These matters caught my eye recently: Tesla Job Description Tells a Lot … Germany Outdoing California in Promoting EVs … Tesla’s 2019 Impact Report is Out
**** Tesla Job Description Tells a Lot About Musk and Tesla
It’s amazing what a management job description can reveal about a company and its leader. A recent CleanTechnica article covered Tesla’s posting for a Program Manager of Product and Underwriting to lead Tesla’s foray into a UK auto insurance program. Tesla has been offering auto insurance in the State of California since the end of August, 2019, and preliminary reports from California’s Tesla customers say they are pleased with their policies and with the savings as a result of buying from Tesla as compared to buying from their former run-of-the-mill US automotive insurance companies.
You wouldn’t think a description for such a job as this would be anything out of the ordinary. But as someone who has hired a lot of people, written a lot of job descriptions, and answered a few myself, I was really impressed with Tesla’s approach. Musk and his staff put a lot of Tesla’s strategy and corporate culture into this job description.
Johnna Crider wrote a great article. First, I was going to quote both her and Tesla’s job description extensively. But there were so many good thoughts from both parties to quote that I decided that approach would be sub-optimal – why not just direct my readers to that well-done article. Click on the link above and enjoy Johnna’s excellent work.
Here are the five things I liked about Tesla’s job posting:
- It’s strategic – – wanting to re-invent auto insurance and the auto insurance industry, particularly with a view to Tesla’s Autopilot and forthcoming Full Self Driving capabilities
- It is intended to be disruptive – to one-up any current auto insurance competitors
- It is customer focused – their UK auto policies will be written in an easy-to-understand language and designed to increase owner protection, make the buying and claim experience easier and more pleasant, and to decrease the premiums for Tesla owners
- It is team-based. Who ever heard of engineering teams being included in the development of auto insurance policies, in addition to the pricing and data science teams?
- In keeping with Elon Musk’s business strategy of kaizen – – continual improvement — this principle will be applied to the concept of Tesla’s auto insurance policies from the customer’s perspective. The traditional insurance company’s “improvement efforts” are usually geared toward making it more costly and difficult for its policy holders to buy from them or file a claim.
I expect it won’t be long before Tesla will be rolling out its auto insurance program to many more states in the US – eventually to all of them. Once again, Musk and Tesla are pushing the envelope in a new (for them) industry. The traditional auto insurance industry will be such easy prey.
**** Germany Outdoing California in Promoting EVs!
The German government is being intelligent about its current economic stimulus program making sure it reinforces it efforts to lower greenhouse gas pollution and promote renewable energy. Already a leader on the renewable energy front, Germany has taken two recent initiatives that promote electric vehicle sales and use. The first of these, reported in Automotive News Europe is a $146 Billion incentive program to subsidize the purchase of primarily battery-powered electric vehicles, but to a lesser extent plug-in hybrids as well. The surprising but good news is that this program only extends to electric vehicles, not ICE-powered vehicles. There are three aspects to the program that only affects cars with a “net list price” under 40,000 Euros (about $45,000). Buyers of such cars will receive 6,000 Euros from the German government and 3,000 Euros from the car manufacturer, and will see a reduction in their value added tax from 19% to 16% for a six month period. To add insult to injury to ICE-powered vehicle buyers and manufacturers, the German government is also increasing taxes on cars that emit over 95 grams of CO2 per kilometer. Currently, only Tesla’s base Model 3 (of all Tesla models) comes under the price limit for this new regulation.
Then, in a further move to combat electric vehicle potential buyer range anxiety, the German government has mandated that all German gas stations offer electric vehicle charging. As of March 2020, Germany had some 27,730 charging stations and it is reported that Chancellor Angela Merkel called for one million charging stations to be installed across Germany by 2030. This strikes me as overkill, typical of a well-meaning but ill-informed politician.
First, with the anticipated improvements in EV battery technology soon to be announced, and even further improvements through the coming decade, batteries will have greater range and as a result need on-the-road charging less. Second most gas stations, particularly those in most of Europe, do not have the room to accommodate one or two (or more) electric vehicles parked for one half to one hour charging. Europe has very few if any huge American-style gas stations such as Buc-ee’s here in Texas with typically 40 or more gas pumps and huge parking lots. Third, it seems to me that it’s a bit dangerous to have high voltage charging stations in cramped European gas stations where gas fumes could be in the air from vehicle refueling and from tankers refilling the stations’ underground tanks.
What struck me as particularly interesting was a comment here that the number of gas stations in Germany has fallen from 40,640 in 1965 to 14,118 in 2020! The tables are turning and it won’t be long before gas and diesel-powered vehicle owners will be the ones having range anxiety as the number of gas stations continue to dwindle while the number of charging stations and in-home chargers continue to increase dramatically.
It is gratifying to see a coordinated federal Government effort by Germany that is strategically aligned to promote both the manufacture and sale of electric-powered non-polluting automobiles. While California leads the US in such efforts, unfortunately it is only one of 50 states and our US government is currently busy reversing stricter pollution guidelines across most industries and for automobiles and trucks specifically. Maybe someday we’ll get it together.
**** Tesla’s 2019 Impact Report Is Outstanding in Its Breadth and Detail
Tesla’s 2019 Impact Report is out and can be read or downloaded here. Traditionally, these are called “Environmental Impact” reports. At 57 pages, Tesla’s 2019 Impact Report is much broader in its coverage. Their report includes six main sections: Mission and Tesla Ecosystem, Environmental Impact, Production Impact, Supply Chain Impact, People and Culture, and Appendix. I found this report chock full of useful information and details. Typical of everything Musk touches and Tesla does, the report sets a new “Impact” reporting standard for US companies. I will quote two lines from it below.
The first quote should be familiar to all of you readers, namely: “The very purpose of Tesla’s existence is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.” [page 3, Intro]
The second quote I find even more exemplary: “We are not just trying to build the best electric cars, we are striving to build the best cars, period.” [page 21, Product Impact]
To achieve laser-like focus in an organization, it’s difficult to top those two strategic objectives. It’s extraordinarily more difficult to achieve them. But the evidence so far is that Musk and Tesla are doing just that.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay
Your feedback in the form of comments or suggestions are welcome in the comment window. Thank you for following my blogs on this site and for participating in my blogging community.
