Overview of Tesla, Inc The automotive industry has seen some big changes in the last few decades. The advent of new sources has always been related to the need in finding new solutions, especially in periods in which the oil price was increasing, or new techniques or technologies were found to innovate how people get around. Lots of innovations that we can find in modern vehicles came directly from 19th century, but these were either used just for small lots of cars or dismissed ones, because the gasoline engine proved to be better with regard to building simplicity. Tesla Motors is an example of how a start-up company can revolutionize a traditional industry as the automotive one.

Tesla was founded by Jeffrey B. Straubel, Elon Reeve Musk, Martin Eberhard, and Marc Tarpenning on July 1, 2003 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA.

Tesla's mission statement is "to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy." It shows the shift towards innovative and sustainable business approaches that are more futuristic. sedan.

Our goal when we created Tesla a decade ago was the same as it is today: to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass market electric cars to market as soon as possible. If we could have done that with our first product, we would have, but that was simply impossible to achieve for a startup company that had never built a car and that had one technology iteration and no economies of scale. Our first product was going to be expensive no matter what it looked like, so we decided to build a sports car, as that seemed like it had the best chance of being competitive with its gasoline alternatives."

Quoted by Elon Musk, Tesla Chairman, Product Architect & CEO, 2013

Tesla provides vehicle service centers, supercharger station, and self-driving capability. It operates across two major target segments the automotive and energy generation and storage. The automotive segment represents the customer durables in the motor vehicle industry which includes the design, development, manufacture and sale of electric vehicles. The energy generation and storage segment include the design, manufacture, installation, sale, lease of stationary energy storage products, solar energy systems, and sale of electricity generated by its solar energy systems and related services to residential, commercial, and industrial customers. These are being utilized through its website, stores, and galleries, as well as through a network of channel partners. This segment also offers service and repairs to its energy product customers, including under warranty; and various financing options to its solar customers. It develops energy storage products for use in homes, commercial facilities and utility sites. This segment is also involved in the provision of non-warranty after-sales vehicle services, sale of used vehicles, retail merchandise, and vehicle insurance, as well as sale of products through its subsidiaries to third party customers. Also, it provides services for electric vehicles through its company-owned service location. In some areas, Tesla employs what it calls Tesla Rangersmobile technicians who make house calls. In some cases, the service is delivered remotely. The Model S is able to wirelessly upload data, so technicians can view and fix some problems without ever physically touching the car.

Tesla's vision is becoming smarter. Tesla's taking its camera-based "Tesla Vision" system to school. After a Tesla owner posted a tweet showing how the system now recognizes when a vehicle is at a stop with brake lights illuminated, CEO Elon Musk responded saying the technology will soon understand a whole lot more. Specifically, the cars will recognize hand gestures, emergency vehicle lights, vehicles with hazards on and turn signals. Tesla still faces its own challenges. Sales of its most profitable vehicles, the Model S luxury sedan and Model X S.U.V., have faltered and remain low. Federal safety regulators are also looking into suspension failures in those vehicles. The company also faces questions about the quality of its vehicles. And Tesla seemed to make little progress toward Mr. Musk's ambitious promise to have one million self-driving Tesla's by the end of 2020. The company has yet to show the world a car capable of operating without a driver. Tesla ramped up production at a factory in China, which has fueled sales growth in that country, the world's largest market for conventional and electric cars. Currently, Tesla is building new factories in Austin, Texas and Berlin, Germany to augment its production in Fremont, California and Shanghai, China. The company also makes battery components in Reno, Nevada and Buffalo, New York.

Questions

1. It was quite challenging from Tesla, Inc to have a proactive vision about the future, technology and sustainability combined together. Discuss the main schools of management adopted at Tesla, Inc that fostered the use of innovation, advanced technology and sustainability.

2. The personal brand of Elon Musk contributed to the strength and marketing of Tesla's corporate brand by which the brand values of Tesla are matching with the values of Elon Musk himself. Discuss this statement to explain the brand promise, brand characteristics and brand value of Tesla, Inc. used in its marketing approach.

3. The 'diffusion of innovation' theory introduced by "Everett Rogers" described the process by which an individual adopts a new idea. Based on the news about launching Tesla's new smart phone, assess the market potential for the introduction of this type of revolutionary smart phones and global effects of Tesla's innovation on the smart phone business.

4. Strong rivalry may hinder firms from making profits. Firms have various ways to evaluate the state of competition and take specific competitive moves, however, Tesla used coopetition. Analyze the widely used Porter forces of competitive rivalry to explain how Tesla embodied coopetition to reduce the rivalry of the existing competition.

5. "Tesla's human resources management & organization culture help the company gain a sustainable competitive advantage through the strategic utilization of people". Discuss how Tesla's human resources planning must be integrally linked to its corporate strategy and what role might the company's mission, vision and values play in the selection of its employees.

6. Tesla's net losses had begun to accelerate in 2014 and between 2014 and 2020, Tesla's losses ranged from minimum of 294 million U.S. dollars in 2014 to maximum of 2.241 billion U.S. dollars in 2017. However, Tesla turned a full-year profit for the first time on record in 2020. Net income of 862 million U.S. dollars in 2020. In addition, as of December 2021, Tesla's market cap had exceeded $1 Trillion, which makes Tesla the world's 6th most valuable company by market cap. (Check the table of the changes of Tesla market cap and stock prices, appendix 1). Comment and make an argument of how a company that was realizing losses till 2019 has turned to be what it is today explaining from your point of view what are the factors that made this change and whether Tesla is really worth this value or not!

7 . Using the four-year financial statements of Tesla 2017-2020 (Appendix 2), evaluate and explain the profitability, solvency, liquidity, activity and market dimensions of Tesla's financial performance highlighting the main weaknesses and strengths of Tesla. [Only computation of ratios without proper analysis would not be considered as the expected solution and will result in a "Zero" in this question].

Be Noted: Appendix 1 & 2 from the following link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1l6o1eRD2xQa9g05EK9bGhKwc2iIwIWZS/view?usp=sharing