Tesla: A chain of startups, says Elon Musk

During a call with investors and journalists, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla was asked to explain his tweet in which he said that his vehicle manufacturing company should be thought of as a chain of “roughly a dozen technology startups, many of which have little to no correlation with traditional automotive companies”. 

He told there are over a dozen startups in Tesla, and he views every product line and plant as a startup. Some of the so-called startups include autonomy, chip design, vehicle service, sales, designing a drive unit, motors, supercharger network and, soon, insurance, Musk explained.

“The thing people don’t understand about Tesla is [the company] is a whole chain of startups,” Musk said. “And then people say, ‘well, you didn’t do that before.’ Yeah, well, we’re doing it now. I think we may have been a bit slower than other startups, but I don’t think we’ve really had anything fail.”