Daimler

"To win over Panasonic, Straubel needed to convince Yamada that Tesla meant business. He had a plan. It harked back to how Tesla had cajoled early investors into taking a chance on a little startup. To stoke Daimler and Toyota for the Model S, years before it was ready, they had worked up mule cars—dummies that were close enough to the real thing to give their audience a taste of what was to come. Tesla needed something they could showcase, a mule factory. Blueprints for a factory, however, failed to capture the kind of excitement their prototype cars had. The Tesla team became convinced that they needed to demonstrate to Panasonic and other suppliers how serious they were about the project. Quietly, they forged a deal with landowners in Sparks and began preparing the site for construction. They called bulldozers and earth movers from around the state, erected massive lights, began moving tons of dirt. The bill was enormous, climbing to $2 million a day. Straubel wanted to have a site prepped for a demonstration to Tesla’s would-be partners. He had to make it convincing enough to suggest that Tesla was charging forward—with or without them."

"In Paris, André, who sees the first “horseless carriages” traveling the beautiful avenues of the Bois de Boulogne, suggests: Why not also put these strange vehicles that make a hellish noise and crawl like turtles on removable tires?” Since Panhard-Levassor bought the rights to Daimler engine patents in 1887, the automobile remains in France a pastime for a few wealthy, sporty, and somewhat crazy snobs. Its prices are astronomical, its performance unconvincing, its robustness questionable, its comfort appalling, its nuisances dreadful."

"TESLA: 7 FOR 7 Tesla is one of the few cleantech companies started last decade to be thriving today. They rode the social buzz of cleantech better than anyone, but they got the seven questions right, so their success is instructive: TECHNOLOGY. Tesla’s technology is so good that other car companies rely on it: Daimler uses Tesla’s battery packs; Mercedes-Benz uses a Tesla powertrain; Toyota uses a Tesla motor. General Motors has even created a task force to track Tesla’s next moves. But Tesla’s greatest technological achievement isn’t any single part or component, but rather its ability to integrate many components into one superior product. The Tesla Model S sedan, elegantly designed from end to end, is more than the sum of its parts: Consumer Reports rated it higher than any other car ever reviewed, and both Motor Trend and Automobile magazines named it their 2013 Car of the Year. TIMING. In 2009, it was easy to think that the government would continue to support cleantech: “green jobs” were a political priority, federal funds were already earmarked, and Congress even seemed likely to pass cap-and-trade legislation. But where others saw generous subsidies that could flow indefinitely, Tesla CEO Elon Musk rightly saw a one-time-only opportunity. In January 2010—about a year and a half before Solyndra imploded under the Obama administration and politicized the subsidy question—Tesla secured a $465 million loan from the U.S. Department of Energy. A half-billion-dollar subsidy was unthinkable in the mid-2000s. It’s unthinkable today. There was only one moment where that was possible, and Tesla played it perfectly. MONOPOLY. Tesla started with a tiny submarket that it could dominate: the market for high-end electric sports cars. Since the first Roadster rolled off the production line in 2008, Tesla’s sold only about 3,000 of them, but at $109,000 apiece that’s not trivial. Starting small allowed Tesla to undertake the necessary R&D to build the slightly less expensive Model S, and now Tesla owns the luxury electric sedan market, too. They sold more than 20,000 sedans in 2013 and now Tesla is in prime position to expand to broader markets in the future. TEAM. Tesla’s CEO is the consummate engineer and salesman, so it’s not surprising that he’s assembled a team that’s very good at both. Elon describes his staff this way: “If you’re at Tesla, you’re choosing to be at the equivalent of Special Forces. There’s the regular army, and that’s fine, but if you are working at Tesla, you’re choosing to step up your game.” DISTRIBUTION. Most companies underestimate distribution, but Tesla took it so seriously that it decided to own the entire distribution chain. Other car companies are beholden to independent dealerships: Ford and Hyundai make cars, but they rely on other people to sell them. Tesla sells and services its vehicles in its own stores. The up-front costs of Tesla’s approach are much higher than traditional dealership distribution, but it affords…"