Part 1: Roasting Ford: A Deep-Seated Hatred for the Logo
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In April 2009, Elon participated in the late show with David Letterman broadcasted by CBS in New York. After introducing Tesla Model S, he challenged the audience, asking: “Would you buy that, or would you buy a Ford Taurus?”
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After Ford registered the entire family of Model A-Z trademarks, which eventually lapsed, the company re-registered the Model E trademark in December 2013. A few months later, Tesla announced the product plans for Model E and Model Y. Ford then sued Tesla, citing that Model E and Model T sound similar. Although Tesla decided not to use Model E as the name of the next-generation vehicle, Elon Musk publicly claimed that Ford is like “the fascist of the alphabet” and “Ford is ‘Killing Sex'” and quickly registered Model Y. He continued to assert that their product line would spell Sexy.
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In February 2018, the Falcon Heavy rocket launched the Tesla Roadster from SpaceX, Ford’s global market vice-president Jim Farley mocked that the company’s upcoming pure electric CUV wouldn’t need to rocket into space to gain popularity.
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In April 2018, Elon quipped to shareholders: “Buy Ford if you don’t like Tesla. Their governance is amazing.”
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In June 2018, during an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Elon expressed that he believes Tesla’s factories promote positive energy, stating that the environment at Ford’s factories was like a morgue.
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Mark Truby, Vice President of Global Communications at Ford, responded that camper vans have become the new fashion trend in the automobile industry, but on the production line of the Ford Rouge factory, a high-tech and high-quality F-150 is produced every 53 seconds. Elon, go check your factory and see what went wrong.
- In July 2018, Elon celebrated on Twitter, “7000 cars in 7 days, only ❤️ to the Tesla team”. Steven Armstrong, Chairman and CEO of Ford Europe & Middle East, retweeted and commented: “7000 cars in 4 hours, only ❤️ to the Ford team.”
- In July 2018, Elon talked about the Tesla electric pickup truck, claiming that it would be equipped with a 360-degree surround camera and ultrasonic sensors to achieve advanced driving assistance. Mike Levine, Ford’s Product Communications Manager, said that these functions have been standard on Ford’s mass-produced vehicles since 2015. In addition, it seems that Tesla’s service team uses a lot of Ford pickups and trucks.
Part 2 Taking on Daimler: One Billion is Not Enough to Play with Me.
- In September 2017, Daimler announced a $1 billion investment in the development and production of the Mercedes EQ series of electric vehicles in the United States. USA Today Money reported, “Mercedes makes a $1B bet it can take down Tesla.”
Elon responded that “a billion dollars is not a big number for Daimler, I hope they could invest a little more, at least add a zero.”
Daimler responded: “Elon is absolutely right. We have plans to invest more than 10 billion dollars in the field of electric vehicles. The one billion dollars is only for battery investment.”
Elon: “Well done!”
Part 3 Criticizing Toyota: Hydrogen Fuel is Foolish
- In November 2016, Didier Leroy, Executive Vice President of Toyota, commented on Tesla, Google, and Apple’s penetration into the automobile industry, saying, “Do you think we will open the door and say ‘come in’? No, we will not let them in.”
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In October 2017, Didier Leroy stated in his speech at the Tokyo Motor Show that Toyota is pursuing sustainable profitable growth. “Other companies can accept losing $10,000 for every electric vehicle sold, Toyota cannot do this. It is not a healthy business model.”
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In the 2018 Tesla Q1 earnings call, Elon shared his views:
Our competition thinks they’re pretty good at manufacturing cars. Actually, they are not. They have no idea what an optimized factory looks like. It’s way different than what they do. I am not trying to be insulting, but they don’t know. They just don’t know. They think they do. It’s like relatively easy to find 30% or even 50% improvements at the factory level. You can see this in some places like stamping or painting, where the incumbent technology is really quite old. And the newer technology is a lot more efficient and produces better results.
Analyst: Are you referring to the Toyota Manufacturing System?
No, it’s a totally different concept. It’s thinking of the factory as a product, the most giant product, most vertically integrated product in the world, from raw materials to finished product, every element of that product, how it flows through the factory, it’s one product. It’s a product that makes products.
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In early 2015, Elon referred to the development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles as “incredibly stupid” at a conference in Detroit.
If you’re going to pick an energy storage mechanism, hydrogen is an incredibly dumb one to pick. You should just pick methane, that’s much much easier. Or propane. The best case hydrogen fuel cell doesn’t win against the current case batteries. So, then, it’s like, why are you bothering? There’s no reason.
The process of making and storing hydrogen in a vehicle is very difficult. You need to decompose water, produce hydrogen, compress oxygen and hydrogen, and the efficiency is only about half.
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In October 2017, Toyota Chairman Takeshi Uchiyamada announced that Toyota would not give up the research and development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles: “We do not see pure electric vehicles and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles as zero-sum competition, and we have no plans to give up hydrogen fuel cell technology.”
Part 4 Roasting Volkswagen: The End of the Internal Combustion Engine
- In 2015, the Volkswagen emissions scandal broke out, and Elon expressed his views at a press conference in Brussels:
The Volkswagen scandal shows that the technology of internal combustion engine emissions has reached its physical limit, and the improvements that can be made are very small. There must be a large number of Volkswagen engineers under tremendous pressure-they have encountered technical bottlenecks that cannot be overcome, so deception is the only choice.
If I took over Volkswagen, I would go another way and lead Volkswagen to become a leader in zero-emission vehicles.
This may be the only way to save Volkswagen.
- In October 2017, former Volkswagen CEO Matthias Muller criticized Tesla: “If I remember correctly, some companies are world leaders in marketing, burning a lot of money every quarter, and will arbitrarily lay off employees. Where is their social responsibility?” One year only sells 80,000 cars, Volkswagen sold 11 million cars this year, and our profit is 13-14 billion euros.
Part 5 Roasting General Motors: No Charm Beyond EV1
1. In March 2014, Elon expressed his opinion in an interview that General Motors should not have recalled and destroyed EV1. They should have launched EV2 and EV3, and iterated to make electric cars better. “EV1 is not a good car. It has many problems, but it is enough to encourage people to take special measures to make its use experience better and to miss it after it is scrapped. Other General Motors products don’t have this charm.”
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In January 2017, Tesla criticized the investment environment promoted by General Motors in the field of autonomous driving has become impatient. “Some small teams composed of programmers who have demonstrated (autonomous driving) software actually sold for billions of dollars.”
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In October 2017, Scott Miller, General Motors’ autonomous driving director, stated that Elon’s entire speech was nonsense when talking about autonomous driving cars.
A car, a camera, a millimeter-wave radar. To achieve L5 level of autonomous driving, I don’t know how he did it.
- In November 2017, former General Motors Vice President Bob Lutz said that Tesla is heading towards bankruptcy and that the company cannot survive until 2019.
Tesla’s problems include cost out of control, low manufacturing efficiency, and no dealer network. In addition, Tesla does not have core technology and uses the same lithium batteries as other companies.
In fact, General Motors may have an advantage because General Motors’ battery endurance is longer and cost lower.
At the current burning speed, if Tesla does not finance, it will be almost impossible to get rid of financial difficulties.
- In February 2018, Bob Lutz said that the Model S is one of the best cars in the world. Considering that Tesla’s finances have no hope of improving, he recommended that car collectors quickly buy a Model S.
Part 6 Roasting Porsche: 350 KW fast charging is not mature.
1. In November 2017, Klaus Zellmer, CEO of Porsche North America, mentioned in an interview that some potential Porsche customers have switched to Tesla due to intelligent and electric technology, and he is paying close attention to Tesla.
- In March 2018, Oliver Blume, CEO and Chairman of Porsche AG, said that the Model S is not the benchmark for the Porsche’s first electric vehicle, the Taycan, because the Taycan comes with a better charging experience of 350 kW fast charging.
- During Tesla’s Q1 2018 earnings conference call, Elon Musk said “350 kW fast charging is not mature at this stage, unless equipped with a very large battery pack or the battery has a very high C-rate. The cost would be an extremely low energy density for the battery.”
Part 7: Criticizing BYD: BYD? Hahaha
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In June 2013, Wang Chuanfu, chairman of BYD, stated at the company’s shareholder meeting that, once mass production starts, BYD can produce a Tesla in minutes.
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In August 2013, Elon Musk replied by saying, “Produce a Tesla in minutes? Okay, I do not think BYD is our competitor.”
“I’m not referring to BYD specifically, but to all electric cars. For example, Nissan Leaf, Chevrolet Volt, Ford Fusion are all different from Tesla, and there is no comparability.
“Have you driven a Model S? Once you drive it, you will understand what I mean.”
Later, in an interview with Bloomberg, the interviewer brought up the fact that BYD’s prices are lower than Tesla’s. Elon replied that he knows about BYD’s vehicles, and that their products are lousy and lack technological appeal, and they also face many problems in China. BYD needs to first produce good products.
- In April 2014, Elon Musk sounded more cautious during an interview with Chinese media:> I do not have enough knowledge about BYD to make an in-depth evaluation. I know that Warren Buffet has invested in BYD, but their cars have not been sold in North America yet, so I have not had the opportunity to experience them. I have seen pictures of BYD electric cars, and they do not look impressive.
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Am I waiting in the shadows to criticize traditional car companies and praise Tesla?
To be honest, I cannot predict some of the technological trends in these conflicts. Does hydrogen fuel cell technology really have no future? Can L5 level autonomous driving really be achieved without Lidar? Is Toyota’s lean manufacturing really outdated?
Let the future give us the answers.
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.
