Tesla Will Build Two Cars For Toyota
Not two kinds. Not two types. Two. As in what’s sitting in your two car garage. In what must be the eclipse of brazenness, Tesla announced that “on Friday it signed a memorandum of understanding with Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corp to deliver two electric vehicles to the world’s largest automaker by the end of month.” And then they sent the press release for that momentous event to all wire services, including Reuters.
It’s not even a contract. It’s a MoU, akin to us sending an email to our friendly car dealer down the road, saying “I intend to come by and trade-in two cars sometime next month.” Take that to the bank and try to get money on it.
According to the Reuters story, Tesla will equip existing Toyota vehicles with Tesla electric powertrains. This story is getting curiouser and curiouser.
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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I take Toyo is purty smart, if Tesla did well in the prototypes, Toyo will for sure publish on the front page, if it fails they will hide the association with Tesla. What Tesla is doing u think the whole Toyo engineering staffs cannot come up with something like this? I am sure the Jap engineers had probably explored all these options decades ago, just there was not enuf demand on the market. On the subject of Lexus LFA tagged at 300 some grand will it be another Toyo 2000GT? of the 70s' At that price is really up there or even above with the Horse, Bull, Trident , Star emblems. I cant see them sell a ton of them either. Why cant they make a V8 MR2? perhaps slightly bigger, wider.
I finished the article: "At Toyota we have a lot to learn from this partnership. We've just begun working with Tesla but I believe that we've taken an important first step," Sasaki said. Reads like two cars is a beginning, not end.
What does God need with a starship?
Once Toyota takes delivery of the cars, they will disassemble, reverse engineer, steal all the best ideas from the cars, and then build their own electric cars without Tesla.