Apple spends about $4 billion on R&D per year. That willingness to spend on R&D would only help Tesla. And Tesla can’t be a cash cow until it becomes profitable.
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Would you guys like to see Apple buy Telsa?
- Thread starter Ultron
- Start date
FlatSix911
Porsche 918 Hybrid
The reason I posed this question is because I feel the technology that Tesla is developing is as important and earth changing as the technology Apple developed with the iPhone and how it changed the world. However, I wonder if Tesla has the financial staying power to see the full development and market penetration of this technology. We all know this is the future but is Tesla as a company capable of getting there?
jebinc
Well-Known Member
gavine
Petrol Head turned EV Enthusiast
You might want to recheck your numbers... the current market cap is $42.1B
Exactly, which is why Elon Musk would never sign. He doesn't vest shares until Tesla market cap reaches $100B and he's CEO. Unless Apple buys at a SP reflecting $100B, there's no deal.
I think you’re absolutely right about the magnitude of what Tesla has done/is doing. It’s parallel to what the iPhone did for smartphones.
And *many* pundits said Apple would fail miserably as they had never manufactured phones before and were getting into a new market. Just as they’ve done with Tesla. But the fact of the matter is that all the other companies that are going full steam on EVs (VW, Audi, Porsche, etc. Even Chevy) are following in the path that Tesla blazed.
Like Apple, Tesla proved that if you put enough in to the design, people will be willing to put down good money for the product even though it means changing the paradigm that that they’re used to.
ACA Man
Member
FlatSix911
Porsche 918 Hybrid
Was this a typo? I think you meant $100B...
Yeah, I have a bad habit of writing the posts without proofreading. But $100B of course.
Did you say that APPLE has the best customers service?!!! Holy Toledo... how far we've fallen if that's true.
I do like Apple products... they're not perfect but work well for the most part. But when I deal with them, I feel like they're programmed to maximize the product of frustration level * $$$ extracted. It's not enough to get one or the other. You need both.
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Well... it may come to that if Tesla has a significant misstep.
So, then pick your poison..
Apple
Ford
Daimler
China
These are the most likely candidates, I think. I think I'd be split 50/50 on either Apple or Daimler.
Barf.
The iPhone is not earth changing. Its just a handicapped laptop. The world was perfectly fine before the advent of smartphones. Particularly, kid’s lives were more adventurous before iPhone. Every time I see a little kid on the phone at the movies, restaurant, sporting event, etc., I just want to......
What Apple developed was evolutionary, not revolutionary. Microsoft had had full screen windows PDAs for a long time. And of course there were blackberry smartphones. It was obvious that these things were going to some together. Apple just did first, and did a better job than anybody else, and maybe they pushed things ahead a year.
What Tesla did was going to happen anyway, too. But I'd say that Tesla pushed it all ahead by a decade. Witness the fact that the competition still doesn't have a car equivalent to the 2012 Model S, 7 years later. It's still evolutionary, but a much much bigger leap.
Aside: around 2003, so still in the UK, a group of 4 of us were in a pub. One of them had a Windows Mobile smartphone, with a bar form factor, as was normal at the time. He said that the market would move to smartphones. I said yes, but the form factor would change more to PDA-style for practicality, because screen size and resolution were so important that kind of use. I was all pretty obvious.
Digital music was similar. I bought an mp-man f20, I think in 1999 or 2000, before the release of the Creative NOMAD and certainly before the iPod. (It's one of few areas in which I'm an early adopter). The f20 only had 32MB, expandable with SmartMedia to 64MB, with slow file transfer over a parallel port interface, but still the advantages (small, light, fast, excellent battery life, no skipping problems) were so clear that it was screamingly obvious that improvements to the underlying technologies would soon makes compressed digital music players the norm. What Apple did was to improve the whole usability experience from player to ripping/buying music, and, even more importantly for their finances, took advantage of Internet music piracy to sucker the music industry into ceding control of the market.
You forgot GM. When GM says that they're going to start their new electrification era with Cadillac, I wonder if they mean they're hoping Tesla won't get themselves out of their financial hole, so they can buy them out. GM is debt-laden, but only because activist investors are forcing the company to take on debt to do share buybacks.
No, I didn't forget GM. I don't see GM as having the strength to pull it off, and so discounted it.
tinm
2020 Model S LR+ Owner
Sure if Apple wants to buy Tesla for $2000+ a share I would have no problem with that.
As long as they first fix all the MacOS bugs in Mail and Preview first.
As long as they first fix all the MacOS bugs in Mail and Preview first.
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