What is going to make more money, make more impact, and make Musk iconic? Building luxury cars that go fast, look nice, and run on electricity? Or creating the entire mechanism, infrastructure, and possibility of moving humans via battery?
Ford isn't famous for making a car, and there's good reason behind comparing Musk to Ford.
Tesla makes cars and they're funded by car sales, but the fundamental game changer they bring to the table is their battery tech and the infrastructure they're building in order to make it viable. When every car is driven by batteries, Tesla will have an unbelievably huge head start in finding, moving, selling, then using the power inside of them - whether it be made by Ford, Toyota, Nissan, or anyone else.
Pardon me for being overly pedantic (although that's perhaps ok on HN), but they are not making their own batteries, are they? They probably purchase Li-Ion elements from some other entity.
But I see your point, I think. They are building the entire infrastructure that goes with the electric car, not just the car itself. I agree that's very smart.
Tesla purchases 18650 battery cells from Panasonic (the same cells I use in my e-cigarette, in fact). What they have developed, however, is a battery management system that surpasses just about everything else on the current market, and that is what other car companies (or airplane manufacturers, etc) will be licensing from them in the future.
They have a proprietary wiring solution and a cooling system that works very well at preventing problems with one or a small batch of cells from spreading to the rest of the pack. On top of that is proprietary software that manages charging this system, and allows for things like quick charging without exploding the cells, which is no small feat for 60+ kWh.
Yeah, you're right. I don't believe they're building their own cells, true. But all the wiring for the types of cells they use, and especially the drivetrain, are proprietary, unique, and highly advantageous.
I guess it would be more correct to say "Tesla is a battery tech company." Still, people are too fixated on the fact that Tesla makes luxury cars. Much more important is the fact that they make very efficient, high performance, safe energy systems.
Wait, what?