At times I wonder if Tesla, as far as the business goes, would be better off pivoting to being a battery company that happens to make cars than a car company that happens to make batteries.
They've been pushing the envelope on battery tech for some time now, and finding very useful, if at times novel, uses for it.
Developers want a solution, not cells. It’s why Tesla’s Megapack solution is so popular, and they have a years long pipeline even at 80GWh/year of manufacturing capacity (split equally between California and China). Autobidder is also state of the art for orchestrating the assets for developers.
With that said, BYD has a strong offering and recently landed a large contract (12.5 GWh) in Saudi Arabia.
AFAIK Tesla is already an energy tech company, some of their energy solutions happen to have wheels and some autonomy. We still think of Tesla as a car company because that is how they make money and also how most people experience Tesla given that they see them on the road. This is similar to Alphabet and Google Search situationship.
Perhaps if they have a CEO that focuses on the business such that BYD's CEO does. Without effective leadership, it's just an unattended machine that will not grow as fast as competitors will, although it'll continue to spit out cars and battery packs on existing lines as long as workers doing that work are happy enough to stay and quality stays "Tesla good enough” that consumers will continue to procure their products.
Hot take: Bring back JB Straubel (Former Tesla CTO). That’s who is the equivalent of BYD’s CEO. A driven, yet low key engineering leader. Culture comes from the top.
Well, currently the CEO is not only not doing his job at Testla, but actually doing his best to drive away Tesla's customers. And it's working, at least in Europe: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgd9v3r69qo
Musk fanboys are always impressed by how much he does, but it's becoming clear he can't have time to be the CEO of Tesla, owner of X, CEO of the Boring Company, CEO of SpaceX, CEO of SpaceX, CEO of xAI, owner of Neuralink, Reichsleiter of the DOGE, and top-20 Diablo IV player.
Great time to recall that Musk was unaware of the battery storage program at Tesla until someone pointed out the test installs they'd done of units in the car park to him. He immediately called for it to be shut down.
The battery storage part of the company is growing quickly with a new factory in China just coming online. That part of Tesla is growing faster than cars and Elon says it could be a bigger business in the long term.
They've been pushing the envelope on battery tech for some time now, and finding very useful, if at times novel, uses for it.