Photo: Tesla Motors
The established automakers are beginning to find themselves in a market environment they just don't recognize anymore. After years of "mine is larger than yours" rivalry (usually referring to engine power), their conflicts are just becoming petty and irrelevant.
We get the idea that the biggest challenge for the carmakers we grew up with is to build an electric vehicle with autonomous capabilities, but that's actually just half the story. Combustion engines will stick around for a while more, so there's plenty of time for them to figure it out. The real shift in the paradigm isn't linked related to the actual products, but the whole process behind them.
The automotive industry is becoming more and more like the IT and communications one - fast-moving and very dynamic, with new startups showing up every day and the inability to call which ones are going to go extinct in a year and which ones might become your next fiercest competitor in a decade.
Tesla's status has long been sorted out, but it's only now that's starting to bite the so-called established names in the business. With the Model 3 looming, the Palo Alto company needs all the help it can get with setting up a reliable production process, and so it had identified the German Grohmann Engineering firm as one of its targets, which led to the birth of Tesla Grohmann Automation.
The merger didn't go that smoothly with some unrest from the German side's 700 employees reported and even some heated talk between Musk and the founder of Grohmann. But even so, according to German website Wirtschaftswoche, the supplier has only been working on its Tesla-related projects over the past few weeks, completely neglecting its other contracts.
Volkswagen and BMW, two of the beneficiaries of said contracts, aren't very happy about it and have made official statements to urging Tesla Grohmann Automation to fulfill its existing engagements. However, no official response has come from the U.S.-German enterprise.
Considering what's at stake, Tesla might even choose to ignore those obligations, break the contracts and pay the fines, if the alternative would get in the way of the Model 3 coming to market on time. Without an official response, it's hard to tell what the situation is, but one thing is certain: Tesla Grohmann Automation is hiring local talent, so it definitely isn't going anywhere.
The automotive industry is becoming more and more like the IT and communications one - fast-moving and very dynamic, with new startups showing up every day and the inability to call which ones are going to go extinct in a year and which ones might become your next fiercest competitor in a decade.
Tesla's status has long been sorted out, but it's only now that's starting to bite the so-called established names in the business. With the Model 3 looming, the Palo Alto company needs all the help it can get with setting up a reliable production process, and so it had identified the German Grohmann Engineering firm as one of its targets, which led to the birth of Tesla Grohmann Automation.
The merger didn't go that smoothly with some unrest from the German side's 700 employees reported and even some heated talk between Musk and the founder of Grohmann. But even so, according to German website Wirtschaftswoche, the supplier has only been working on its Tesla-related projects over the past few weeks, completely neglecting its other contracts.
Volkswagen and BMW, two of the beneficiaries of said contracts, aren't very happy about it and have made official statements to urging Tesla Grohmann Automation to fulfill its existing engagements. However, no official response has come from the U.S.-German enterprise.
Considering what's at stake, Tesla might even choose to ignore those obligations, break the contracts and pay the fines, if the alternative would get in the way of the Model 3 coming to market on time. Without an official response, it's hard to tell what the situation is, but one thing is certain: Tesla Grohmann Automation is hiring local talent, so it definitely isn't going anywhere.
Google News