Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk, taken by Yuriko Nakao of Bloomberg.

When I was looking through articles on Bloomberg, I came into this article that talks how Tesla is going to move towards enabling automated driving into their cars. Tesla is not the first company to do this, rather European companies such as BMW and Mercedes-Benz also have these technological advancements plugged into their cars.

What I don’t find surprising is how Tesla chooses to add a feature that is not common in cars; having an automated driving system. What I found surprising is why they did it, because in theory, it will increase their costs and thus increase the price of their car, even though Tesla chooses to have a strategy that focuses on its narrow market segment and product uniqueness.

From this article, I believe that Tesla’s main competitor is not only the Nissan Leaf, but luxury car brands such as Mercedes Benz, who are also targeting high-income earners. Maybe what Tesla does differently from other brands, is that it is planning to “going from highway on-ramp to highway exit without touching any controls,” which is more than what the Mercedes Benz S550 is capable of doing. Tesla here shows that it tries to perform similar activities in different ways, which is to combine all the features the Mercedes Benz S550 has (telling drivers that they’re drifting out of the lane, there’s another vehicle in blind spot, and maintaining a safe distance between the car and the car in front by matching their speed). This article interests me because as far as what I have learnt in class about Tesla, this article shows that there is more to Tesla than just building a Gigafactory and a $90,000 electric car.