This was my initial reaction as well, but considering the scale of Tesla I thought I should validate it.
Intel reportedly produces roughly 10 million wafers per year [1]. Roughly 70 million new cars are sold per year [2], with Tesla currently accounting for 0.5 million of those [3] with roughly 50% YOY growth numbers and a plan on continuing those for multiple years [4].
Cars/wafer is a pretty unclear number, at 5 Tesla is 1% of Intel's market (today), at 25 0.2% of Intel's market. It will take quite awhile for Tesla to hit intel's scale - but the automotive market as a whole might actually be pretty close to it if all new cars start including giant computers.
Interesting to think about, but I still don't see it making business sense for Tesla, even if they follow some crazy optimistic curve and take half the car market.
There are already multiple competing companies whose sole job is to make the best fabs at high production rates.
Tesla doesn't even make most of their batteries in-house, which is way more core to their business of EV manufacturing. They partner with Panasonic, LG, CATL, etc. because they are in the business of building out manufacturing capacity for battery cells.
Intel reportedly produces roughly 10 million wafers per year [1]. Roughly 70 million new cars are sold per year [2], with Tesla currently accounting for 0.5 million of those [3] with roughly 50% YOY growth numbers and a plan on continuing those for multiple years [4].
Cars/wafer is a pretty unclear number, at 5 Tesla is 1% of Intel's market (today), at 25 0.2% of Intel's market. It will take quite awhile for Tesla to hit intel's scale - but the automotive market as a whole might actually be pretty close to it if all new cars start including giant computers.
[1] 884k/month * 12 months/year, from https://www.eenewseurope.com/news/top-five-chip-makers-domin...
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/200002/international-car...
[3] https://backlinko.com/tesla-stats (or see [4] but then you have to add up quarters yourself)
[4] https://tesla-cdn.thron.com/static/ZBOUYO_TSLA_Q2_2021_Updat...