Autonomous and electric transportation will eventually resemble utilities like electricity, gas, or phone service, Morgan Stanley said in a note to clients on Tuesday. That could spell trouble for Tesla, the investment bank said, as it may not retain access to data from the vehicles it builds in China.
Read more: A drone video claims to show the first stages of construction on Tesla’s Chinese factory
“While we expect Tesla to construct a factory in Shanghai and transfer valuable production technology to the region, we see extremely high risk to the ability for Tesla to have access to the most important part of the value chain in this market – the data. We reiterate our long-standing view that automated and electric transport will, over time, resemble a utility provided principally by domestic parties as a public good not unlike electricity, water, or telecom services,” Morgan Stanley said.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Tesla is building a factory in Shanghai, China, that the automaker said will be ready to begin parts of production for its Model 3 sedan in 2019. A video uploaded to YouTube on Sunday claims to show the lot Tesla will use for the factory, which appears to be in the beginning stages of construction. (Tesla did not respond to a request to confirm that the video shows the future factory site.) Tesla has said the Shanghai factory could produce around 500,000 vehicles per year, starting about four to five years after construction begins.
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