Why General Motors, Holden and Toyota should be worried about Tesla?

It's not often I blog about someone else's work, but these stats on Tesla's meteroric rise, are too good NOT to share.  Credit has to go to Tom Randall (@tsrandall), Senior Reporter at Bloomberg for the awesome pics and stats in this blog post.

But first I wanted to share my awesome experience of the latest version 9 Autopilot, that I tried out in Brisbane, a few months back,

Boy....has there been some serious improvements.  Last time I took a Tesla Model S for a test drive, was around 1.5 years ago.  And since then, the 'stay in lane' feature has come on leaps and bounds.  I used the feature for around 5 minutes on a stretch of highway.  The car in front was doing 70kmph in a 90kmph zone, and the Tesla slowed down gracefully.  It kept perfectly in the centre of the left lane, as the road curved, left, then right and sharply left again.  

At the next slip road, the vehicle in front exited.  Once it was clear of the Model S, the car gracefully accelerated up to the speed limit of 90kmph without a hitch and without any input.  All I had to do was to keep my hands on the wheel, so the car knew I was still alive.  The 'hands-on wheel' feature was brought in by Tesla after a couple of accidents in the US, where drivers had totally relied on the Autopilot and were not paying attention to the driving.  This feature aims to prevent such occurences.

All I can say it that is absolutely amazing, and I'm sure the experience translates precisely into the Model S and Model X cars.  Unfortunately you can not test drive a Model 3 in Brisbane, so here is the closest I got:

In Q3 of 2018 you can see that the production of the latest Model 3 car increased exponetially.  And it's likely this curve will continue through 2019 and 2020, as Tesla forfil a backorder in excess of 500,000 Model 3 orders. 

It took Tesla 10 years to see 0.5 million cars, which includes significant amounts of research and development time and money.  This was to hone the battery technology, the look of the various cars, and ensuring that all the components integrated seamlessly, and costs effectively.  This includes the following models:

• Model S - The first popular high-end all-electric luxury car.
• Model X - With Back to the Future style wing style opening doors, aka the Delorean.
• Model 3 - The cheaper, but still luxury, Sedan.

It looks like it will take only 15 months to reach the first 1 milion cars.  Check the stats below:

You can see from the stats below that the Model 3 is the 5th Best-Selling Sedan in the US.  

Not bad for a car that still costs around $55,000 USD.  

Let's now take a look at the value, known as market capitialisation, of the world's most valuable automotive makers:

Now this next graphic shows the progression of Tesla's cash flow.  This will likely lead to a positive $837millionUSD, as opposed to spring 2018, which was a negative at $795millionUSD:

 Mmmmm...maybe I should invest in Tesla stock???