Gaurav Sabnis Profile picture
Apr 28 53 tweets 13 min read
See, this is one news the muggles are missing in all of Elon's shenanigans. The F-150 Lightning is sold out for at least a year or so. Unless you think Farley is just telling straight up lies, that's a pretty big reason for Tesla to be worried.

Cos it's the F-150!
People outside America don't fully comprehend what a branding and product design and marketing behemoth the F-150 is.

It is the top selling car in America by a hefty hefty margin. That means it has a huge loyal sticky base that loves the whole package. Especially the storage.
F-150s have rugged engines, of course. But their main appeal is the back, which is huge, spacious, stable, comfy, and has generated a whole other economy of it's own in terms of accessories. A business like that has even been on Shark Tank. Pickup truck beds and such. Image
So this car, already by far the top selling car in America (4 times all Tesla models combined), because of its space comes in and says, hey, you can now go electric, get the same power and and ANDDD you get even more space! Look! There's no engine so even more space! Image
So now that already almost a million a year strong segment of F-150 lovers gets an option that is
- electric
- can go 500 km on a charge
- even MORE storage than gasoline version
- costs a shockingly reasonable $42K

Why would they switch to Tesla? They got their precioussss.
The next two big sellers are Ram and Silverado. The Electric Silverado is already making waves and has a readymade loyal base too. And the Ram electric is coming in the Fall.

So America can now have pickup trucks that are exactly like the ones they've loved, but electric.
Go Google the top ten selling car models in the US. Literally every single one of those models will have an electric version by the end of next year.

Consumer behavior in general and car buying behavior in the US in particular, is notoriously features based. Ease based.
For Tesla to justify its trillion dollar valuation, they are going to have to overtake at least one of GM, Ford, Toyota in the US. Who exactly will be buying those Tesla's if the same models everyone loves start being electric?
Right now, Tesla dominates the tiny tiny electric car market because Tesla is practically synonymous with electric cars.

But in 18 months, there will be something like two dozen electric cars, most of them versions of existing popular high selling models.

Of course short TSLA!
I tell ya, Tesla was a solid $100 bn company. Muskya only knows pump and dump. So took it to a trillion. Gaslighting people into thinking that you can't be an environment lover unless you root for Tesla cos it is electric and powerful and quiet and good looking.
But by the end of 2023, if sales haven't drastically shifted from at least one of GM,Ford,Toyota,Honda towards Tesla, that #TSLA stock starts looking Madoffish. Because now it's Tesla is more about being a trillion dollar company than making cars that almost everyone buys.
If you can buy your same old F150, Silverado, CRV, Accord, Outback, in electric form for a price that's still below a comparable Tesla, you'll still be notionally helping the environment.

Elon never made Tesla anything more than a rich guy brand.

That is so not worth a trillion
Elon knows his house of cards is built on pumping up stocks of Tesla. Why he absolutely lost his chaddis at Bill Gates having a modest $500 mn in a short position of Tesla.

Divide $500 mn by $1 trillion.

And then see Elon's anger in context. He knows his house is crashing soon.
Whenever Tesla implodes, as it eventually will, it may trigger a recession because that's literally a trillion dollars of capital that's going to go whoosh by the end of 2023.

Or so I predict.

If I'm wrong, laugh at me in 2024.
Musk lost his head over Gates having a $500 mn short position on Tesla but himself put up 20 billion of Tesla stock as collateral to buy this absolutely profit-resistant bird site. 🤔🤔

Why should Tesla the company be beholden to the tantrums of Apartheid Clyde?
There is no discernible marketing angle or strategy that Tesla seems to have other than being the Elon company.

Whereas all other car manufacturers are brimming with marketing angles and strategies. And they've been marketing cars for way longer than Clyde has.
Absolutely. No denying that. His schtick has made electric cars cool and shaken up the game. Plus his company does make good cars. The problem with Tesla isn't its products but justifying that valuation. Cos that is a pretty big hurdle to cross.

This story has happened before. Apple and the Steve's made personal computers cool. Tech majors and other startups rushed in. For 20 years, Apple stayed a company with cool expensive products for cool people. You'd spot the Apple logo and be like oh there's an Apple.
Today, the Apple logo is so ubiquitous that you barely notice it. Cos they finally started getting huge market shares, first in ipods, then iphones, then ipads etc. But in the PC game, they struggled. Steve was kicked out, brought back, it was a rough rough ride for a while.
Microsoft, IBM, HP, Compaq, Dell in the 90s were like, "Thank you for making PCs cool, Steve. We will take it from here."

Because behemoth corporations aren't build on brands that you notice and point out to people. They're built on brands that become ubiquitous.
Similarly, it was Blackberry that made smartphones cool or aspirational. Remember all the blackberry jokes? But it stayed a product where you would be like "oooh that person in an expensive suit has that blackberry look look".

By now Apple had learned better mass marketing.
As had Samsung after years of succeeding in the consumer electronics market. And Google had so much data. They all said, thank you, Canada, for making smartphones cool. We will take it from here.

Tesla is a logo that has a cool cache. It can make you popular with the cool kids.
But for Tesla to justify that trillion dollar evaluation, people will have to stop noticing it as this unusual brand. It needs to be part of the ether like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple logos are now. The actual trillion dollar corporations with something to justify it.
I'm not saying it can't be done. It can. For 25 years Mac fans would chew your ear off with why you should buy a Mac or iMac because they are so cool, fast, trendy, virus immune etc. And yet Apple stayed single digit market share. Very cool, but not a valuation behemoth.
And then Steve's second inning, they came up with 3 products that no one had to be convinced to buy. They got HUGE market shares. While still being able to command a premium!! That requires clinical marketing, not just hype. Steve was much more than a showman tho he was showy.
For Apple and Samsung to become this huge, Nokia and Blackberry had to lose a lot of market share really fast. For Tesla to justify the trillion, you need a couple of legacy Auto brand sales to just go whoosh and shift to them.

Where is the plan for that? The focus on that?
If history teaches us anything, it's that within a couple of years, Tesla board will say, thank you for your service, Clyde. You go do you and twitter and pretend like you're the one who first thought of reusable rockets and mars missions. We will do the actual marketing now.
Muskbois genuinely think that Elon was the first to think, hey, why don't we reuse rockets? 😂😂😂😂

When that's something scientists and engineers were working on for decades and the dude just had the right contacts for contracts and raising money. And showmanship of course.
Microsoft and others beat Apple in the PC game, not by necessarily making "better" products. But by creating multi-contact multi-component ecosystems. What I call the "Bread bhi main hi doonga" strategy.

Today, Apple has that ecosystem. They sell you the omelet AND the bread. Image
Where is this Tesla ecosystem? There is none.

There is an Apartheid Clyde ecosystem from cars to Mars to Twitter wars. There is no Tesla ecosystem as such, not at trillion dollar levels anyway.

Toyota, the biggest car seller in the world is *just* $250 billion or so.
The problem with Tesla is that now that it has become a trillion dollar company, it has to LITERALLY have revenues and profits that are at least 4 times that of Toyota and 20 times that of GM by the end of the decade. Just selling cars.

The numbers for that don't add up to me 🤷🏽‍♂️
Again, I'm not an investor, I'm not in the corporate world, I'm not an influencer, I'm not a journalist, I'm not a columnist.

I'm someone whose job it is to take the skeptical long term deep dive look at marketing and teach it to my students. This is my analysis from that angle.
If I'm wrong, my friends and Twitter followers, students, colleagues will be like lol prof Sabnis, you were wrong on Tesla. And I'll be like, yup, sure was. I'm in a job where it's okay to get predictions wrong. I'm not playing with other people's money. 😇😇
My job is not to predict if Tesla ends the quarter or the year more profitable or less, which is the job of many people. I'm not a day trader or wealth manager.

My job is to predict if Tesla justifies its trillion dollar valuation after a decade.

I don't see it happening.
My broad prediction for the car market is that it will end up going to about 25-30% electric before the industry and the world realizes the scaling issues and battery disposal issues and realizes electric cars do at best marginal benefit to the planet.
The poorest of the poor person can go and buy a liter of petrol or diesel or kerosene ANYWHERE in the world.

Half the world can't get reliable 24 hours access to grid based electricity, no matter how well off they are.

Electric cars being the dominant future makes no sense.
Just think of how many times you or someone you know has run out of cellphone battery. Then imagine if running out of battery made you immobile.

Electric cars are, when you take a broader thoughtful view of things, just newer models of the same old same old.
Who wouldn't if you had the space? Cos what stops a lot of people is the gas guzzling. Making it electric, as @complexityist once put it, takes the emissions test fail out of our sight to coal and gas run power plants. And is marginally better.

Indeed! But to add a point.

I have been on electric vehicle public transport since childhood only. Bombay local trains. NYC subway. The electric vehicles we need are already here and have been for decades.

More public transport, less personal tanks

I'm all for electric buses. Full throated rah rah supporter of electric buses. And electric trains, which are a century old.

It's electric cars I have a problem with.
One of my killer lines at a desi party was when a bro said

"In 10 years, everybody will commute in electric vehicles scrolling their phones going to work without having to drive them"

And I was like,

"Bro that's my daily commute. It's called a subway. Costs me just $127/month"
How this company will justify its trillion dollar market cap when

1. What the world needs is less cars not more, and public opinion is shifting in that direction

2. The biggest current automaker in the world is worth just $250 billion dollars

I will leave to fin bros.
Sure, you can make that bet.

But it is a bet that essentially says that in 10 years, Tesla will be selling more cars than Toyota AND get 4 times as much return on investment.

I would very much like to see how that happens!

This showboat is racking up L's on a weekly basis. Just yesterday, he lost a whiny bid to remove SEC oversight of his tweets.

Your CEO can't tweet about your company without censorship and he's going to buy Twitter and you will beat Toyota.

Okay!

bbc.com/news/business-…
I mean really, who wouldn't short a company with this kind of drama when all of big auto plus a bunch of other new companies (including those started by the actual brains behind Tesla that Elon pushed out of Tesla) are about to blow up the electric car market very soon? Image
What a resounding slap this is 😂😂😂 Image
Ah yes, if I'm saying something you disagree with, I must be a "paid agent". Default mentality.

Again, I'm a tenured professor whose literal job it is to give my takes. I'm not saying buy the F-150. I'm saying lots of people buy it.

Anyway, bye.

Literally in this very thread I've said I personally hate the very idea of electric cars. I'm not favoring one over the other. I'll most likely never buy an electric myself, be it Tesla or Ford or GM or whatever. I hope to never again buy a car in my life.
I'm not being paid to do F-150 marketing.

I'm being paid to research and teach marketing.

And any marketing professional will tell you that the F-150 is a huge hurdle for Tesla to vanquish if it has to justify its trillion dollar valuation.

It's about what cars sell in the end
Oooh, how diabolical that I often try to convert stuff to the metric system because most of the world uses the metric system! I must be a paid Ford influencer, right? Yo Ford, where's my check at? There's a caviar shipment arriving in an hour!

Turns out I might be a joint paid agent of a lot of car companies because I dare wonder how Tesla is going to beat existing brands.

Asking GM, Toyota, Subaru etc also, where's my influencer check?

How is that "boner", Elon? Image

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More from @gauravsabnis

Apr 30
On behalf of all #NYC residents to friends visiting soon & asking

- Yes, we have heard hotel & Airbnb prices are insanely high this year
- No, we do not have any inside info that can get you cheap digs
- We live here. The one NYC topic we DON'T know well is hotels/Airbnb's 🙈
There really is no mythical secret perfect affordable hotel room or Airbnb in NYC. The short term stay market in NYC is pretty competitive and transparent. Google & common sense will answer all your questions on cheap temporary digs better than the average NYC resident.
Standard rules for finding digs in NYC for over a century

- best is if you know someone you can stay with
- if not, first decide budget upper limit
- then start in midtown and expand concentric circles until you find something acceptable
- it's NYC. You'll be out most day.
Read 5 tweets
Apr 30
Public flooding into NYC these days reach out for advice I often feel like I'm the worst person to answer.

"What's the best skyscraper observation deck? Is the Edge worth it? The Summit? One World? Is ESB still worth it? How about Top of the Rock?"

I would visit them all! 🤷🏽‍♂️🤷🏽‍♂️
In many many things in life, I'm "alpasantushta". Easily pleased.

Skyscraper observation decks in NYC are one such thing. I generally like going up high on top of a building and looking at the views around me. And when the view is NYC, it's gorgeous from everywhere!
You put me on top of a 5 storey building and I'll get enchanted by the view. So my honest answer to the question "which is the best skyscraper observation deck in NYC?" is, whatever is most convenient for you to visit!

They are all spectacular views of the same city! 🤷🏽‍♂️🤷🏽‍♂️
Read 9 tweets
Apr 30
In 1969, Woodstock almost didn't happen. The response to the planned counterculture "hippie" antiwar music festival with a studded lineup was so positive that the organizers had a tough time finding a venue big enough. Local villages balked at such big hippie crowds protesting.
Finally Max Yasgur, a dairy farmer in Bethel agreed to let his 600 acre muddy farm be used for the historic concert. It's not like Yasgur was some hippie flower child himself. In fact he wasn't a big fan of the hippies. But his reason for letting them use his farm is timeless.
"The reason you don't want them here is because you don't like what they look like. And I particularly don't like what they look like either. But that's not the point!"
Read 4 tweets
Apr 30
In the Catskills again and just read a batshit hilarious gilded age feud called "The Fried Chicken War" that I must recount here. 😂😂

Our story begins in 1880 at the Catskills Mountain House, America's first major fancy mountaintop hotel, Alpine style started by Charles Beach.
Staying & dining there once was Philadelphia businessman and lawyer George Harding, whose daughter was on a no-red-meat diet. But the dinner that night was roast beef. George asks the waiter to bring his daughter fried chicken instead. Waiter says no can do.
Harding raises voices, tries to throw his weight around, making a general nuisance of himself. Waiter is like, bro, we don't have chicken! Should I hatch one miraculously? George gets incensed. Matter is escalated to owner Charles Beach who steps in to soothe tempers.
Read 7 tweets
Apr 29
I was riveted by the video. Nothing funny there. A brilliant rendition! And impressive diction and enunciation for someone who doesn't speak the language. Those lyrics are not easy!
Ugh, why why why are the replies and QTs on that full of lazy stereotypical jokes? Why can't my people stand up and applaud the superb singer instead of recycling WhatsApp uncle jokes about Chinese people and Chinese food?
If this had been a white woman on American idol, these Desi bros would have been like wow wow so amazing so proud of India.
Read 6 tweets
Apr 29
Dudes acting offended in the comments have clearly never had any real experience with women in their family dying and then having to store the body in the morgue for a bit. This is not uncommon advice in India. I first heard it 20 yrs ago. And it is a shameful reality.
It wasn't exactly "tie her legs". But rather, wrap the sheet around her body, especially lower body very tightly, and in a way that if someone unwrapped it, you can tell. So it's easier to pick up the body and also "avoid possibilities of indecent acts". Took a while to sink in.
The same crowd that will tell women to dress cautiously and learn self defense to protect against sexual assault is getting offended at a scene in which precautions are being taken to avoid a girl's dead body from being sexually assaulted. Something that's common in India.
Read 6 tweets

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