Tesla's production strategy

Turn the Law around

There is a decision here that is somewhat counterintuitive, Tesla began to produce a car designed to not have a driver, even without having completely resolved autonomous driving, its name is Cybercab and production has already begun at the Giga factory in Texas, that alone would be news, but what really changes the game is not just the production, it is how Tesla decided to do it.

To this day, companies trying to put self-driving cars on the streets face a very specific limit: regulation. There is a rule in the United States that limits the number of non-standard vehicles, without steering wheels, without pedals, with a different design to about 2,500 units per year, only Tesla avoided it in a curious way.

Simply translated, instead of asking for special permission, he designed the car to comply with all existing rules as if it were an ordinary car, although it is anything but ordinary, which allows the CyberCab to be produced without that limit. In practice it means that, if everything works, the company can scale production without getting bogged down in the bureaucracy that has held back other initiatives.

And there the strategy appears because this car is not just another model, it is designed as a volume base, the idea is simple, most trips in the world occur with one or two people, so, instead of manufacturing large cars for individual use, smaller, autonomous vehicles are created, running all the time, it sounds efficient and it is, but there is a problem that has not yet been solved.

The car doesn't drive itself yet.

Tesla continues working on full self-driving and despite the promises, the system still presents flaws, situations in which the car hesitates, stops or simply does not make a decision and the data shows it. Today, on average these systems are still involved in more incidents than human drivers, that is, the hardware is ready, production has started, but the brain is still in development and that creates a strange scenario.

The company is building something on a scale that is not yet completely finished, at the same time betting on who will solve it along the way, the famous curve that Elon Musk himself mentioned starts slowly and then grows quickly. If that works, Tesla gets ahead, if it doesn't work, the risk also escalates.

If driving is already being automated, flying may be the next territory to shift to exploring, they don't think.