Photo = REUTERS
“When I first heard it, it was like a fantasy of a crazy person, but later it is a reality.”
This is an evaluation of Tesla’s chief executive officer Elon Musk (CEO, photo). In Silicon Valley, where geniuses from around the world gather, Musk is considered a unique figure. Instead of finding a niche in the existing market, it is changing the world by creating completely new opportunities.
Tesla is changing the global industrial landscape 15 years after launching its first car. Geeks’ toys, electric cars that were treated as low-cost, low-cost cars at best, became the next-generation popular means of transportation. This is why it is one of the leading global innovators after Apple, which opened the door to a huge business ecosystem of smartphones, and Amazon, which changed the center of the distribution industry from offline to online.
Tesla is not just an electric car sales company. It is evaluated as an’energy platform company’ that ends the era of petroleum and leads the transition to eco-friendly energy. Like Apple, which created a new ecosystem and created enormous added value through the iPhone, it is professing to open a’new era’ with electric vehicles.
Tesla gained momentum from the beginning. The world’s first electric sports car was chosen as the first model, not the popular electric car. It is the first generation of roadsters released in 2006. The first generation of roadsters cost more than $109,000 (about 122.5 million won), but about 2400 units were sold in over 30 countries around the world. After confirming the demand for electric vehicles, Musk himself became CEO in 2007.
There was also a crisis. In 2008, it was on the verge of bankruptcy. In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, corporate cash flows drastically decreased, and people who wanted to buy electric cars were cut off. In December of that year, when there was only money left to last for a week, Musk poured $40 million (about 50 billion won) of personal wealth to Tesla. Thanks to this, Tesla, who has revived its knighthood, gathered all kinds of innovative technologies and launched the Model S in 2012. It expanded the demand base by offering a sedan type, not a sports car.
Tesla electric vehicles are also knocking on the door of the autonomous vehicle (PAV) market. Electric vehicles are much lighter than internal combustion locomotives. As Tesla invested heavily in battery technology, it weighed more. Thanks to the lightweight fuselage, vertical take-off and landing can be used in urban areas.
Recently, the market is also in the mood to agree with Tesla’s vision. In July of last year, Tesla surpassed Toyota in Japan and climbed to the top of the global automobile industry in terms of market capitalization. The stock price, which started trading at $17 per share at the time of IPO in 2010, jumped more than 50 times to $852.23 on the 5th.
Musk is in the form of’mobility innovation’ in’two-track’ between the Earth and the universe. This is through SpaceX, a private space exploration company founded in 2002 before Tesla. The goal is to move some of humanity to Mars. In 2017, the rocket was recycled and relaunched.
SpaceX plans to launch a human-carrying Mars rover by 2026. If successful, human life and markets will expand beyond the Earth to the universe. The possibilities that can arise through this are truly endless.
In February 2018, Musk put Tesla’s electric roadster on a rocket and sent it into space, with the words “Don’t panic” on the dashboard. It is a passage from the book’A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Milky Way,’ which he read when he was a teenager and raised his dream of space. Is this a message saying that we should not be embarrassed by our future steps? The world is watching this innovative entrepreneur who turns dreams into reality.
The mobility paradigm changed by Tesla… The final station is’autonomous vehicle’
Where does Tesla’s competitiveness come from?
Tesla sold 500,000 electric cars last year. It is less than 1% of the total global car sales last year (77.50 million units). But looking at the market cap, the story changes. In July last year, Tesla was ranked first among global automakers. As of the 5th, Tesla’s market cap was 807.8 billion dollars, which is more than the combined market caps of two major US automakers such as GM (77.8 billion dollars) and Ford Motors (44.9 billion dollars).
Since the advent of Tesla, the game in the global automotive industry has completely changed. Existing automakers such as Toyota, Volkswagen, and Hyundai Motor Group all announced the transition to electric vehicles and started pursuing Tesla. At the forefront of the electric car era, attention is paid to Tesla’s competitiveness, which is stepping on the’accelerator pedal’.
○The world’s best electric car
Tesla’s competitiveness begins with vehicles, experts say. Tesla is selling high-end sedan Model S and mid-size sedan Model 3, semi-large sports utility vehicle (SUV) Model X, mid-size SUV Model Y, and pickup truck cyber trucks. All are evaluated as having driving performance comparable to that of a sports car. For example, the’zero back’ of the Model S (the time to reach 100 km/h from a standstill) is only 2.1 seconds. It is 1.5 seconds shorter than the Porsche sports car 911 Carrera 4S (3.6 seconds). Unlike an internal combustion locomotive, which speeds up step by step with shifting, electric vehicles emit peak power from the motor as soon as the accelerator pedal is pressed.
It doesn’t just make it popular because it’s fast. Tesla is evaluated as “constantly evolving even after purchase”. This is thanks to the’over the air’ function that wirelessly upgrades vehicle functions. It is a function that corrects errors or adds new performance by updating software like a smartphone.
For example, four cameras mounted on a vehicle can be used as a black box. You can reduce the zero back or increase the mileage. This means that you can enjoy the effect of steadily purchasing new cars even after time passes after purchasing the car. Existing automakers are also introducing OTA one after another, but most still have to visit a service center to update their software.
Tesla is often pointed out that he is “is not good at making cars.” Steps (open seams, etc.) and poor paintwork are often discussed. However, the industry estimates that the core parts of vehicles, such as artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductors used for autonomous driving and electronic control units (ECUs) that control vehicle parts, are among the best in the world. At the beginning of last year, Japanese experts disassembled Tesla’s Model 3 and analyzed it and evaluated that “Tesla’s ECU is ahead of Toyota and Volkswagen by more than six years.”
○ Tesla’s hidden competitiveness
Tesla’s manufacturing capabilities are evolving rapidly. At’Battery Day’, a new technology announcement event in September last year, the company announced that it would lower the battery cost by 56% and release an electric vehicle worth 25,000 dollars. If the battery price, which accounts for 40% of the cost of electric vehicles, can be reduced by almost half, it is predicted that the spread of electric vehicles could be greatly expanded.
There is also a plan to self-produce battery cells. Tesla manufactures its own battery system, but supplies battery cells to the battery system from Panasonic, LG Chem, and CATL. The battery cell production target in 2022 is 100GWh, which can fit 1.3 million electric vehicles per year. Tesla plans to increase production efficiency by designing a machine that makes battery cells.
Tesla’s business model is not simply to make a profit by selling a lot of electric cars. The goal is to preoccupy the’electric autonomous vehicle’ market in the near future. The industry is seeing that ultimately the door to the autonomous vehicle (PAV) market will open.
This is because Tesla’s advancement of battery technology by nearly 10 years has laid the technical foundation for vertical take-off and landing with a lightweight fuselage and flying at close range. In preparation for this, Tesla is in a hurry to vertically integrate its business structure. It connects all stages of the service from software to cloud systems, ECUs, AI semiconductors, charging stations, and communications.
SpaceX’s satellite internet business’Starlink’ is also not unrelated. Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive officer (CEO), plans to launch 12,000 communication satellites in orbit over the earth to provide Internet service around the world. To date, more than 1000 Starlink satellites have been launched. Using this, it is possible to analyze driving information of customer vehicles around the world. It is the basis of big data that can develop autonomous driving technology.
Musk aims to have an annual production capacity of 20 million units by 2030. It is more than 50 times larger than the current (365,000 units). It means that it will dominate more than 25% of the global automobile sales market.
Reporter Park Sang-yong/Sun Han-gyeol [email protected]