Reviews Tesla boss open to mergers with other automakers

Tesla boss Elon Musk does not rule out a merger of the electric car supplier with traditional manufacturers from the industry.

© Patrick Pleul / dpa-Zentralbild / dpa Tesla has become by far the most valuable car manufacturer in the world thanks to the trend towards electromobility.

“We will definitely not start a hostile takeover attempt”, Musk emphasized on Tuesday evening at the presentation of the Axel Springer Awards in Berlin. But if a competitor should find “that it would be a good idea to merge with Tesla,” they'll talk about it. Thanks to the trend towards electromobility,

Tesla has become by far the most valuable car manufacturer in the world with a market value of around 550 billion dollars. That gives Musk plenty of leeway to use Tesla stock as an acquisition currency. The other automakers play in a different league when it comes to market value. VW is currently worth around 78 billion euros, Daimler a good 60 billion euros and BMW around 44.5 billion euros.

Facelift: New Tesla Model 3 should roll off the assembly line with these changes

Tesla has apparently revised its Model 3 and not only made visual changes. The revised Model 3 should already roll off the assembly line. © Electrek Tesla Model 3 with less chrome. At the Tesla plant in Fremont, California, Tesla Model 3s that have been modified in key areas are to be produced. This is reported, among other things, by Electrek . The manufacturer does not seem to limit itself to optical elements as in a classic facelift. A lot also seems to have changed technically.

Tesla has previously touted its use of data to improve existing features like Smart Summon, which CEO Elon Musk said in October had been used more than a million times. That allowed airlines to compete directly on price and launch competitive fare and market share wars against each other .

Tesla is in active talks to make its vast Supercharger network available to other automakers . Tesla CTO JB Straubel made a comment at the Midwest Renewable Energy Association's 28th Annual Energy Fair in Wisconsin that said the automaker has continued to investigate sharing Superchargers.

At the same time, shortly before Musk's appearance in Berlin, an email was announced in which the Tesla boss calls on his employees to be frugal - also with a view to the share price. Musk pointed out, among other things, that Tesla is currently improving profits by selling CO2 emission rights, while the actual core business earns little money.

“Investors give us an advance on future profitability. But if they decide not to happen, our stock will be crushed immediately - like a soufflé from a sledgehammer, ”the financial service quoted Bloomberg as quoted in Musk's Mail. To make Tesla vehicles cheaper, “we have to become smarter when it comes to spending,” he emphasized. Musk had promised a Tesla at $ 25,000 in three years.

With the completion of the Tesla factory in Grünheide near Berlin, he will spend more time in Germany, said Musk. The US company plans to build up to 500,000 electric cars per year in the plant from next summer. Musk also recently announced that over time, part of the factory would also become the world's largest battery manufacturer.

Tesla posts record results

© Tesla Tesla posts record results The pandemic and the recession are not dampening the momentum of the electric vehicle manufacturer, which posts sharply rising results. While many companies are suffering from the economic crisis linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, Tesla is doing quite well.

Traditional automakers sell more cars and earn much more profit than Tesla , which still has not Tesla has also seemed to overcome problems that hobbled its ability to bring new cars to market In addition to opening the Shanghai factory, the company has started building a third auto plant, near

CEO Elon Musk says that Tesla is currently open to licensing software, supply powertrains, and batteries to other automakers struggling to make electric cars. Recently, we reported on automakers admitting that Tesla has a lead on several key areas of developing and building electric vehicles.

The decision to relocate the European Tesla plant near Berlin was due, among other things, to relatively affordable living space, said Musk. The plant should have around 12,000 employees.

When Springer boss Mathias Döpfner asked where he would be spending the night on Wednesday, Musk said he would sleep in a conference room in the still unfinished factory in Grünheide. "It gives me a very good sense of what's going on," he explained. Among other things, Musk had slept in a conference room at the main factory in California during the difficult production start-up of the currently most important Tesla vehicle, Model 3.

Musk also said that in ten years' time the majority of new vehicles will have autonomous driving capabilities, he believes. At the same time, for the time being, there will be situations in which people like to drive themselves. "But it will be increasingly unusual to drive your own car." Tesla's software, which can relieve drivers of the control of the car in most situations, should be ready for the market next year - even if approval by regulators could take longer. Unlike most other developers, Musk wants to do without the more expensive laser radars in autonomous driving and get by with cameras and radar sensors alone.

After the US election: This means Joe Biden's presidency for Tesla

Unlike Donald Trump, the designated US President Joe Biden has committed himself to the fight for climate protection - positive for Tesla and other electric car manufacturers. But Tesla could have other plans. © Vitaliy Karimov / Shutterstock Tesla. Still-US President Donald Trump had overturned important environmental protection regulations of the Obama administration and withdrew from the Paris climate protection agreement.

Tesla boss Elon Musk, who has been opposed to the lockdown measures, told investors in earnings call on Wednesday that he considers it forcibly imprisoning people in their homes against all their constitutional rights. Demand for Tesla 's electric cars held up in the first three months of the year

" Tesla is open to licensing software and supplying powertrains & batteries. "The supply could lower the entry barriers for startup EV makers , posing a potential threat to legacy automakers , which have their own platforms," said Park Chul-wan, a South Korean battery expert and a professor at Seojeong

Musk, who is also the head of the space company SpaceX, confirmed that he could imagine being buried on Mars. "Just not on impact," he joked. "We all have to die at some point - and if you already have the choice of being buried on Mars ..." The 49-year-old star entrepreneur also repeated his warning that the development of artificial intelligence would be "more dangerous than an atomic bomb" could be.

The undoped prize of the Springer Group (“Bild”, “Welt”) is being awarded for the fifth time. This annually honors people who, according to Springer, are particularly innovative, create and change markets, shape culture and at the same time face their social responsibility. Previous winners were Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, web pioneer Tim Berners-Lee, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and the economist Shoshana Zuboff, who is known as a critic of online platforms.