Tesla is the new apple?
You mean tesla is going to intentionally cripple our old cars when a new model comes out? And try and integrate tesla products into every part of your life so you're stuck in the tesla ecosystem no matter how bad it becomes?
This is a good example where the comparison breaks down. Companies tend to branch out into other markets when the one they are in start to saturate, or they are otherwise hemmed in by competition and can't budge the margins. Another time companies branch out is when they see an unserved market and they go for it. Apple kind of did both. Apple grabbed a small percentage of the personal computer market early on with the Macintosh, but sales of Microsoft OS machines remained the market dominator through the 90s and into the 2000s.
Apple was market locked but saw opportunities to adapt their existing tech into new markets like digital music players and tablet computers and finally cell phones. Now Apple and most of their competitors are all trying to compete for the digital home and be the dominant tech throughout your house.
Tesla did expand into the solar energy business. They started with the PowerWall and then bought Solar City. I think the Solar City buyout was only to keep the company afloat. They were struggling in a very Balkanized market with constantly dropping prices. But the PowerWall is an expansion of Tesla's existing expertise in li-ion battery technology and it supports car charging as well as becomes a part of the home.
I expect Tesla will continue to innovate in energy storage and collection, which happens to help the supercharger network. But there is a deep vein to be mined in the transportation business that they have only begun to tap. There may come a time when you can't get transportation without entering the Tesla universe, but I don't see them moving into our homes much more than energy sources. I could be wrong, they could end up buying out one of the big players in home automation. But Tesla's "thing" is involved in energy and transportation and doing things nobody else is doing.
And that is where Apple and Tesla are similar. Both have a history of doing things nobody else thought of doing, or weren't doing successfully mostly by applying existing tech in new ways.
I wonder if tesla's bad QC is going to cost them more in repairs and lost customers than it would have cost just to build the cars better. I'm sure they had some accountants do the math at some point. They clearly determined it's more profitable to skip QC and do repairs if the customers whine, but did they take into account what that would do to the brand image?
One concern I do have with Tesla is they do manufacturing the old school way which does contribute to poor quality. Their products are so much more advanced than anyone elses they can get away with it, but it does hurt their primary goal, which is to make a better car in every way.
in one word "No." Tesla was downgraded again. Not sure how they recover from this to be honest. Expect many more downgrades from here. Not sure how long jonas keeps his price target.
Stock analysts have been downgrading Tesla every few weeks since they went public. Anyone who has shorted Tesla up to now has lost money.