Tesla is different from other electric cars on the market as it makes use of small, cylindrical batteries, such as those that are seen in laptops. The Nissan Leaf for example uses the large, flat cells and these are typically packed together and make it easy for the design team. Tesla on the other hand chose to go for the smaller batteries and this has created a challenge for engineers when it comes to wiring them together.
This has been something that has put other makers of electric cars on edge and the CEO of General Motors put together a task force to try to reverse engineer the design of Tesla. This could lead to an electric car that is more affordable.
The Model S came onto the market in 2012 and it became the Car of the Year at Motor Trend, despite the fact that only 40,000 units have been sold, which was far from the goal. This of course could be down to the price tag that comes with the car. It starts at $70,000 and rises fast, so in effect it is nothing more than a rich person’s car. Musk did say that he wants to offer a model that is affordable but he said that he thinks that this could be three years away.
The founder of DoubleLine Capital said that he wanted to do business with Musk if he forgot about making cars and put focus on supplying batteries to automakers.
Tesla has been shopping around for a location to build a battery factory, said that they need more manufacturing capacity in the years to come.
Of course manufacturing has not been the only area that Tesla has tried to disrupt, they also want to change how consumers buy cars by stopping the middleman.
Auto-sales is one of the highest pressure environments and salespeople do try to get potential customers into the car and see them drive it off the lot. However people at the retail stores of Tesla do educate customers and these people can then go to the website of the company and purchase a car from the company in California.
This makes auto dealers angry and of course they do have deep pockets when it comes to fighting Tesla,
One of the haters of Telstra is Governor Chris Christie, from New Jersey, he blocked the direct to customer sales strategy in March and said “This administration does not find it appropriate to unilaterally change the way cars are sold in New Jersey without legislation, and Tesla has been aware of this position since the beginning.”
New Jersey was the 5th state to ban the sales method of Tesla, Texas, Colorado, Arizona and Virginia has also done so.
It seems that auto dealers are not the only ones who are angry, as Musk is said to also be behind getting astronauts along with supplies into outer space in the SpaceX spacecraft, so competition here is unhappy too.
Musk went ahead and found Space X in 2002 with the aim of getting people on Mars. One of the capsules of Musks Dragon did become the first private craft to deliver cargo to the International Space Station.
Space X has recently been fighting tooth and nail competing with the Air Force satellite launch contracts. The company has said that the launch system would be able to save the taxpayer $1 billion per year. United Launch is the current contract holder and of course they are not happy, but it seems that just as with the car consumers, the government likes the idea of more launches of the Space X in the future.
