NBC News reported that on Saturday, a job fair in Fremont, California, was cancelled by Tesla after it caused a traffic jam and reached over-capacity. The Fremont Police Department tweeted that the "overwhelming response" to Tesla's job fair resulted in a major backup on I-880.
The success of the Fremont factory has indeed been very "overwhelming." According to Tesla Forums, the company now uses over 50% of the 5.4 million square feet for the development of the Model S and X, and other future vehicles. The factory was built in 1984 in a partnership between Toyota and General Motors. In 2009, General motors backed out of the factory, and Toyota built it's last vehicle there in 2010 due to it being unprofitable.
Tesla bought the factory and has now seen massive success where the two largest automotive brands could not.
This speaks volumes on the ability of a new American company to enter what was thought to be a saturated market. As I mentioned in my last post, it is foolish of other companies to not take them seriously, because in many ways, Tesla is already winning the race.
Do the overwhelming number of people that want to work for Tesla a good thing? Or will it make the company over-hyped an unable to meet its reputation?
In a recent interview with AutoBlog at the New York Auto Show, a Daimler (Mercedes) executive was gave a quote on how Mercedes will deal with the competion with Tesla Motors.
He claimed Tesla has no network" and only offers "little shops that don't have service capacity. "Tesla is great, but you've got plenty of well-established brands that mean luxury."
To me, this quote shows ignorance, and the companies refusal to except Tesla as a competitive product. Tesla is known famously for it's immense network of superchargers all over the country. It has a non-traditional set-up for service centers due to the fact that the car is run by computers that can be fixed remotely by engineers.
Are Tesla's not worthy for the market because they don't have a well-established brand? Just because a company has been around for awhile doesn't mean it will always make quality products, and just because a company is new doesn't mean it can't. Tesla outsold all the competition in it's class this last quarter, including the Mercedes E-class, Audi A6, and BMW 5 Series.
Cadillac is taking a much smarter approach to the new competition. An executive from GM stated that Tesla offers "a great opportunity and a learning exercise for all of us, and will help us traditional manufacturers to think twice about electric mobility.
By noting the successful qualities of Tesla, other companies can improve themselves. It is speculated that the success of the Model S prompted the earlier than expected developement of Cadillac's own electric luxury vehicle, the ELR.
By not choosing to simple ignore new competition, I think that Cadillac will see greater success than Mercedes in the coming years.
Do you think Mercedes is right to think that Tesla will fizzle out and not be a threat to the company, or do you think they should pay attention to them?
