Tesla is Making Progress With Important Chinese Deals
China and the US have made a lot of waves around the world with the ongoing trade dispute. Tesla, and other multinational corporations get caught up in the middle of it all. With Currency manipulation being one of the topics being debated in many forums, many worry about future relations between the two nations. Some may recall that President Trump had rashly stated during the campaign that he would "fix" these problems with China. At the same time, Tesla plans to make the move sooner than later as these relationships and attitudes can change on a dime, especially with regard to westerns companies positioned in China.
[Source: Tesla]
The Chinese Economy slowing down also plays a part in the complicated trade relationship between China and the US. China's boom period is similar to many that have come and bust. Housing markets and other assets exploded in price pushing rent up, but now this is fizzing, and China needs more sustainable economic growth. Tencent, a chinese known around the world for digital apps and payment services bought a stake in Tesla back in March 2017. One thing that can help to jump-start Tesla's connections into the region.
General Motors and Ford both already have deals in China but the only cars sold are gasoline and diesel. This poses a huge problem for GM and Ford in China as many people die each year just from pollution. The move towards EV adoption is not a choice for the Chinese. It's a dire need to keep up the population's health. It's important to the chinese people that they work to reduce the carbon output and negate particulate emissions. China's explosion of population and economic growth helped to put the environment in such a perilous state.
Innovation into renewable energy technologies like Tesla's plan, is key to cut-down the pollution in China as well as other highly populated countries. Battery technology is the core of these innovations. As you can put batteries in any vehicle or use them to power entire communities with large-scale industrial ones like Tesla Energy builds.
Tesla is far ahead of the competition, soaring past their competitors by developing the most advanced battery technology. With timely investments into core research teams. Tesla moved the needle in this burgeoning space, as they are the largest buyer and producer of lithium batteries in the world. Smart phones and laptops have helped with this as well, but those devices carry entirely different properties versus electric vehicles/energy storage. Elon Musk, Tesla's CEO also spoke on twitter about having "Excellent meetings with Senior Leaders" in regard to China.
With so many companies working tirelessly to come out with a premium or western quality EV, it is surprising that zero have been able to complete with Tesla on a technological level. As the largest consumer of electric vehicles, I believe the partnerships Tesla makes with China could be one of many important steps Tesla needs to reach its goal of sustainability.
good summary. mine would be, our president is an idiot mucking up the works again and taking advantage. china tries to do good, tesla is doing better, hold on to your underwear cuz its gonna be a bumpy ride
I agree, it will be a bumpy ride. I'm still hopeful it will end up where we end up with cheaper and more accessible energy.
Interesting observations, I hadn't been following this angle but it makes a lot of sense and seems strategically significant. I really like that Tesla also made a lot of people scratch their heads when they open-sourced a lot of their technology work. The best way to win is to play a different game, and they don't seem to follow the old rules well.
They do have radically different tactics. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don't but I believe in the thinking, you don't know until you try.