Tesla has been one of the motorists that has indeed managed to flourish this year despite the pandemic. And as the electric carmaker continues its rise, it becomes quite clear that lower-ranking motorists who refuse to make the transition to sustainable transportation are lagging behind. This is the case even if the motorist in question is Toyota, the previous Number 1 car manufacturer per brand cap.
Tesla only sells a fraction of the cars sold by Toyota each year, but the electric car manufacturer has a market cap that is now about $ 370 billion. That’s roughly equal to Hong Kong’s annual gross domestic product, and it’s now almost not reaching its full potential. TSLA bulls like Cathie Wood of ARK Invest note that Tesla’s Autopilot tech and data are largely ignored, and billionaire investor Ron Baron claims that Tesla Energy has as much potential as the company’s EV company.
Tesla is showing rapid growth all over the world, and this is no more evident than in China, a country that is currently home to the first offshore Gigafactory in Shanghai. Thanks to this, as well as efforts of grassroots routes that Teslas widely supports by the Chinese government, the company is about to reap benefits in the country. In Japan, however, things could not be otherwise. Tesla may have close ties with Japan thanks to its long-term battery partnership with Panasonic and its previous deal with Toyota, but today the mainstream cars of the eastern country remain out of reach for the maker of Silicon Valley.
Despite this, William Pesek, an award-winning Tokyo-based journalist and author of “Japanization: What the World Can Learn from Japan’s Lost Decades,” argues that Tesla’s rise around the world further highlights how the Japanese car brand is still gearing up in the first place. sit. In an article on the Nikkei Asian Review, Pesek notes that what Japan has been missing so far in the Tesla image is the fact that Elon Musk is doing so do not sell cars. While Japan is still focusing on hardware, Tesla is already researching software, which allows Elon Musk to sell more than iPhone on wheels. This will ensure that Tesla is able to embrace the next generation of engine.
“What Toyota has long missed about Musk is that it does not sell cars. He sells an iPhone with wheels. The car itself is only a medium to mark the software among the iTunes-like community it builds. The data that Tesla collects from users, their environment, interests, trends, travel habits and range of behaviors are likely to be more valuable than the high-performance engines and batteries they perform. This enables Tesla to sharpen the customer experience while distinguishing where the market will then disappear, ‘Pesek wrote.
Perhaps what Japan needs right now is to embrace the fact that disruption is sometimes a necessary evil in times of transition. Strictly speaking, legacy automakers like Toyota should have no problem picking up Tesla by, say, 2025, because of its massive talent pool and resources. However, this does not seem to be the case, as manufacturers like Toyota have a tendency to focus more on legacy than innovation. Toyota has refined its automotive manufacturing processes by dozens, and its global supply chain is helping to create millions of jobs. This, though noble in a way, is a weight that a company like Tesla just does not have.
Tesla moves hard, fails hard, and renews fast. The vertical integration of the company allows it to implement changes and improvements as soon as they are ready. Sure, motorists like Toyota could not afford such changes overnight, but efforts must be made to increase innovation. This is something that Japanese companies are capable of doing, as seen in Panasonic’s ongoing efforts and its long-term battery partnership with Tesla in Gigafactory Nevada. Maybe companies like Toyota, Nissan, Honda, and the other major Japanese manufacturers could do the same.
For now, it appears that Elon Musk has already won. So big is the gap in the electric car market that newcomers like Lucid Motors and Rivian Automotive seem to have a better chance of catching on to Tesla than legacy carmakers. But amid this threat of permanent abandonment, veterans in the automotive market could also see this time as an opportunity to change and increase their game for electric cars. If there’s anything that shows the rise of Tesla, it’s actually that innovative solutions are the new standard, and they are here to stay.
