Sunday, January 20, 2019
It's slippery
Elon taking part in a discussion on the hundreds of EV startups, especially in China:
I wish them well. Track record in auto startups is tough. Thousands of US auto startups, but only Ford & Tesla have avoided bankruptcy. A similar scenario is likely in all countries.
He says this often. It's slippery. Not strictly false but intentional point-missing.
In any field there are lots of non-serious startups and some serious ones. If we filter out the non-serious and look at 'comparables' to Tesla ... companies that produced thousands of cars for several years ... most of them were ABSORBED or TRANSFORMED, not bankrupted.
Among the serious carmakers present in 1930, many of them ended up as part of Chrysler directly or indirectly. Several switched to other products (beer, HVAC, trucks, trailers, real estate) and continued for many decades.
¶ 1:34 AM 
