Reciprocity
Active Member
In China? Because they certainly arent doing it here. You would know if they where breaking ground on those factories in the US. Again, its one thing to plan to do something, its a whole nother to get approvals, permits and break ground. Now if they where doing this in China, it would be for a Chinese consumer. I dont see China exporting large amounts of batteries before they get their own issues fixed. I would guess if something on this scale was being done in China, it would be storage and not cars. China's main issue is not global warming, it is that they cannot breath. It doesnt matter how hot it is or how high the oceans are going to be in a decade if you are choking to death from soot today. In some places, they cannot even leave their homes for long periods of time. They could definitely do something like what they did with solar only for batteries, it would more then likely be storage to combine with solar before automotive, only because its much simpler and more benefits for less cost. Building cars is hard, building stationary batteries is hard as well, but not nearly as hard. Aside from diesel, modern cars are much cleaner then coal fired power plants. Either way, China will not be exporting 100's of GWh of batteries for a decade at the earliest and maybe never. By the time they build enough batteries for China, they will be ready to replace them. In terms of vehicles, China seems to be focused on buses and small 2 wheel electric scooters and 4 wheel electric golf cart sized cars. This is a very bottom up approach and Tesla and its competitors would be more of a top down approach, attacking margin first and foremost as they move down the food chain to more mass market cars. If anything, China and Tesla should meet somewhere around the Corolla price point in 5 years with several Terafactories in China, Europe, India and the US.
Also, Apple has never built a car. If they intended to, they should buy someone outright, because starting from scratch is a 10 year plan, not a 2 year one. Just ask Elon how much fun it is to build cars from nothing. Tesla's first mover advantage might be that it has captured the momentum, once they have that momentum its hard to slow Tesla down. They have the people, they are motivated, its not a start up anymore and people can see the light at the end of the tunnel. For years, im sure they had fears of failure, but everyday they further solidify their future by building a lead that might just be insurmountable in our lifetimes.
If anything Apple would try to buy Tesla. No legacy automaker is clean enough to bother with. They would have to wait for one to go into bankruptcy to clear out the terrible mess and contractual obligations to legacy suppliers, pensions and of course there are the Unions. Lucid, FF and any of these other jokers are not further along then Apple with nothing. It only takes 60 guys 6-9 months to build what FF and Lucid has. This was Tesla 10 years ago. Granted, Apples money could speed that up by 5 years, but by then, Tesla will have built a bigger gap. Apple could cut that gap in half again in 5 more years, but... there would still be a sizable gap. It kind of reminds me of the Iphone vs Samsung. Samsung is someways is a better phone, but not enough stop people from overpaying for an Iphone and giving apple a huge premium in terms of gross margins/profits, while Samsung still continues to try to catch up. Samsung always seems a couple steps behind and they dont have the pricing power Apple does. This is the future I see for Tesla and its competitors.
If Apple was smart, they would partner with Tesla to build an iModel3 and iModelY. I know its not their style, but why build all this autonomous software if you dont have a car to put it in that meets Apples standards. Are they really going to put their software into a Bolt or a Leaf? Google would, but not Apple. Then again, the new VW iBug looks like an old school iMac.
