How Tesla was able to fight its way from industry newcomer to electric car giant

shares in this article

• First electric car 2008
• Model 3 best-selling electric car in the world
• Price increase from USD 17 (December 2010) to USD 242.40 (October 2022)

The visionary entrepreneur is closely linked to the success of the electric car manufacturer from California Elon Musk. In 2004, he joined Tesla Motors, which was still a small company at the time, for six million US dollars and became CEO in 2008. The price of $17 per share at the IPO has meanwhile (after several stock splits) become $242.40 per share.

Elon Musk’s takeover

Although large parts of today’s success are attributed to Elon Musk, the first word did not go to him. In July 2003, Martin Eberhard founded the company together with Marc Tarpenning and named it after the inventor Nikola Tesla. Even then, they were convinced that electric cars would play an important role in the future. In addition, they did not agree that General Motors took back the leased electric cars of the EV1 model in order to scrap them. A year later, Elon Musk joined and became CEO in 2008. As a result of an agreement, he can officially call himself a co-founder of Tesla. The two original founders have left the company in 2007 and 2008 respectively.

Tesla’s first electric car

In March 2008, Tesla’s first electric car, the Tesla Roadster, went into production. This consisted of the body of a classic sports car and had a range of 350 kilometers, which was groundbreaking at the time, and almost 300 hp. The drive battery consisted of lithium-ion batteries, which are also used in notebooks. It followed the IPO on June 29, 2010 at an issue price of 17 US dollars per share. A value that was even classified as unexpectedly high at this point in time. Tesla was the first US automaker to go public since Ford in 1953. The Model S is the world’s first all-electric sedan, with even greater range and better performance than the Tesla Roadster. Tesla drivers can use the superchargers Tesla introduced in 2012 to charge their cars. There are now more than 36,000 Superchargers at over 3,000 locations worldwide. Up to the Model 3, three other electric cars were developed and brought to market, but said Model 3 had it all.

Avoid multiple bankruptcies

With the production of the Model 3, the company faced enormous difficulties. These were so severe that Tesla was said to be just weeks away from bankruptcy as money was burned like crazy – even as the Model 3 became the world’s best-selling electric car at the same time. Unlike the other models, the Model 3 was no longer in the luxury segment, but was available for the price of a mid-range car. But that wasn’t the only near-bankruptcy Tesla had to contend with. In 2008, the company was only a few days away from bankruptcy and was particularly dependent on outside financiers. In May 2009, what was then Daimler AG bought a stake in Tesla for 50 million US dollars. The value of the investment would be in the billions today if CEO Dieter Zetsche had not sold the stake in 2014 for 600 million euros.

What speaks for Tesla

But the Tesla super meltdown didn’t materialize and the soaring Tesla share doesn’t seem to be coming to an end. At times, the Californian electric car manufacturer was more valuable than the three German car giants VW, Daimler and BMW combined. In contrast to the three just mentioned, Tesla recognized early on that for large quantities of electric cars there is no way around its own cell production, which also seems to be superior to its competitors not only in terms of quantity but also in terms of quality. As a result, there are hardly any quality problems or difficulties from suppliers with the batteries for the Tesla models. Circumstances that other car manufacturers are far removed from. In general, supply chain issues are less common at Tesla because a large portion of the components are manufactured in-house right on site. The electric car manufacturer has now opened so-called gigafactories in Nevada, Shanghai, Texas and Brandenburg. In addition, to save raw materials, the company’s battery factories have already started to implement a recycling system. Thus, 100 percent of the Tesla batteries received are to be recycled, with a full 92 percent of the raw materials being reusable.

Editorial office finanzen.net

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