Why Tesla is making Moonshots

Tesla a day was one of the greatest technological presentations since long time. Tesla revealed their Optimus robot, the updates on Dodger and self-driving. Tesla is building robot now for something which had no market up to now, and they basically want to create this market. What I find fascinating about Tesla, that they are making one moonshot after another. If you are not familiar with the concept of moonshots, this philosophy drives back to the president Kennedy, and he was making remarks about the ambitious goal to putting a man on the moon. And in business, moonshots are, so to say, ambitious goals to achieve something previously unachievable, and this is done without any near-term profitability. And this Tesla moonshot is consumer robotics. The market of electric cars practically didn't exist before Tesla entered, before Tesla created an electric car. It's not like they've entered early enough, no, they've created the market. And the fact that BMW and Mercedes now building electric cars, they are just catching up, they have to do it, otherwise they will be left behind. And exactly the same thing with SpaceX. The market of commercial space didn't exist before. Russian rockets were flying some stuff to space, but it was not commercial. Starlink is interesting again, because this market doesn't exist. What they do is, they think of a market which might be useful, and they take a risk and go and invest in this market. You don't really know if people will use satellite internet before you build it, but in order to create it, you need to develop space internet tech, put thousands of satellites into space, develop the infrastructure and user interface, and then see if it works. And these are just some of the examples of moonshots, but Tesla got more, like Cybertruck and Semitruck. If you happen to work in technology, like me, you will really appreciate this, because you know how much time it takes to build something from scratch. And Tesla is really fast. And they are making moonshots one after another. And I think it's not random, it's a strategy. Because when you stay in one technology, imagine Tesla will be doing only electric cars and do it forever. They could stagnate. Instead, they enter and create new markets, like consumer robotics. The interesting thing is that Tesla can do it, because usually big companies are not open to such a risk. It is hard to convince the board that you need to open a new project and you need 5-10 million dollars investment. You need to have a vision and confidence in front of shareholders, because they have to agree to it. And somehow Tesla manages it very well. While in reality, every business should have both, like franchise and moonshots, because moonshots don't bring money for a long time. But you have to make moonshots, otherwise you may end up like Nokia, who just missed the smartphone. Because once you missed a moonshot and someone else make it, then franchise looks old and no one needs it. This happens many times with big companies. Tesla made a roadster, then Model S, and then they've made Model 3. And then it's sort of franchise and it brings lots of revenue. And now Model Y will make Tesla money. And the key Tesla moonshot from the very beginning is autopilot. It's very important, because they invest a lot of money in it, like building Dodger, hardware 3, hardware 4, all the software. That's huge. And the thing is, there could be better cars in terms of comfort, beauty, features. But AI-based autonomous driving is Tesla's moonshot. And now they extended it to consumer robotics. In reality, consumer robotics doesn't exist today. The only popular consumer robot is iRobot, so your vacuum cleaner. But the robot which Tesla is making, it will be creating the whole market of multi-purpose autonomous robots. And this one will open up other new markets like specialized chips for robotics and AI. And this is, by the way, a very nice startup idea for the future. Another key aspect is timing. And sometimes timing is even more important than what you time. Tesla got the timing just right. They've built a car and it was timed. SpaceX as well. By the time of SpaceX, consumer electronics got very robust. The computers in SpaceX are not space-grade. And this makes it so much cheaper. 10 years before, it was not possible. And this is, of course, just one of the aspects. And the same thing with Optimus Robot. They've got timing just right. Solving kinematics is important, but it's already solved to some extent. This is just a matter of the price. What is not solved is the brain. And now there is a possibility to solve it. If Tesla would try to build a robot 5 or 10 years ago, there were no AI computers. So they wouldn't be able to solve it with neural networks. They would have to do it with conventional algorithms. Exactly what Boston Dynamics were doing. And now it is the time. The time to solve the brain. And timing is everything. Guys, I'm experimenting with making more concise videos. Let me know in the comments which format do you prefer. What do you think about it? Support my channel at Patreon. Help me to reach 100 patrons. I write interesting stuff there. And now check out my another video about TeslaBot. Many people liked it. And I will see you in the next video. Ciao!