With sales records and a capitalization that broke the trillion dollar ceiling, Tesla deserves some reflection.
The founder of Revlon taught that “in the factory we produce cosmetics, in the shop we sell hope”. At the factory, all machines are machines. But who buys a Tesla is really buying a car, like Porsche or Ford or any other brand? If the new manufacturer had proposed a normal range, made up of electric and thermals, how much attention would the customers have given it? Especially those who spend very large sums and expect to lead the state of the art of auto-motor technology. Of course, if the engine and gearbox are missing, the bar goes down, but it is equally likely that they would not have deigned to look at it. No, those who drive a Tesla know they are not showing off a car, no matter how beautiful and with futuristic software, but something completely different. It is the distancing of polluting and noisy motorists from the people, the most advanced form of distinction, the one based on the civic sense of harmony with the environment and with the future. Elon Musk sensed it and rides it: honor to his entrepreneurial genius.
But is the undisputed commercial success only the result of intuition and tenacity, or have others helped him? Here too, what attitude would the existing builders have, the incumbent, the owners of the ironworks, if the new tiny producer had knocked on proposing a normal range? They would have put around, without ever mentioning it, all sorts of denigration, on quality, on the lack of industrial history and customer franchises, on the absence of a distribution network.
Instead, they shrugged, trusting that the niche would stay that way and that the adventure would end up buried under the mountain of losses, unable to produce a dollar of dividend. They had their reasons, given that the capitalization of the world‘s top ten groups had gone from $ 344 billion in 2000 to $ 716 billion in 2015.
At the time Tesla had just started, but already the following year it was in the top ten and in 2020 we find it in first place with 555 billion. The singular aspect is that the value of the other nine groups has remained the same. Perhaps this has opened their eyes, indicating that it was not the dividend but the expected value that drove the shareholders. Then they changed their strategy, even pointing to the newcomer as a reference to imitate and putting themselves in the wake: at least a singular choice.