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You hear it all the time: Tesla is not a car company, it is a technology company.
Indeed, Tesla is based in Silicon Valley, popularized all-electric expensive cars among the elite technologies and redesigned the car into a dynamic software platform.
Check, check, check – but that does not make a tech company. In fact, Tesla is becoming more and more a car business every day as it manufactures and sells more cars. In addition, almost all of Tesla's revenues come from its vehicle sector. Difficult to avoid that.
I could go on, but even people who admit that Tesla is a car company tend to compare it to BMW or Porsche, builders who move into the luxury performance segment and can generate double-digit profit margins.
There is however a car company Tesla already looks like: Honda.
Read more: Tesla has recorded two consecutive quarters of profits – here are the top 5 recipes for this success
Tesla the integrated energy conglomerate
In fact, Tesla should probably consciously strive to become even more like Honda. Here's why. Tesla ceased to be Tesla Motors a few years ago and became Tesla's integrated energy conglomerate. Electric vehicles are an area of activity. Solar energy solutions are another, following the acquisition of SolarCity in 2016. Then there is the energy storage, based on Tesla battery technology, which is a company additional.
Now, let's look at Honda. Its automotive sector is the eponymous brand, which arrived in the United States in 1959, and the luxury brand Acura, launched in 1986. Honda has been manufacturing motorcycles and scooters since the 1940s. All suburban residents know that the company produces lawn mowers and snowblowers. Its generators are legendary. It also manufactures engines, including high-performance racing engines. And for a brief period, it was in the solar energy sector. More recently, he has entered the private jet game.
Honda is recognized in the automotive industry as the most technical automaker after BMW (which has a motorcycles division). "I think it's best when I have a key in my hand," said one day the founder of the company, Soichiro Honda. Following in his footsteps means knowing how things work.
Although Silicon Valley has adopted Tesla as a kind of software-side company, the company of CEO Elon Musk is actually a design and engineering company. Code is cool, and Musk is adept at talking that talk. But the most important achievement of Tesla is to create a viable market for electric vehicles, a century after their defeat in favor of internal combustion engine cars.
Like Honda in many ways – except motorcycles
Musk himself is perhaps the most technically knowledgeable CEO of the industry (at least when it comes to electric vehicles) (he is certainly the most knowledgeable in rocket science) . He sadly worked on his own badembly lines and slept in his own factories. It is, in short, the Soichiro Honda electric cars. And batteries. And solar panels.
The only way for Musk to deviate from Honda's chief engineer's manual is his categorical refusal of Tesla to make an electric motorcycle. But even this stems from personal experience. Musk went off-road when he was a child and later deceived death almost as an accident on a larger bike. This is a position that could actually be detrimental to Tesla, as a two-wheeled company vehicle would likely double the tiny electric motorcycle market overnight.
At a more serious level, Honda has had decades of success putting into practice an engineering-driven culture. Honda performs and performs brilliantly.
It's something that Tesla has not always done. And could learn to do. Of the master.
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