Have to chime in once again : My reply to Jeff (and his argument, if I understood correctly) was about further monetizing these Superchargers in the future. As long as no other brand can use these stations there is no revenue beyond TSLA car sales, the $2k from lower-end buyers or maybe sponsorship deals with property owners.
I'm sure Tesla will be very happy to sell their drivetrain technology to other manufacturers. But at this point the only reason we're having this discussion is because Tesla is the company driving the market and that's what they have to continue to do. My view is that Tesla is trying to get to a position that will force other manuacturers to license their technology.
Tesla would be able to produce drivetrains at Fremont in very high numbers, much higher numbers than they could manufacture whole cars. Drivetrains also do not need a large network of stores and service centers. It's quite possible that in a mature market, Tesla could manufacture only high-end cars while being a drivetrain supply to one or more other manufacturers, which would allow them to scale back on other costs.
Something I don't understand is why you think that their Gen 3 strategy is risky. Gen 3 is about a
research push to make the electric drivetrain and other supporting technologies cheaper (and better in the case of charging), so that volume production will allow them to bring the base price down to a target of $35k.
If Tesla achieve its price target they'll raise the money to build out global production. If Tesla fails to achieve its price target, they won't.
But in the event of failure to hit the price target, it doesn't mean that the money spent on research will have been lost. Part of the reason Tesla's top-down strategy is so workable is that partial success is still success: lower cost will either increase margin or lower prices (and therefore increase sales volume) and increase profitability either way (I think they'd lower prices to build volume myself). If I recall correctly, in one of the earnings calls Elon Musk has already spoken about the potential for lowering target Model S/X margin to around 20% in the longer term. Having a large amount of spare capacity at Fremont gives Tesla a lot of wiggle room.
Many countries now build DC fast chargers using public funds; in short, my and your tax money is subsidizing other EV brands' infrastructure.
PS: Assuming free DC charging stations make sense, another manufacturer can duplicate this quickly for 100-200 million around the globe. The SC network is no unique, strategic TSLA advantage.
The SC network isn't just about being there, although any established complete network has an advantage. The SC network is also about charging speed and scalability. The competing cars plus network must be able to match or beat the Tesla (
wait+charge):drive ratio. The wait time is why Tesla uses a scalable design and continues to push the maximum and sustained rates of charging.
Going back to Tesla driving the market, the problem I see with your assumption is that no other manufacturer yet has a long-range BEV, many are still pushing PHEV and current DC charging stations are serving mid-range BEVs with high charge:drive ratios, which would lead to higher (wait+charge):ratios at volume.
Realistically, they need to have a long-range-BEV-specific DC charger network, but it's hard to build out an equivalent network when you don't have cars. Tesla committed to and started building the cars ahead of the network, and are gradually adding it, and can point to increasing amounts of real data that they can use in negotiations with landowners to say "(Let us) build it and they will come (with money)". But Tesla had no competition in their space. Other late entrants into the market would now be facing a Catch 22: if they try to build the network in advance, it will be hard to convince landowners to lease them space at reasonable rates; if they try to wait they're trying to convince people to buy their long-range BEV on a future promise, instead of a Tesla( Inside) that can use the established network.
The longer the manufacturers delay a release of a long-range BEV the harder it will be to compete with Tesla, which could mean a cooperative coalition will be required, which could further delay release. If during that period of delay just one established volume manufacturer licensed the Tesla drivetrain with Supercharging, it would make it harder for all of the others.
(And you may have noticed above that I didn't even mention the important challenge of matching Tesla's BEV prices without following their cell strategy or without stepping on their patents).
