That assumes SF city politics would take over the suburbs.
The city of Indianapolis years ago merged itself with its surrounding county, to unify city and suburbs. This was instigated by the Republican suburban leadership so that the metro region would remain under Republican control. Indianapolis has been a more politically moderate city than peers as a result.
No, I'm saying that NYC is a very large city (speaking geographically, by population, or by politics). It has the super-liberal UWS and Greenwich/East Village, but also the UES, Staten Island, eastern Queens, Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn, old-line Italians in Arthur Avenue, Howard Beach, and a lot of ordinary middle-class areas. All those areas balance out the nutty leftism of other parts of the city.
San Francisco doesn't have anything like that. As the article discusses, the middle class has been fleeing San Francisco for decades. it's never going to elect a Bloomberg, let alone a Giuliani.
"There is no planet where the valuation of Tesla makes any sense."
This is the typical mindset of investors who look backward--P/E ratio--while attempting to value a growth company.
Electric vehicle penetration will soar from 3% to 20% by 2025. Tesla volumes will soar alongside from 500K to 3.5M. That equates to 2025 EPS of $18 ~ $900 at 50x (2x P/E to growth ratio) and $600 present value.
"Their battery technology is all from Panasonic"
Panasonic manufactures 2170 and 18650 cells. Tesla provides the formula for the chemistry of those cells, and creates a proprietary pack from them. Tesla also has multiple breakthroughs with the introduction of its 4860 cell, now being produced at the Roadrunner facility on Kato Road.
"their self-driving technology is behind Waymo"
Waymo's release of "public-but you can't sign up" self-driving ride share service is a specialized solution restricted to a specific area. Deep NN require vast amounts of data that is well labeled, Tesla has an advantage here.
"Other car makers have access to most of the same technology and much more experience mass-producing vehicles."
OEMs will need to spend billions to retool their factories to produce EV. As EV penetration rises they are left with useless equipment, technology and engineers. Massive amounts of capital will be need to retool factories to produce EV specific platforms. Converting ICE platforms to EV has proved to produce inferior product. OEMs have little software expertise. OEMs may have had superior manufacturing skill, but with Tesla's cell-to-body, and metallurgy breakthroughs allowing giga-castings that replace hundreds of parts and processes this is no longer true.
The other OEMs will have to retool, yes. However, Tesla must construct brand new factories if they start shipping Ford-quantities of cars. Constructing brand new factories takes more capital than retooling, especially since EVs are a lot simpler than IC cars.
The established players have massively more capital and expertise making reliable cars.
Non-competes suck. You have a few options when leaving a company:
* Get the blessing of the old employer to work at the new company.
* Work around the restrictions (geographic area, industry, list of companies, ...)
* Fight it.
* Ignore it, ensure the new company will too, and hope for the best.
Anecdotally, I've heard of companies sending out cease and desist letters. The letters were ignored by the new employer/employee and it went no further.
