The Public Plan and The Private Plan To Start The War of the EV’s
For those of you that read the headline blurb, you might wonder how winning the war of the ex’s makes Musk a modern Robber Baron. After all he started out making a stupid expensive electric car out of a nearly dead model of the English Lotus. He said all along exactly how the car company would grow, and grow it has. Using political tact, Tesla helped to create the war of the EV’s by encouraging EV legislation and convincing people it was time to ban petroleum powered cars.
Following his plan to build a SEXY “car” company, Tesla now has the top selling car model. And yes look at the Tesla 3 on the model three and you quickly realize his cars spell SEXY. So how do you beat Toyota, Ford and GM with an EV that gives people range anxiety, fear of not finding a charger and even fear of losing control to the automation? At the same time how do you beat the largest maker of solar panels and the oil companies? The answer is to do like the original Robber Barons that built Oil, Steel and Railroad companies. Create a war of the EV and then own everything. Tucker is probably dancing in his grave.
EV Wars, aka The Charger Wars
Yesterday as I pulled my Jeep 4XE into the Outlet mall at Tejon Ranch, I found two “Shell EV” charging stations. I guess it’s better to be late to the party than never show in Shells book. The Shell Chargers weren’t where the map in the Jeep said that would be, but I found them after looking at the attached image in Apple Maps. Right next to 30 or more empty Tesla chargers sat the two lonely Shell EV chargers. Just across I-5 there are another 30 plus Tesla chargers. The two shell EV stations were both open and had green lights saying available, however they didn’t work. They were off line. Thankfully the Jeep 4XE has a petroleum motor as well.
From the beginning Musk had a plan to create a network of chargers. That is akin to GM owning Exxon and Ford Owning Shell. In an emergency your Ford could buy Exxon gas but it would be crazy expensive. In this case, my Jeep can’t go to the Tesla station at any price, although Musk is making deals.
With today’s issues with real estate, Musk can buy roof space at shopping malls and outlet malls dirt cheap. In fact he can probably buy the entire mall now as major companies leave the markets. So now he has a captive audience charging for 30 to 60 minutes at a time on road trips, Sounds like the right place for a travel stop with high priced food and snacks where the outlet mall used to be? Or maybe people charging will shop again out of boredom creating yet another income stream for Elon.
Building The Vertical Robber Baron Style
This is where Tesla wins the war of the EV’s without drawing blood. Musk very smartly started each of the components necessary to out fox the competition as separate businesses. He even got the government and some competitors to help foot the bill. Think of all of the Solar Tax credits and rebates that Solar City customers received. How about getting the old Toyota-GM joint venture plant in Northern California for pennies on the dollar for the first Tesla assembly line?
A while back Tesla “Bought” Solar City, but wasn’t that already his company? The result was crushing the manufacturer of the Solar City PV panels, Panasonic. Panasonic left the business leaving Tesla with no alternative other than to build their own panels. Voila, Musk is now running a car company that makes electric cars, owns the fuel stations for those cars, the company that makes the fuel stations, and the company that provides the fuel. He even owns the company that makes the equipment to “mine” the fuel, the solar panels that “mine” the energy from the sun. You will conform….