> This data is clear: Tesla is facing a demand collapse in China. The company sat on its lead for too long and bet everything on autonomous driving.
IMO the majority of Teslas lead was based on introducing the "just ship" SW-Dev methodology in the "don't rush anything" car-dev industry.
They were never the best in "just ship", and particularly weak due to their lack of general experience in mass-production (and their general hubris that everything done so far must be wrong).
Most western startups adopting the same style were struggling to secure enough cash to really ramp-up the competition, legacy car-vendors were too slow to move from a cautious quality-first methology to a similar "just ship" style.
But Tesla was always vulnerable for another (external) player to enter the space with a more-aggressive "just ship" mentality, but based on strong mass-production experience.
Now they are facing exactly that competition from China, but most of all IN China, from local suppliers...
more_corn · 14h ago
The key point here is that in China the sales dip is NOT because of the antics of their CEO (which is probably the case for the sales drop in Europe). The sales drop in China is due to robust competition from Chinese rivals. To be clear Chinese consumers find the Chinese cars a better car for the money. Which means the rest of the world is next. (Excepting any country that institutes protectionist tariffs to distort the economics)
IMO the majority of Teslas lead was based on introducing the "just ship" SW-Dev methodology in the "don't rush anything" car-dev industry.
They were never the best in "just ship", and particularly weak due to their lack of general experience in mass-production (and their general hubris that everything done so far must be wrong).
Most western startups adopting the same style were struggling to secure enough cash to really ramp-up the competition, legacy car-vendors were too slow to move from a cautious quality-first methology to a similar "just ship" style.
But Tesla was always vulnerable for another (external) player to enter the space with a more-aggressive "just ship" mentality, but based on strong mass-production experience.
Now they are facing exactly that competition from China, but most of all IN China, from local suppliers...