're doing.

	▲	amelius an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, but a lot of experience is required in robotics to reach that stage. Maybe the insight is that it is better to first sell the robots (the "shovels") and only later go into the gold business yourself (if ever).

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gumby 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Chinese cars are effectively excluded from the US market mainly to keep Tesla afloat.

	▲	maxdo an hour ago \| parent [-]
		no, they mostly not allowed to keep fords, gm, and other inefficient manufacturing afloat. Proofs? tesla exists in China and cable to compete there. There is no ford or GM in it's US shape, only sub brands that loosing ground.

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ajay-b 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Which begs a question: Is it really possible to compete with China on consumer products? The price and cost of labor advantage, indeed state sponsorship and support, would suggest that it's not.

	▲	StilesCrisis 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		For electronics, sure. iPhone and Android are American products. Playstation and Switch are Japanese. If you mean "can we compete on cost of manufacturing," no. They all build in China.
	▲	detourdog 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Veblen goods can compete. China is unique in cheap high tech products. As production scales down and shipping costs raise smaller markets open.
	▲	neves an hour ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Musk's companies are some with the most state sponsorship on the planet. Remove the tax credits, government buying, and commercial barriers, and there's nothing. Even then, he is losing to Chinese competition. It's pure incompetence.
	▲	proxyscore 35 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Well the usa always shouts free market from every rooftop in all the invaded countries, so I wonder where the struggle is?
	▲	kraken_cult 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That seems like a major issue national security wise. I wonder why no one has brought that up?

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neves 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Musk basically lost to China competitition, but can't assume it.