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Tesla
Tesla, founded by a group of engineers in 2003 and headquartered in Palo Alto, California, focuses on producing electric vehicles without compromise. Elon Musk, who led the company'
a Miguel Mota 6 éve
323
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Founded in 2003 by a goup of engineers, Tesla is an Electrical Vehicles producer based in Palo Alto, California. It was founded with the belief that the use of electric cars should not be a compromise.
Elon Musk led the company's funding round in 2004 and served as chairman at the time. It was not until October 2008 that he became CEO. He is a serial entrepeneur and the CEO of Tesla. He has been involved in projects such as PayPal, SpaceX, OpenAI and Neuralink and has a particularly visionary prespective of the world and its future. The link here provided contains a history of the company and its biggest milestones.
The company has combined the EV manufacturing with a lot of emphasis on the use of solar energy and has even purchased a solar energy company, SolarCity. Tesla is a company that integrates most of production required for all that surrounds EVs: it produces the cars, its batteries and the chargers, not just at home but on the road; it develops solar energy technology and solves South Australia's energy problem; it manufactures the machines that manufacture its cars. And the way in which it gains a competitive advantage, besides the high-automation of its process, is through its Customer Relationship Management and the innovative way in which it takles new problems and adapts is business to it.
10 Facts about Tesla:
Tesla has created a very strong brand image for itself in the recent past. Its relationship with its customers has become quite strong within the auto manufacturing industry. In a 2016 study on customer experience, Tesla came out on the top 20 and was the best ranked auto manufacturer (https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tesla-tops-research-on-car-brands-that-offer-the-best-customer-experience-112165.html). But all the loyalty and "wow" factor surrounding Tesla do not come solely from product and innovation; it is also achieved through Customer Experience. Here lie three examples of how Tesla continues on trying to improve customers' experecience even after sale.
The car manufacturer's relationship with its customer is far from over after the car is bought, and some of the challenges with EVs lie in this phase: where do I charge in long trips? does it take too long? Is it more expensive than gas? In order to respond to those customer needs, Tesla keeps on developing ways to making it faster, simpler and cheaper, both through technical innovation and a differenciating attitude.
An additional link is provided to an article where a satisfied customer tries to break down the factors behind Tesla's "awesome Customer Experience" in the moment of purchase.
Tesla's cars come integrated with digital technology. This has provided Tesla with a very unique advantage over its competition: Tesla can update the car's software at a distance. This means that, whenever Tesla improves one of the algorithims used in its cars, it can, "over-the-air", update it.
This feature is distinctive for any customer; in particular for those who are car enthusiasts and value having the latest features available in the market. It provides them with the possibility of buying a car today and having the technology of the future tomorrow, while incurring in smaller costs than they would if they bought tomorrow a car.
This is a unique approach in this industry and it seems to be a game-changing one. Not just in terms of the customer experience, but also in what is the company's business (and business model) and how it operates.
This capability is currently being used with the Autopilot feature: cars come prepared with the hardware necessary; once the technology is developed, customers will be able to download the software for their current car.
One of the post-purchases services provided by Tesla is its network of Supercharger Stations. This stations allow the customer to charge its battery with the fastest technology available in a multitude of "busy" routes in North America, Europe and Asia. Currently, there are 1130 Supercharger Stations all over the world and the company continues investing on its expansion.
Additionaly, the company emphasizes the cost advantages of charging with the Supercharger compared to gasoline and provides help, through technology, to optimize trip planning and assure recharging needs are met with the most efficience. [A link is here provided to Tesla's map of Supercharger Stations around the world.]
These stations are Tesla's response to the difficulty of using EVs in lon-distance trips, both in terms of convenience and time consumption.
In the last few years, Tesla strategy has clearly been one of Vertical Integration. The company has, both through its own investments and aquisitions, taken charge of more and more steps of its production process.
Tesla has re-enforced in 2016 its commitment to Solar Energy with the acquisition of SolarCity, an energy company that designs and installs solar power systems.
Since then, this industry has already seen Tesla launch the Powerwall, a system integrated that stores the excess solar energy produced, making it available in times of need.
In November 2017, and in the midst of problems with the production of its Model 3, Tesla acquired Pribex.
Pribex is a company that designs and builds highly automated, high volume manufacturing machinery.
This is part of Tesla's effort to "turn the factory into a product - to build the machine that makes the machine."
Tesla acquired Grohmann Engineering in November 2016 fo "about $150 million". The German engineering company just became "Tesla Advanced Automation Group", a group dedicated to helping Tesla increase the automation and effectiveness of its production process.
Tesla produces its own car batteries at its Gigafactory. Additionaly, its plant's expansion is designed to acomodate the future growth in the demand for its cars.
Tesla's production process:
Tesla's Gigafactory was started in 2014. It is, at the moment, partially built (and used) and it's where the company produces the batteries for its vehicles. The factory will become the world's biggest building, aiming at responding to Tesla's projected vehicle demand. Additionaly, the factory will be entirely powered by renewable energy.
The Tesla production factory is located in Fremont, California, and it has a 5.3 million square feet area. This factory had been home to General Motors and Toyota production in the past and was then bought by Tesla in 2010. After its purchase, the factory was extensively remodeled, with the first vehicle, a Model S, being first produced in 2012.
The company plans on expanding the factory and almost doubling its area in the coming years,
Tesla is a disruptive company, driving Digital Transformation in the auto sector. It is the most successful EV in the world (and probably the most desirable one as well), it has cutting edge technology (in particular regarding self-driving cars) and it has created a network for EV charging across North America and Europe. Its capacity to innovate and develop new technology is undeniable. But it is not only in the technological or mechanical sense that Tesla is disrupting.
Its business approach, quite characteristic of its CEO Elon Musk, is, on its own, quite special. Starting as a car manufacturer, Tesla's business range has expanded quite fast in the last few years and the company is also in the forefront of solar energy and has recently provided a solution for an energy problem in Australia.
Tesla is one of the strongest brands in the car industry and it is seen as a reliable cutting edge company. However, it does so without a marketing budget. The company has been able to establish itself as a household name without spending any money on market or advertising, making it, amongst car manufacturers, an innovative brand in this sense too.
Another surprising stance from Tesla, particularly given its technological nature, is making public all its patents. The company states it was started to promote sustainable transportation and, persuing a more collaborative environment in tech investigation and development, has made all its patents public information.
The Supercharger Stations are Tesla's response to the need for mid-trip re-charging in the smallest amount of time. Tesla has developed these stations which reduce tremendously the charging time for Electric Vehicles. With an average need of filling 80% of the battery, given the existence of multiple stations across Europe and North America, it will not take more than 30 minutes for a Tesla vehicle to be charged.
In addition, and keeping aligned with Tesla's vision of a sustainable energy consumption, these Supercharger Stations are planned to be powered by solar panels installed on top of each station.
Tesla's use of digital technology alongside the mechanical features of its cars has certainly been industry changing. Additionaly, it has given its cars the possibility to wirelessly, via wi-fi, communicate and update themselves.
One example of this is the Autopilot: all Tesla cars come now equiped with the necessary hardware (states Tesla) to run the technology being developed for a fully autonomous car. If true, this will allow customers to obtain this new technology without having to buy a new car.
Tesla has for a long time been commited to growing the use solar energy and has even aquired SolarCity. In the pursuit of that goal, the company has now entered a completely new industry with the launch of Powerwall.
Powerwall is a battery pack for home use that connects to solar energy in order to store excess production. It is an easy to install fully automated system that requires no maintenance. It can additionaly be remotely monitored and controlled via smartphone.
Telsa has announced the new Roadster in November 2017. The new model of the Roadster 2008, Tesla's first production car, will begin being sold in 2020.
The new car is said to achieve 60 mph or 100km/h in 1.9 seconds, the quickest street legal production car at the date of the announcement. It is both an innovative milestone for Tesla's engineering, design and technological capabilities and another huge step towards making EVs desirable.
Research on the lithium-ion batteries started happening around 1979, and since then it has come a great way to the game-changing batteries Tesla uses in their cars.
The key development Tesla made that led to becoming so successfull in that area was that in just under a decade it was able to reduce price difference between gas-powered cars and eletric vehicles. In 2008 the price for an Eletric Veicle was around 600$ to 1200$ per kWh and with the introduction of Tesla's model 3 the price will go down to $190 per kWh (dropping the prices to the same as $3 per gallon of gas).
First introduced in 2015, Tesla's Autopilot has been in development ever since. Since the end of 2016, every Tesla car has been equiped with 8 cameras that provide a 360 view and 12 ultrasonic sensors, in addition to a radar system to see through rain, fog or other cars.
The Autopilot extra costs $5000 to activate when the car is purchased and though it does still not replace the human driver, it certainly can help in navigating in highways and parking lots.
The company has recently been under fire over the death of a driver traveling in one of these semi-autonomous vehicles.
