Today is the fifth and final episode of Elon Musk’s story.
Last time we talked about the successful launch of SpaceX's fourth rocket. The company's funds were basically in deficit. At this time, NASA came to the rescue and threw out a $1.6 billion contract to bring SpaceX back to life. Musk became famous overnight and attracted two engineers who were researching electric aircraft to come to him for financing, but Musk was not very interested.
Before leaving, the two engineers mentioned that they had been researching electric car projects. Musk immediately became excited. One of the engineers, named Straubel, quickly introduced Gage, the owner of AC propulsion electric car company, to Musk. It turned out that Gage only wanted to provide technology and was not willing to develop the entire vehicle.
But Gage introduced two engineers who were preparing to build electric cars, Eberhard and Tarpenning, to Ma. These two were the real founders of Tesla.
Soon in 2004, Musk invested $6.5 million and became a major shareholder of Tesla. However, four years later, due to the company's financial crisis, Musk was dissatisfied with CEO Eberhard's management and replaced him from the CEO position. Eberhard chose to resign in anger.
Soon, Tarpenning also left Tesla. From then on, Musk officially became the new owner of Tesla. However, the development of Tesla's first car, Roadster, was not smooth. The transmission problem could not be solved and the cost was also high.
At a critical moment, Musk's backyard was in trouble again. His wife suffered from severe depression after giving birth to their second child and wanted a divorce. Under the media's hype, Musk became a liar who occupied the company and an irresponsible husband. So, how did Musk get through the difficulties in 2008? How did he continue to make great strides afterwards? Let's continue to talk about this in today's program.
In June 2008, Musk was upset by his divorce and the poor progress of the Tesla Roadster project. At this time, a buddy called him and wanted to take him out for a walk to relax. What can two men do when they go out for a walk? It must be to go to a place full of beautiful women and do something that can make themselves happy.
The guy who called was called Bill Lee, who also invested a little money in Musk's company. But that's not the point. The point is that Leo's wife's father is former US Vice President Albert Gore, and his wife's grandfather is an internationally renowned environmentalist who mainly studies global warming. So, your social circle determines the height of your career.
Leo first took Musk to the Aston Martin factory for a tour, and the CEO of Aston Martin accompanied him throughout the trip. But in his eyes, Musk is just an amateur, at best a car enthusiast, and Tesla is just a toy in his eyes, not a car at all.
That night, Leo took Musk to a high-end club in London and went straight to the VIP room. As soon as Musk entered the room, the fog in his heart instantly dissipated. Male compatriots all understand what kind of picture this is. In this room, there is Musk's next wife, British actress Lula Riley.
Less than three days after they met, they had become more than just friends. Musk even wanted to take her to the United States, but Riley hesitated. But soon, she flew from the UK to the United States to meet Musk. They dated from 2008 until they got married in 2010, when Musk was 39 and Riley was 24.
Marriages between an old man and a young woman are generally not favored by the outside world, and this marriage obviously did not receive the support of Riley's parents. As expected, the two divorced after 2 years. However, they remarried 18 months later, but within less than a year of remarriage, they divorced again. Riley received $4.2 million in the first divorce and $16 million in the second divorce.
In the last episode, we mentioned that in February 2008, Tesla held a delivery ceremony for the new Roadster. In fact, only seven cars were delivered this time, which were provided as the "Founder Series" to Musk and other investors, including Google founders Page and Brin, eBay founder Skoll, and Tesla's real founder Eberhard, etc. Does everyone look familiar with this operation mode? In 2017, NIO EP9 also held a delivery ceremony, and 6 cars were customized for investors.
With the support of many Silicon Valley celebrity car owners, major media began to boast that the Roadster was the best electric car they had ever seen, with performance comparable to 911 and appearance that beat Ferrari. But only Tesla employees knew that the gearbox problem had not been solved. It was not until the end of 2008 that the gearbox problem was finally solved, but the manufacturing cost of each car rose from $100,000 to $120,000.
Therefore, Musk decided to raise the price of the car from $92,000 to $109,000. This move made more than 400 customers who ordered Tesla extremely angry, and Musk was almost beaten at a customer meeting in Los Angeles.
Musk was actually feeling very aggrieved. Not only did he lose money on every Roadster he sold, but he also needed more than 4 million dollars a month to maintain Tesla's operations. At the time, the company had less than 1 million dollars in its account. In Musk's words, if he didn't see any money coming in within a week, the company would definitely close down. Fortunately, Musk had many friends. Bill Lee, who was mentioned earlier, lent him 2 million dollars for emergency use, and Google founder Sergey Brin also paid 500,000 dollars. These were all borrowed from personal relationships, and he didn't expect Musk to pay them back. Musk's brother Kimball also sold several properties to help Musk.
At the end of 2008, SpaceX suddenly received a $1.6 billion NASA order. Musk hurriedly negotiated with NASA to see if he could lend some funds to Tesla for emergency assistance. Surprisingly, NASA agreed to this decision. At this time, Musk sold some of his shares in SolarCity, a solar company, and continued to invest in Tesla. Then he asked his cousins Lyndon and Russ' software company Everdream to borrow $15 million. After scraping together more than 20 million, Musk quickly found investors and told them that he had put all his last capital into the fight, and asked if everyone could chip in a little to help, but the investors were still unmoved. At this time, Musk still wanted to save Tesla through government loans.
Some people may ask, is Musk borrowing money everywhere to continue the development of Roadster? No, in fact, at this time, Musk already knew that this so-called electric supercar Roadster was a money-loser, and it was almost a fantasy to expect it to make money. However, the purpose of hyping the fame of Roadster in the early stage has been achieved, and the mission of this car has been completed. The next money raised must be invested in the development of the new model Model S.
If you look at the gear lever on the right side of the Model S and the wiper control lever on the left side, you will find that they are exactly the same as those on Mercedes-Benz cars. In fact, when Tesla encountered a crisis in 2008, it was Daimler that saved Tesla. Later, Daimler-Benz engineers also helped Tesla develop the Model S. In May 2009, Daimler also acquired nearly 10% of Tesla's shares and gave the latter a life-saving sum of $50 million.
I guess Daimler must be regretting this decision now. In 2014, Daimler was not optimistic about the future development of Tesla and sold its shares. Daimler's leaders entered Tesla when it was the poorest and left when Tesla was about to become rich. They cultivated an opponent who subverted themselves. It was really a wave of operations.
Musk was really lucky. Before the subprime mortgage crisis broke out in 2007, he flew to Germany and visited Weber, the global head of R&D at Daimler. At that time, the Roadster was still in the R&D stage, and Musk wanted to learn from Daimler and fool the Germans to see if they were interested in electric cars. He could help them modify electric cars and make some money for the company.
It happened that in 2007, Daimler had just released the electric version of Smart and was also looking for suppliers. Musk exaggerated his company's technological advantages in front of Weber. In fact, he knew very well what Tesla Roadster was. As a result, in December 2007, Daimler executives really decided to visit Tesla in Silicon Valley a month later.
When Musk saw that there was a chance, he immediately asked all employees of the company to put aside their current work. He made a bold decision to build an electric smart car for Daimler executives to see before they came. At that time, a friend asked, "Boss, we don't sell smart cars in the United States." Musk asked, "Where is the nearest smart store?" The friend replied, "In Mexico." Musk said, "That's great. Go to Mexico and get me one, right away."
So in less than a month, Tesla engineers modified an electric version of Smart. When Daimler's executives came to Tesla, Musk gave them a surprise. Daimler executive Kohler got in the car, stepped on the accelerator, and the car whooshed out of the garage.
Kohler was very shocked at the time and felt that electric Smart was the future direction. Of course, if he had read more reports from the American news media at the time and knew about the transmission problem of the Roadster, there would probably be no subsequent story. Not long after the Daimler executives returned, they decided to purchase 1,000 battery packs for Smart from Tesla, with a total order value of US$40 million.
In May of that year, Daimler invested another $50 million in Tesla. When Toyota heard about this, it decided to follow suit. In 2010, Toyota also invested $50 million to buy 3.15% of Tesla's shares, and jointly developed the electric version of RAV4 with Tesla. Later, Toyota also sold its California factory to Tesla for a bargain price of $42 million.
However, the honeymoon period between Toyota and Tesla was very short. In 2012, the electric version of RAV4 was launched and sold very poorly. Toyota's view on electric vehicles began to change 180 degrees. In 2016, Toyota sold all its Tesla shares.
Having survived the 2008 crisis, Tesla enjoyed great success in 2009 with the backing of Daimler and Toyota. Not only that, Tesla also received a low-interest loan of $465 million from the U.S. Department of Energy. The company even had government backing, which made it more confident.
Finally, on June 29, 2010, Tesla successfully went public on the NASDAQ. At that time, Tesla had only sold more than 1,000 cars. This is not only the first American automaker to go public since Ford's IPO in 1956, but also the only independent manufacturer of pure electric vehicles listed in the United States.
You can say Musk is lucky, but luck comes to those who are prepared. In 2008, Musk decided to develop the second mass-produced car, Model S. In fact, he was not sure because he had not found a factory that could mass-produce tens of thousands of cars. It was a problem where to build this car. As a result, in 2009, he got close to Toyota, a big boss, and coaxed and deceived Toyota to take over the Fremont factory in the San Francisco Bay Area. This factory is as large as 88 football fields. In the next few years, hundreds of thousands of Model S and Model X rolled off the production line in this factory.
Tesla Roadster was discontinued in 2011. In the same year, a Chinese drove a Roadster back to China and became the first Tesla owner in China. For Tesla, Roadster was just a trial run. The mass-produced Model S was the iconic model that created Tesla's glorious history. This car became a hit as soon as it was launched, but the process of developing this car was also full of hardships.
In 2007, Musk was looking for designers to develop a new car, Model S. He hoped that this car must be designed from scratch, the kind of car that would make people feel wow when they saw it.
He looked for a lot of big names in the automotive design industry and finally chose a guy named Fisker to design the appearance of the Model S. He told Fisker that the price of this car was $50,000 to $70,000, and he hoped it would be on the market within two years, and that it looked like the car was much more expensive than the price.
Fisker assured that this task was a piece of cake for him, because he had worked as a designer for traditional car companies such as BMW and Ford for nearly ten years, and Aston Martin DB9, Aston Martin V8 Vantage and BMW Z8 were all his masterpieces. Musk patted Fisker on the shoulder and said, "Brother, I believe in your ability."
However, later facts proved that one can trust strength but not character. Musk later described Fisker's design as "a weasel laying mice, each one is worse than the last." Fisker's poor design seriously affected the work progress of the Tesla team.
Musk was puzzled. He paid a lot of money, and Fisker's previous works were also obvious to all. How could it be so terrible when it came to his car? Musk described the early Model S designed by Fisker as a huge egg, without any aesthetic appeal. Fisker was still quibbling at this time, saying that Tesla had too many restrictions on him and they were too strict.
Six months later, the truth came out. It turned out that Fisker had founded his own company, Fisker Automotive, in 2005, and launched the Karma hybrid car in January 2008. The car was sharp and sexy. After reading it, Musk was so angry that he wanted to vomit blood. He realized that his previous communication and suggestions with Fisker were all used by Fisker in the design of this car, and the design plan given to him was just perfunctory.
Musk felt that he had fooled others for decades, and this time he was finally fooled. In April 2008, Tesla sued Fisker, but lost the case. However, the final outcome of Fisker Automotive was that it went bankrupt in 2013 after burning through $1.4 billion. But after Fisker went bankrupt, China's Wanxiang Group and Li Zekai's company came to acquire it. In the end, Wanxiang Group acquired Fisker Automotive for $149.2 million, but Fisker himself retained the Fisker trademark. Wanxiang Group renamed the company Karma, and the Karma model was renamed Revero and continued to operate.
But the story doesn't end here. Fisker Automotive has revived and started a second venture. In 2020, it acquired SPAQ for a special purpose and successfully went public through a backdoor listing. Without building a single car, the company's market value has skyrocketed to $2.9 billion.
Are you familiar with the term "special purpose listing"? Yes, Jia Yueting's FF was successfully listed in this way not long ago. The reason why Fisker Automotive can make a comeback has a lot to do with Fisker's wife.
Fisker's wife, Geeta, is known as the female Iron Man of Silicon Valley. She holds a PhD in biotechnology from Cambridge University and has been working as an investment consultant for banks and foundations. She married Fisker in 2012 and started working with her husband to revive Fisker Automotive in 2016. They first brought in Magna, the "Foxconn of the automotive industry", to join the cooperation, and then the real Foxconn also came to support it. Currently, Fisker Automotive is also doing well. Musk probably looked at the news about Fisker and shook his head and smiled bitterly. It is a joke in our electric car circle that such a person with such a bad character can end up like this.
Let's get back to Tesla. After canceling the cooperation with Fisker, Musk began to look for the next designer. At first, he planned to hire the then famous Apple designer Fadell with a high salary. This guy designed the iPod and iPhone. But after the conversation, Musk found that unless he was asked to be the CEO of Tesla, Fadell would not be interested at all.
Musk finally found another designer, who was Fisker's schoolmate, Holzhausen. This guy worked at Volkswagen for 8 years, then moved to GM, and then to Mazda. It can be said that he has learned the design styles of German, American and Japanese cars.
So, if you look at the Tesla Model S now, you can't really tell which country's style it has, it's a mix and match. But if you look closely, this car still has some shadows of the Mercedes-Benz CLS. There's no way around it. When the Model S was first designed, the car that was most referenced was the Mercedes-Benz CLS. It's nonsense to say that it was built from scratch.
Holzhausen's joining put the Model S project on the fast track, but Musk still often interfered, demanding that the screen in the car be bigger, that the entire car be made of an all-aluminum body, and that the door handles be hidden so that they would pop out automatically when approached.
Finally, in March 2009, Tesla held a delivery ceremony at SpaceX headquarters with four Model S and 20 Roadsters. As usual, Musk invited a large number of celebrities and political and business celebrities to the scene to promote the event.
Schwarzenegger continued to cheer for Musk, Clinton's office director McLarty also exclaimed in front of the camera, and the US State Department's Chief of Staff for Political and Military Affairs, O'Cannell, even asked Musk if his company was short of people. Later, he really became Tesla's vice president of business development and brought in a large number of high-end customer resources.
With the help of celebrities, Tesla Model S received more than 10,000 orders when its daily production was still in the single digits. It was not until June 2012 that Model S was officially delivered to consumers. Although Tesla was in the limelight at the time, traditional car companies still looked at Tesla like a child playing house, because even if this car company sold 35,000 cars a year, it would account for less than 1% of the entire car market, which was almost negligible. However, with the launch of Model X in 2015 and Model 3 in 2017, the situation became uncontrollable. Tesla hit the seemingly indestructible market of traditional car companies with an unstoppable pace.
In January 2013, Musk suddenly announced that he would enter the Chinese market and that he would invest hundreds of millions of dollars in building charging stations in China, realize localized production in the next 3-4 years, and set up an engineering research and development center in China. Tesla did what it said. In its 2013 global store opening plan, Tesla first opened one of the 25 new stores in Fangcaodi, Chaoyang District, Beijing. In this place where every inch of land is valuable, it took a 740-square-meter showroom. This area is three times the size of the showrooms in the United States. It seems that Tesla has carefully researched the consumption habits of Chinese consumers.
However, the showroom in Fangcaodi was delayed in opening, and everyone was wondering what Tesla was up to. Later, Tesla's sales director in China explained the truth: Tesla's trademark had been registered by someone else, and Tesla was negotiating with the trademark holder about the transfer.
This very smart Chinese man is called Zhan Baosheng, from Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province. He started to engage in international trade after graduating from university in Nanjing in 1999. In September 2006, Zhan Baosheng registered the Tesla trademark for the first time in his own name. Subsequently, he applied for registration of Tesla and Tesla Motors in 2007 and 2009 respectively.
Recall that Tesla was founded in 2003, Musk became a major shareholder in 2004, and Tesla Roadster was officially unveiled in July 2006. Musk invited Schwarzenegger, Leo, Google founder and other celebrities to promote his company. It seems that the timing was right. Two months later, the Chinese Zhan Baosheng registered the Tesla trademark. This incident tells us that we should learn English well, think more, and have a long-term vision.
Zhan Baosheng not only won the Tesla trademark, but also the three domain names tesla.com, tesla.cn, and teslamotors.cn. Tesla's US headquarters was eager to solve this problem, so they interviewed a Chinese in Silicon Valley, Zheng Shunjing, who was formerly the general manager of Bentley China.
Musk said to him that if he could solve the trademark problem, the position of president of China would be his. In November 2012, Zheng Shunjing returned to China and met with Zhan Baosheng. He thought the other party was easy to fool, and he actually offered a price of 50,000 US dollars during the first meeting.
Little did they know that Zhan Baosheng had been reselling trademarks and domain names since 2004 and was a senior trader. Zheng Shunjing wanted to trick him and did not investigate his background. Zhan Baosheng immediately turned hostile and said, "Go as far away as you can. 50,000 US dollars, is that a beggar's money?" Half a year later, Zheng Shunjing met with Zhan Baosheng again and this time offered 2 million RMB.
Zhan Baosheng looked at him with contempt and said, "Do you think I'm a loser? I can pay 2 million in a minute." Later, Musk revealed that Zhan Baosheng's psychological price was 30 million US dollars. But Zhan Baosheng replied, "I never made an offer. Later, I started to raise funds myself and prepared to build electric cars, which were called Tesla." Zheng Shunjing left the company on March 31, 2014 because he could not handle the matter.
In July 2013, Tesla's vice president, the US State Department's Chief of Staff for Political and Military Affairs, O'Cannell, led a team to China to resolve the issue. O'Cannell first asked the head of sales in China to continue to advance the company's preparations. The three words Tesla could not be used, so it was changed to Tuosuole. Tuosuole is the transliteration of Tesla by Hong Kong people, just like Lexus is called Lingzhi in Hong Kong. Later, it was forced to change its name to Lexus when it entered the mainland because the Lingzhi trademark was registered by someone else.
But O'Cannell's mission in China was to get back the Tesla trademark. So he visited many places and learned that there were only three ways to get back a trademark from someone else in China. The first was to prove that it was a "well-known trademark" because China has special protection for "well-known trademarks". However, no one in China knew about Tesla at the time, so this approach was obviously not feasible.
The second way is to file an application for cancellation of use for three consecutive years. In other words, as long as Zhan Baosheng does not use the Tesla trademark to build cars within three years, he can apply for cancellation. As a result, not only does he have a Tesla website, he has been using this trademark to promote that he is preparing to build cars. Zhan Baosheng also said that someone is willing to invest more than 1 billion in him. As long as Musk is willing, he can spend 200 million to buy his technology. If these two ways are not feasible, then the only way is to take the third way, settlement.
On August 5, 2014, the official Weibo account of Beijing No. 3 Intermediate People's Court announced that the Tesla dispute ended peacefully and the two parties shook hands and made peace. A series of intellectual property cases between Tesla and Zhan Baosheng involving trademarks, copyrights, unfair competition, etc. were successfully mediated by Beijing No. 3 Intermediate People's Court in less than a month.
On August 29, Zhan Baosheng was taken away by the police at the airport on suspicion of falsely reporting registered capital. He was detained in the detention center for 5 months before regaining his freedom. Zhan Baosheng said in an interview that it was Zheng Shunjing who was behind him because he did not cooperate and Zheng Shunjing lost his job. This was revenge. From the limited information I have, I think this guy is oversimplifying the matter.
Tesla's trademark problem was finally solved, and good news came from the other side. On January 22, 2014, Tesla's official Weibo published an article titled "A Fair Price", which detailed the reason why the Model S was priced at 734,000 yuan in China. The price in the United States was 81,070 US dollars, transportation and handling were 3,600 US dollars, tariffs and other taxes were 19,000 US dollars, and value-added tax was 17,700 US dollars, totaling 734,000 yuan (the exchange rate was 6.05 yuan/US dollar). At that time, Chinese consumers were shocked. They had never seen such an honest car company. Other car companies treated people who bought imported cars as leeks, but Tesla actually made the price clear. All of a sudden, Tesla's popularity in China soared, and everyone spread the word, praising Tesla as an honest man who did not cut leeks.
To be honest, Tesla was honest when it set this price in 2013. Because a small boss in Zhejiang liked the Tesla Model S very much, but it was not sold in mainland China, so he had to order it in Hong Kong, spending more than 2 million to get it licensed.
When Tesla said it was going to enter the Chinese market, many automotive media also speculated that the price of this car should be around 1.5 million. Therefore, this price at that time can be said to be very conscientious. Tesla's direct sales model is also an innovation, but it also led to the subsequent reselling of orders in the secondary market. At that time, a Model S order could even be sold at a price increase of more than 100,000 yuan.
In April 2014, Musk visited China for the first time. He was treated like a celebrity wherever he went, with screaming fans and media attention. Accompanying Musk was a short beauty, the newly appointed president of Apple China, Bixuan Wu. Bixuan Wu graduated from Yale University and worked at McKinsey, Motorola and Apple. She led the team to develop Apple's business in China. Musk needed a president who was familiar with the Chinese market, and he thought Bixuan Wu was a perfect fit.
Wu Bixuan lived up to expectations and immediately went to Shanghai to negotiate with relevant departments. She put forward four demands: first, she hoped that Shanghai would give her a free license, second, she hoped to help Tesla build super charging stations, third, tax incentives, and fourth, she hoped to get financial subsidies. The other party only replied with one sentence: If you want to open a factory here, everything will be discussed.
On April 21, 2014, Musk came to China for the second time. With Wu Bixuan's introduction, Musk met with the leader of the Ministry of Science and Technology. Musk, who was outspoken and quick-witted, asked as soon as they met, "Can we reduce some import tariffs on our electric vehicles?" Unexpectedly, the leader said to him in person, "I will definitely do this."
Wu Bixuan, who was standing next to him, broke out in a cold sweat. On April 22, at the Beijing Fangcaodi showroom, Musk will participate in the first car delivery ceremony for Chinese owners. In fact, this so-called car delivery ceremony is just an advertisement with a group of celebrities selected to cooperate in the promotion. Tesla Model S began accepting reservations in August 2013. Most customers paid a deposit of 250,000 yuan, but were constantly notified by Tesla of delayed delivery.
The first batch of customers who received the car included Yin Xidi, Chairman of Chongqing Lifan Group, Li Xiang, President of Autohome, Yu Yongfu, Chairman and CEO of UC Youshi, Pan Yanming, Executive Vice President of Times Group, etc. These people are either rich or noble. Ordinary consumers think that Tesla is not following the rules and cutting in line to arrange orders. The delivery ceremony on that day was very chaotic, and many Tesla owners who came to defend their rights shouted in protest.
On that day, seven car owners received the keys from Musk, including Sina CEO Cao Guowei, Ctrip founder Liang Jianzhang, Noah Wealth Chief Strategy Officer Tan Wenqing, No.1 Store Chairman Yu Gang, SMC China Fund Executive Partner Shao Qingxiao, Zihui founder Zheng Gang, eHi Car Rental Chairman and CEO Zhang Ruiping, and three of the owners were represented by their wives. Although the scene was a bit chaotic, Musk felt that he was sought after by so many people and was quite proud of it.
On April 23, Musk arrived in Shanghai again and attended the delivery ceremony in Jinqiao, Shanghai. He told the local leaders that their efficiency was too high. It was said that the super charging pile in Jinqiao was built in 10 days, which would take a month to complete in the United States. Soon after, Shanghai issued 3,000 imported new energy vehicle license plates. The biggest beneficiary of this policy was, of course, Tesla. These more than 3,000 license plates are worth 270-360 million yuan. Musk's debut in China can be said to be fruitful, which also strengthened his determination to localize the production of Tesla in China.
However, Tesla seemed to be flourishing in all aspects in 2014, but in fact, the input was high and the output was low. At the end of 2014, Wu Bixuan, who had been in office for less than a year, resigned and was replaced by Zhu Xiaotong, the new president of China. Some people analyzed that Wu Bixuan's resignation had a lot to do with the sales completion rate being less than 1/4 of the plan, the inventory was close to four figures, which was not within the subsidy range, and the direct sales model was contrary to the policy.
Zhu Xiaotong's rise to power has a lot to do with his outstanding performance in charging pile construction. Tesla went from being in short supply to having a huge increase in inventory. Tesla experienced a roller coaster ride in 2014. Many people wondered what happened to Tesla this year.
First, there was the issue of the handover of the top leader. At the end of March 2014, Zheng Shunjing, the president of the China region, resigned and was replaced by Wu Bixuan. In fact, in November 2013, the US headquarters transferred Wu Bixuan here, and then gave Zheng Shunjing a nominal position of global vice president, and required Zheng Shunjing to report to Wu Bixuan.
So during these four months, Tesla China had two top leaders. Without mentioning the internal struggle, you can guess how fierce it was. Unfortunately, Wu Bixuan's good days did not last long. In September 2014, the US headquarters sent another global vice president and Greater China CTO, Jin Jun, to be responsible for Tesla's marketing, public relations and brand promotion in Greater China.
Jin Jun could bypass the president of China and report directly to the US headquarters. This personnel arrangement also directly led to Wu Bixuan's resignation. Jin Jun only stayed at Tesla for half a year before leaving. Because during his tenure, sales did not improve at all.
In 2014, when Tesla first started selling in China, the U.S. headquarters gave the Chinese region an annual target of 3,000 units. Unexpectedly, just after the Spring Festival in February, all orders for 3,000 vehicles were completed.
Therefore, the US headquarters issued a new target of 5,000 units. At this time, the internal struggle between Wu Bixuan and Zheng Shunjing began. Wu Bixuan successively established three new sales departments: telephone sales, bulk orders, and door-to-door test drives, and restricted Zheng Shunjing's rights to the daily affairs of the Fangcaodi store. The store's orders plummeted.
Subsequently, online orders were constantly being hyped up by scalpers, so Wu Bixuan launched a customer "background check", requiring individual buyers who submitted orders for more than four vehicles to provide more information such as their identity, occupation, and purchase intentions to prevent scalpers from reselling the vehicles.
Musk made his debut in China in April, and after seeing the enthusiasm of Chinese consumers, he immediately decided to set the annual target at 10,000 units. However, Tesla's sales began to decline at the end of April. Due to the "background check", scalpers were unprofitable, and the false prosperity of Tesla's hot orders was instantly extinguished.
Not only that, many scalpers saw that they could not transfer the orders, so they simply "ran away" maliciously, because Tesla's deposit requirement was only 15,000 yuan at the beginning. Due to too many missed orders, Tesla China began to stockpile a large number of inventory cars. It was precisely because of this incident that Tesla changed the deposit rules from 15,000 to 50,000. However, after paying so much deposit, Tesla repeatedly delayed delivery, which also led to the dissatisfaction of later customers and the incident of Musk's car delivery site.
It was precisely because of the troubles of inventory and sales tasks that Wu Bixuan approached Alibaba in September 2014, hoping to cooperate on a Double 11 promotion. At that time, Alibaba was not interested in Tesla. First, they had no idea whether the quality and service of this new electric car brand were reliable. Second, Apple and LV had opened direct stores on Tmall at that time, and they did not lack Tesla as a merchant. Musk also visited Alibaba with Wu Bixuan, but Musk was only concerned with bragging to Jack Ma and did not care about Double 11.
Wu Bixuan thought that Musk had tacitly approved the Double 11 event, so he continued to push forward the matter. After a long period of communication, Tesla's Tmall flagship store was finally launched. Gurion, the vice president of the US headquarters and Wu Bixuan's direct leader, also approved of the matter.
On October 20, 2014, Tesla began to promote its entry into Tmall and participation in the Double 11 Shopping Festival. This was the first time that Tesla China tried to cooperate with a third-party platform for sales in addition to its own official sales channel. Tesla originally prepared 18 Model S cars for the "Double 11 Shopping Festival". After placing an order and paying the full amount, consumers can "quickly pick up the car" in as fast as 5 days. In addition, Tesla will also install home charging piles for free for customers who "buy on Double 11 Shopping Festival" as a special offer.
The cooperation between Tesla and Tmall was originally envisioned to be very beautiful. In the details of the cooperation disclosed by Tesla before, consumers can choose their favorite models in Tesla's Tmall flagship store, freeze 50,000 yuan of Yu'ebao funds as a deposit, and pay the balance at a Tesla outlet in the city where the car is to be picked up. The car can be picked up in as fast as 5 days.
If the effect and response are good, Tesla will open a store on Tmall and use Tmall as a direct sales channel to help alleviate the problem of the backlog of existing cars that has become increasingly serious in the second half of 2014 and turn orders into sales.
As a result, just as the promotion began, the US headquarters sent an email asking to immediately stop cooperating with Tmall. Wu Bixuan was confused. On October 30, 2014, Tesla officially announced unilaterally that it would terminate its cooperation with Tmall. Under the premise that Gurion, who was in charge of global sales and services, agreed to cooperate with Tmall, there was only one person who could stop it.
Musk was extremely angry about this matter. He believed that this was Tmall leveraging Tesla's brand for marketing and was inconsistent with Tesla's usual sales process. He reiterated: Like all multinational companies, the world needs a unified policy to maintain the unity of the brand! The cooperation between Tesla China and Tmall undermined the original vehicle delivery rules and was unfair to consumers who had placed orders before. In fact, only Wu Bixuan knew that some of the vehicles used in the Tmall event were canceled vehicles from customers. Therefore, this incident also caused a feud between Tesla and Alibaba.
Well, the talk about Elon Musk is finally coming to an end. Some students may still want to hear about the development history of his solar energy company, brain-computer interface company, and tunnel digging company. I really can’t expand on these. Because I saw that there are still many friends in the comment area who want to hear the analysis of the car model.
In summary, Musk is definitely a qualified entrepreneur. He is like a beam of aurora, devoting all his energy to entrepreneurship. No matter what industry he is in, he will make himself an expert in that industry first. I believe this is not something that everyone can do. And one thing that everyone does not see, I have repeatedly mentioned, is that it is also very important to build your own personality and build your own social circle.
In a near-death experience, Musk's friends were his lifeline. People believed that if they gave him more money and more time, he would be able to create miracles. At the end of the program, I hope that every listener can learn what they want from the program and add more passion and motivation to their work and entrepreneurship. Then the purpose of my biography will be achieved.
