Omnichannel and Auto Industry
Omnichannel is not only for retail. It is now here in auto industry, as Ford moves to "assemble to order" model.
Tag Tesla
Lordstown: The Land of Broken Promises
Taking a look at Lordstown Motors' fiasco, SPACs, Operations Scaling, and the continuing saga of manufacturing in the Midwest.
Musk moves out of CA
Musk moves out of California, on the way to Mars colony. What does it mean for the Tesla plant in California? Not much. I argue that building operational capacity and expertise is hard, and the scaling at the CA plant continues to be one of Tesla's continuing achievements.
Tesla Moving out of California?
Recently, Musk was again in news due to his tweets — probably not his most famous or costliest tweet ever — for threatening to move Tesla HQ out of California and manufacturing out of the Fremont CA plant. Supply chains and production has been sputtered in the US and elsewhere due to COVID. It is true that maintaining idle plants is prohibitively expensive. I take a look at how Fremont plant works well for Tesla, and how shifting capacity is complicated.
Tesla’s U-turn again
Tesla is making it harder to order the 35K Model 3 vehicles. I have argued that such a low price should not have pursued by closing showrooms, in the first place. Shutting showrooms for 35K cars makes it appear as if Tesla needs those less loyal, price-sensitive customers at the cost of diluting the high-service expectation that its top-line customers have.
Tesla Scales Back
A post about Tesla's decision to cut more than 3,000 jobs and scale back on showrooms. Tesla needs showrooms, but not for the often-quoted reason. I argue that after this decision, Tesla should focus on its most-valued customers by improving on their product service bundle.
Tesla Cars as Product-Service Bundles
What are the pitfalls of Direct-to-Consumer business models? I use Tesla's growth to talk about product service bundles.