ChargePoint charger.
Pasquale Romano, the CEO of charging network giant* ChargePoint, had a lot to say about Tesla when I spoke to him on Tuesday.
Lots of control:
Romano: So, [Tesla is] innovating on the design side because they’re not following the traditional model year cycles, they don’t follow the traditional supply chain cycles. They’re vertically integrated on battery. They have a tremendous amount of control. And moving very, very quickly with very impressive vehicles.
Production, ground up:
Romano: They are building the production capacity. That’s putting one foot in front of the other. And that actually takes time to build the production capacity. You literally have to bring a factory out of the ground or retool one that exists. You have to hire people, train people, buy all the robots, get all the equipment in place. Get the supply chain up on the volume.
Only EV:
Romano: So, 100 percent of what they do is EV. And for every incremental EV they manage to sell, they get closer and closer to being consistently profitable and reaching the next level of escape velocity for the company.
Others are late:
Romano: A traditional auto manufacturer will take a more cautious approach. They have to balance the production capacity between their ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicles and their EVs. They’re not as vertically integrated because they all started later. Tesla started way earlier. They’re all late relative to Tesla.
Why they pump out Model 3s:
So this is why you’re seeing so many Model 3s pumped out relative to other models (from other auto manufacturers). If a lot of these car manufacturers had started as early as Tesla and had applied as much capital and mind share as Tesla has internally. Other auto manufacturers…I mean, GM produces [millions of cars a year]. If GM wanted to, they could triple production capacity on the Bolt.
So, Tesla is all in. For the EV market, thank god for Tesla, Rivian, California, and the Chinese.
Tesla bashing:
I don’t know why so many people bash them. Well, I do know…a lot of it is financially motivated with the short sellers.
Other:
Romano had plenty to say about things not related to Tesla in my interview. The Tesla comments came at the very end. The bulk of the interview was about how EV charging will play out in 2020 and beyond for ChargePoint. I plan to post something on that in the coming weeks.
CEO Pasquale Romano
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NOTES:
*ChargePoint says it has 103,600 charging spots around the world and is targeting 2.5 million places to charge by 2025.
Romano says he drives two Teslas and is about to get a third.
