Part 1
The ideas of electric cars in the US saw it's birth centuries ago when an Iowa Chemist William Morrison manufactured a six-passenger car that could only move at a top speed of 14 miles per hour (Matulka, 2020 par. 3). Since then, the interest in manufacturing electric cars increased, but a breakthrough was realized in 2010 when Elon Musk took a loan of over $400 million from the Department of Energy Loan Programs. Tesla was born, and since then, it has been the mirror to the future. Tesla Inc. (hereafter referred to as Tesla), is an electric automotive manufacturing company with headquarters in Palo Alto, California. It specializes in the manufacture of hybrid and fully automated cars, alongside home energy storage devices called power walls, megapacks, and power packs (Fortune Magazine, 2020, n.d).
Tesla has been the leading automotive vehicle manufacturer in the US since its inception. It operates solely in the US, but its market target is the global automotive industry. The rising concerns over the effects of pollution owed to the carbon footprints of carbon-fuel powered vehicles have made the world conscious of carbon pollution. The main customers of Tesla are not defined, but includes the entire developed and developing consumers of cars. However, since the vehicles need special equipment for powering and part replacements, the Tesla market has majorly been the developed nations. Tesla vehicles and other electric vehicles currently make up 3 percent of all cars manufactured and sold, but with the increased concern of environmental pollution and the fast industrialization process has made the industry develop fast. It is estimated that by 2030, electric vehicles will make up 10% of the cars in the motor vehicle company.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Part 2
The Industrial Revolution began with the shift from rudimentary farming practices like the use of animal power and human effort as the primary sources of mechanical energy. The first industrial Revolution was thus characterized by increased mechanization that necessitated the invention of fossil fuels, water, and steam powers. Nicholas Davis, the head of Science and Innovation at the World Economic Forum, describes the first industrial Revolution as the 'revolutionary paradigm shift that introduced machines to the human world' (Davis, 2016 p. 2). The First Industrial Revolution dominated most of the early 18th Century and lasted till the mid of the 19th Century.
The Second Industrial Revolution began in the mid-19th Century and lasted up to the first two decades of the 20th Century. The invention of electricity gave way to new innovations. Computerization and technical developments expanded production, and automation began to replace industrial human labor. New designs in the fields of Chemistry and Physics paved the way for the tremendous industrial breakthrough that defined the Third Industrial Revolution (Schwab, 2016, pg. 11). Computerization during the Third Industrial Revolution expanded the digital system, broadened the reach of communication, and saw a significant increase in the power of computing. Sharing of information thus improved, and production increased tremendously.
Despite the significant advancement in the field of production, electric power, computing, and management that have defined industrial Revolution, not all parts of the world have been impacted equally with industrialization ( Loureiro, 2018 pg. 741) . While other economies are welcoming the Fourth Industrial Revolution, most economies in the developing worlds are still getting the grasp of the Second Phase of the Revolution. Most developing countries in the poorest countries do not have access to electricity, automated mass production of industrial products and agriculture, limited connection to the broader world, and minimal contact with the new economic advantages.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution has begun, and many economies are caught in the middle of the development. Despite the lack of equity in the distribution of resources that enable equal appreciation of the industrial wake, many people are aware of the new Revolution. The widespread and positive reception of the mobile handsets has contributed to great widespread information. The mobile is just a tiny bit of the larger model that is designed to make use of cutting edge technologies that have come to define the new Age. Production, supply chain management, customer outreach, and data about consumption and the subsequent demand are recorded and controlled and even predicted using complex digital mathematical models called block-chains. Szozda defines the new Age as the Age of connection and utilization of the virtual space. She says that, in this digital Age, people are "connected together in social media, and this is transferred to the field of industry, where machines, items, and employees get linked into a network in virtual reality" (Szozda, 2017, p.401). The Internet of Things is one of the latest developments that have become significant in this industrial Age. Data is collected and analyzed in real-time, and accurate predictions are made.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution has been defined as the advent of Cyber-Physical. The Revolution revolves around the relationship between people and machines. The hardware that drives this Fourth Revolution has a strong foundation from the Third Revolution, but with some improvement. Technology has, therefore, become part of everyday interaction, with some being embedded in human bodies. For example, gene editing, increased artificial intelligence (AI), new automated robotic systems, and many more.
The Fourth Revolution is still in progress, and it is difficult to ascertain the extent of its reach. However, there are concerns that security and individual identity are real concerns at this Age. The issue of security arises with the heavy dependence on the digital space. It has made the fears of the state actors more pronounced as they fear that in the hyper-connected and inequitable world, social unrest and segregations are likely to lead to a power shift to these non-state actors. The richest, those who control about 98% of the world's resources, make up only 1% of the world's population. However, the less privileged are the remaining 99%, and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is built on the digital space, hands them immense power (Hardoon et al. 2016, par. 1). A new battle space has been created. Hacker's and terrorists now thrive in the cyberspace. This new battle space has replaced air, land, and water bottles, and all nations are now shifting their attention towards the potential power of this new dimension. Schwab states that:
"While any future conflict between reasonably advanced actors may or may not play out in the physical world, it will most likely include a cyber-dimension simply because no modern opponent would resist the temptation to disrupt, confuse or destroy their enemy's sensors, communications, and decision-making capability." (pg. 80).
Furthermore, the advancement of robotics and other automated weapons, nanotechnology, biological and biochemical weapons, and other energy sources has made the conversation more serious. These weapons are mainly developed by non-states actors, and the governments are worried about how they may be used by the enemies. The question is thus not when, but how (Schwab and Davis 2018 pg. 32).
As evident, the present Fourth Industrial revolution does not only present the new highly industrialized nations with new capabilities of mass production but has opened the door for more participation of both state and non-state players. The security of data has become the main priority. Identity theft cases have risen, and now, the battle is who possesses information and the right robots (Mandling et al. 2018, pg. 298). Businesses run online, supply, and demand are facilitated online. All transactions are digitalized. Even locomotion vehicles are automated, and they operate on data input ( Shao, 2019, pg. 97 ). The amount of data collected on a daily basis is robust, and those who manage these data are non-state players, the digital industry moguls like Mark Zuckerberg, and others. With the rise of the Age of Ai and robots, much still waits to be unearthed.
Part 3
Tesla Inc. operates like any other company that collects user data and includes it in its planning, thus informing their future modifications on their products to suit their customer needs. In Szozda’s Toothbrush Manufacturer's Case Study, she asserts that in accordance with the elements of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, companies have made information flow the most essential aspect of their operations. The traditional supply chain includes the product flow from the supplier (who receives raw materials or finished products) to the manufacturer, then to the distributors, and finally to the retailers, who deliver them to the consumers (Fig. 4). This model, however, relies on one-way communication, where the subsequent element in the chain can only communicate to the other item. For instance, the consumer only talks with the retailer, and so on. While this model still functions, the Fourth Revolution has introduced a complex system, in which information has become the most crucial element of the business. Through the cyber-space, consumers, who are the primary targets for the end product in every market, can interact with the manufacturer, the supplier and the distributor directly and thus upsetting the traditional chain of command.
Tesla, in particular, has employed these elements in various ways. Tesla has an integrated information management system called the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY). Tesla operates through a collaborative model in which the Customers relate directly with the product team, who, in turn, connect directly with their service providers. At Tesla, the information management system is consumer-centered. Information management collects and organizes, then analyses the collected information about the use of Tesla products. As a result, Tesla has established a collaborative model that ensures maximum cooperation between them and their consumers, thus enabling them to tailor their products from their consumer's direct input().
Apart from the direct customer input, Tesla also uses the AI inbuilt in most of its products to collect massive amounts of data about the use of their products. Their semi-automated and fully autonomous cars have a high degree of correspondence between their real-time operations and the company. The vehicles are inbuilt with sensors and data transmitters, which collect real-time data and send them to the mother company. This has enabled Tesla to know the challenges that these vehicles are likely to face in their operations, which allows them to upgrade them to respond to these challenges. For instance, weather, traffic, response time to emergency brakes, the transition between automatic to user control for the semi-automatic cars, and user safety during an accident. AS a result, Tesla has been able to understand the defects in their products and act on them, which has reduced the frequency of accidents using their vehicular products.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is exceedingly evident in the Tesla vehicles and is currently changing the way Tesla operates. Burger et al. (2013) state that the mission of DESY's information management activities is to provide optimum systems for each life cycle stage and help to establish engineering processes that are compatible with the information management goals" (pg. 4). All these forecasts that Tesla, like any other company that has caught the haze of this Revolution, is already aware that the Revolution operates primarily on data.
References
Bürger, J., Hagge, L., Kreutzkamp, J., Lappe, K., and Robben, A. (2013). Integrated Information Management for TESLA. Int. Conf. on Computing in High Energy Physics (CHEP) .
Davis, N. (2016). What is the fourth industrial Revolution? . [online] World Economic Forum. Available at: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/what-is-the-fourth-industrial-revolution/ [Accessed 4 Feb. 2020].
Fortune. (2020). Tesla . [online] Available at: https://fortune.com/fortune500/tesla/ [Accessed 4 Feb. 2020].
Hardoon, D., Ayele, S., and Fuentes-Nieva, R. (2016). An Economy For the 1% | Oxfam International . [online] Oxfam International. Available at: https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/economy-1 [Accessed 4 Feb. 2020].
Loureiro, A. (2018). There is a fourth industrial revolution: the Digital Revolution. Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes , 10(6), pp.740-744.
Matulka, R. (2020). The History of the Electric Car . [online] Energy.gov. Available at: https://www.energy.gov/articles/history-electric-car [Accessed 4 Feb. 2020].
Mendling, J., Decker, G., Hull, R., Reijers, H., and Weber, I. (2018). How do Machine Learning, Robotic Process Automation, and Blockchains Affect the Human Factor in Business Process Management?. Communications of the Association for Information Systems , pp.297-320.
Schwab, K. (2016). The fourth industrial Revolution . 1st ed. Cologny/Geneva: World Economic Forum.
Schwab, K., and Davis, N. (2018). Shaping the fourth industrial Revolution . 1st ed. Geneva, Switzerland: World Economic Forum.
Shao, Z. (2019). Interaction effect of strategic leadership behaviors and organizational culture on IS-Business strategic alignment and Enterprise Systems assimilation. International Journal of Information Management , 44, pp.96-108.
Szozda, N. (2017). Log forum , 13(4).
