At the moment most of them are running notably below capacity.
Tesla's growth plan originally had them doing factory expansions and new factory in Mexico by now, but instead they have pivoted to trying to keep utilization of their existing lines up by introducing cheaper trims of existing vehicles.
The benefit of having control is that they can adapt them to their priorities. Similar Apple designing its own chips when there were already viable producers in the market.
They won’t need to rely on others prioritizing their priorities, like low volume, high cost early investments in batteries designed for a market (humanoid robots) that doesn’t exist.
If they then scale them up, they also have the benefit that there is no 3p supplier who can turn around and sell those to a competitor.
At the moment most of them are running notably below capacity.
Tesla's growth plan originally had them doing factory expansions and new factory in Mexico by now, but instead they have pivoted to trying to keep utilization of their existing lines up by introducing cheaper trims of existing vehicles.
Batteries - lots of uses beyond EVs, but lots of EVs are making use of the batteries they can produce, as well.
you could make the same argument about batteries. Panasonic and other exist.
The benefit of having control is that they can adapt them to their priorities. Similar Apple designing its own chips when there were already viable producers in the market.
They won’t need to rely on others prioritizing their priorities, like low volume, high cost early investments in batteries designed for a market (humanoid robots) that doesn’t exist.
If they then scale them up, they also have the benefit that there is no 3p supplier who can turn around and sell those to a competitor.
Regular car factories with a fancy name.