Tesla delivered 241,300 vehicles in the third quarter of 2021. That surprised many, beat Wall Street's expectations, and sent the company's stock price up 5 percent. Tesla managed this at a time when most car company sales have dropped sharply due to supply chain issues. The mindset Elon Musk and Tesla employees used to overcome these issues is something every business leader and especially every entrepreneur can learn from.
It's hard to overstate how much of an achievement Tesla's third quarter was. Tesla sold 102,000 more cars than it did in the same quarter of 2020--an increase of more than 73 percent. The company set a record for quarterly production. Compare that with other car makers: General Motors' sales were down 33 percent and Ford's sales were down 27 percent in those three months compared to the same quarter last year.
"Achieving the output that we did achieve was only due to an immense effort from people within Tesla," he said. "We were able to substitute alternative chips. And then write the firmware in a matter of weeks. It's not just a matter of swapping out a chip. You also have to rewrite the software. It was an incredibly intense effort of finding new chips, writing new firmware, integrating with the vehicle, and testing in order to maintain production."
In other words, he and the employees at Tesla kept doing what they'd always done. They adapted to a changing landscape and found ways to solve problems on the fly. Later in the call, Musk even entertained the question of whether Tesla might solve the problem once and for all by building its own semiconductor plant. "People want to say, 'Why don't you just build a chip fab?'" he said. "Well, OK, that would take us--even moving like lightning--12 to 18 months. So it's not like you can just whip out a chip fab."
The moral of the story- GM, Ford, VW, Toyota et al are overburdened, bloated bureaucracies just like government. So think twice before giving anymore authority to Washington, DC on anything! The Biden administration is particularly adept at creating crises just so it can expand its control. Never mind "solutions" make matters worse. Fixing things is not their goal. Their goal is to expand government overreach. When you control legacy media you can spin victory from failure, as we're seen recently with the unemployment numbers. That's how Biden and the social-democrats roll. That's why they look upon entrepreneurs like Elon Musk with disdain. Hell, Trump too for that matter. Thank you.
It's hard to overstate how much of an achievement Tesla's third quarter was. Tesla sold 102,000 more cars than it did in the same quarter of 2020--an increase of more than 73 percent. The company set a record for quarterly production. Compare that with other car makers: General Motors' sales were down 33 percent and Ford's sales were down 27 percent in those three months compared to the same quarter last year.
"Achieving the output that we did achieve was only due to an immense effort from people within Tesla," he said. "We were able to substitute alternative chips. And then write the firmware in a matter of weeks. It's not just a matter of swapping out a chip. You also have to rewrite the software. It was an incredibly intense effort of finding new chips, writing new firmware, integrating with the vehicle, and testing in order to maintain production."
In other words, he and the employees at Tesla kept doing what they'd always done. They adapted to a changing landscape and found ways to solve problems on the fly. Later in the call, Musk even entertained the question of whether Tesla might solve the problem once and for all by building its own semiconductor plant. "People want to say, 'Why don't you just build a chip fab?'" he said. "Well, OK, that would take us--even moving like lightning--12 to 18 months. So it's not like you can just whip out a chip fab."
The moral of the story- GM, Ford, VW, Toyota et al are overburdened, bloated bureaucracies just like government. So think twice before giving anymore authority to Washington, DC on anything! The Biden administration is particularly adept at creating crises just so it can expand its control. Never mind "solutions" make matters worse. Fixing things is not their goal. Their goal is to expand government overreach. When you control legacy media you can spin victory from failure, as we're seen recently with the unemployment numbers. That's how Biden and the social-democrats roll. That's why they look upon entrepreneurs like Elon Musk with disdain. Hell, Trump too for that matter. Thank you.
