2019年4月30日
Tesla is finding out what it's like when China gets a little angry
It started last week when a Tesla Model S sitting in a Shanghai parking garage suddenly caught fire, burning up a few cars around it. The response to that on Weibo, China’s massive microblog, was swift and brutal: “Tesla should be barred from entering garages just like Samsung Note 7s were banned from boarding,” 'now Tesla is threatening our safety with super-fast, self-burning speed. We can’t endure that.”
Tesla broke ground on a factory in Shanghai in January, taking out a $US500 million loan from a syndicate of Chinese banks to complete the project. It’s supposed to be churning out cars by the end of this year – though Wall Street has its doubts about that timeline – and that loan is due back to creditors next March.
China has also become a huge market for electric vehicles, though that picture is becoming more complicated by the day, thanks to market saturation and shifting government incentives for electric-vehicle buyers and manufacturers.
One-off or not, the Shanghai fire has opened a window for state media to criticise Tesla. Tesla debuted its Model S in China in April 2014 and derived 15.3% of its revenue from China in 2014. But registrations did not keep track with sales, as many vehicles sat in the channel or at Tesla’s bonded warehouse. Most buyers, it turned out, used their Teslas for commercial purposes. As long as the Chinese still revere Elon [Musk] for being an ‘innovative leader’ Tesla will be fine.
WeWork confidentially filed to go public
The We Company, better known as WeWork, announced on Monday that it had submitted its draft registration to go public with the Securities and Exchange Commission. WeWork rebranded as The We Company in January in an effort to expand beyond commercial office rentals.
The We Company has raised over $US10 billion in venture capital since 2011. Softbank, the Japanese conglomerate, has invested some $US10 billion in The We Company, in the form of venture capital, as well as debt instruments and secondary share sales not considered part of its funding raised. Softbank most recently invested in The We Company in January at a valuation said to be about $US47 billion.
The We Company doubled both its revenue and losses in 2018, with $US1.82 billion in revenue and $US1.93 billion in net loss. That same report also said international growth accounted for more than 40% of revenue by the second half of 2018. The We Company recently acquired Managed by Q to increase access to office and administrative services for its 401,000 commercial members in its 425 locations.
5G networks will be 10 times faster than 4G LTE, but we shouldn't get too excited yet
5G is coming. That means instead of waiting five minutes to download a movie on Netflix in 4G, it will take just 30 seconds on 5G. The new standard means devices can communicate with each other with no lag. That opens up the possibility for things like wireless VR experiences and more reliable driverless cars thanks to the ability to analyse and process data at faster speeds. But there are some obstacles 5G needs to overcome before we can really reap all of its amazing benefits.
First, we need a whole new infrastructure. Your cell phone provider, for example, will need to install a lot of new equipment for this new technology because 5G uses a totally different wavelength than the 4G standard your phone currently uses. To ensure a reliable 5G signal, there needs to be a lot of 5G cell towers and antennas everywhere.
One of the biggest problems they face is actually local governments, local communities, who don’t want these carriers to build towers or antennas all over the place. While 5G is being rolled out, it is very slow and in limited areas, and non-city and rural areas will be more difficult to cover since 5G has such a short range. You can expect 5G phones to cost you about $US200 to $US300 more than one without 5G. While all the carriers are already starting to tout their 5G capabilities, don’t get too excited because it’s still going to be a few years before you can really take advantage of it.
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