What have Starbucks and Tesla have in common? Yes, the Coffee-Cup-container, but we are different my little. Howard Schultz, Chairman and CEO of Starbucks, said in a 2006 Interview with “60 Minutes”: “Our business model is to connect people. Humanity. To create communities and a third place to live, between home and work.“ This view is the Foundation of the success of Starbucks.

Very similar to Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla argued. Even if a Cup of coffee is not a car, the question remains: What is the function of these products at the customer?

Tesla-founder, Elon Musk, sees his car as a third place

Musk, the vehicle sees the primary as a third place“ between home and the office. The customer would like to move between these three places without frictions, that is, between the places easily switch and interlocking integrate.

How closely these worlds are connected to each other, shows us the latest Corona-pandemic, in the home, the profession and the way to move there together.

The core strategic question is always: what is the business see you? What are the Benefits of pens the customer or what need do I meet him?

car manufacturers are to be found on the product

fixed The auto industry was an industry that always change. However, the majority of never on the purpose to fulfill the product to the customer, that is why he bought in the end a car. However, the digital technologies and changes in customers have enlarged behavior of the space of possibilities significantly.

This represents a formidable challenge to the established manufacturer, as their product-based perspective are trapped: “A car is a car and nothing else!” FOCUS Online / Shuang Liu DLDaily

digitalization has changed Germany for the better, if we get it right. At the digital conference DLD, the as FOCUS Online, Hubert Burda Media, where experts discuss several times a year to these developments. This spirit, this themes, to. FOCUS Online to his readers throughout the year offer: with DLDaily FOCUS Online speaks for DLDaily with people who have concepts for the digital future: with innovative politicians, visionary thinkers, creative entrepreneurs. We explain the new technologies and show how they can be in their professional and private lives.

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It’s not quite “attempts to escape” from this dominant logic, for example, when Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche at the annual General meeting in 2014, stated: “We understand us not only as a car maker, but also as a provider of mobility solutions.”

Why the change for the auto maker is not so difficult

You want to sell so also mobility. This one has also built an Ecosystem of partnerships with other mobility services (Car Sharing, etc.), but really profitable you have not done this yet.

there are two reasons:

1. This change of perspective, as what I consider to be my business, therefore represents a major cultural Transformation for an established company. Already in the founding of Tesla’s in 2003, had a major competitive advantage – the Start on the green Meadow and the ability to pitch the business model of established automotive manufacturer in the consistently new Visio. This way of thinking continues into the present.

As Tesla has as a result of the Corona-crisis within introduced in the shortest possible time, the contact-free vehicle handover. The vehicle can be opened via the Tesla App, and the sales process by means of the built-in touch screens to be completed. The advantage: customers are protected against infection, and the car sale can continue to run.

2. Out of this Vision, the success factors do not apply it to master independently and via partnerships arose for Musk. The vehicle’s software, the car battery and the charging infrastructure to the centre of the business model as Enabler of this Vision, advanced with Tesla today.

“Software is eating the world”

In a “normal” car 100 million lines of code on average. For comparison: The Hubble space telescope comes with approximately 50,000 lines of Code. This ratio is multiplied with the increasing development of the vehicles to Autonomous Driving.

Elon Musk, had recognized the strategic importance of the vehicle’s software in the morning. Not a bad train at a time, in the “Software world eats”. Not only is the Software developed with Tesla itself, but the Hardware is the same. So to develop the Full Self-Driving Computer in – house is the control center of the vehicle, which takes the computing power for Autonomous Driving, the maintenance or the Infotainment.

it is the same with the car battery, which in the case of Tesla, up to 40 percent of the vehicle. Here, too, Tesla has set the course early on, while established producers debated a long time about the strategic importance.

Today, Tesla installed in its vehicles some 20 percent of the world’s battery capacity for electric cars. That this Potential is not fully exploited from the point of view of Musk still, the company shows through the development of other skills and capacities in Asia and in the surroundings of Berlin. In addition to the car competition also private households, in consequence of the increasing decentralisation of energy production and storage could boost demand for Tesla’s batteries.

Auto one-Hand

Also with the structure of its own charging infrastructure, Tesla goes its own way. The company has spanned a global network of more than 16,000 public charging stations and selling its own Hardware with each vehicle to the car buyer. With these factors, Tesla controls the most critical bottleneck factors in an industry in which the cards are mixed.

This control allows the organization to a, the speed of innovation slow hardware dominated in a dynamic software-dominated to transfer. On the other, Tesla is able to offer its customers a seamless experience from “one cast” – a promise that looks to be a model more in Apple (and Steve Jobs) than in the Volkswagen.

What does this mean for others?

The share price of Daimler is located at the end of March – not only because of Corona at 21 €. The market capitalization is just 32 billion €. In comparison, Tesla is at about 90 billion euros.

Tesla is on the Fast track, and some experts speak of a head start in the critical factors of several years. Mentioned Tesla, a Visionary and a provocateur in a Person, even in times of Corona’s controversy, by only printing of the state of its factory in Fremont now shut down.

His word has weight with over 32 million followers on Twitter. That is not unimportant. Especially in a company like Tesla, the more about innovation capital, that is, vision and enthusiasm, as a short-term quarterly profits is convinced.

For the competitors, this means to make even more thoughts, if your product satisfies your target audience the purpose, but also timely and promising. A look at the other newcomers, helps in auto mobile market. Companies such as Lucid motor, Faraday’s Future, or Rivian all this, the future of the car to make automobile.

Volkmar Denner, CEO of Bosch, has brought the still-dominant product-centred view in an Interview with the “NZZ” of 26.3.20 to the point: “What we can very well, are physical products and systems. Therefore, the T in IoT (Internet of Things) plays at Bosch a Central role. We Supplement products with networking and Software, from a ‘thing’ a IoT Device. In the case of AI, with little success, it would be promising to compete with Internet companies.“

But what if the competitors therein – that is, the vehicle software has its key advantage?

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