Tesla

Every car company on Earth buys parts from thousands of suppliers, assembles them in a factory, and ships the finished cars to independent dealerships who sell them to customers. Tesla does none of this. Elon Musk built the most vertically integrated car company since the original Ford Motor Company. Tesla designs its own chips, manufactures its own battery cells, stamps its own body panels, writes its own software, and sells directly to customers through company owned stores. There is no middleman at any stage. The entire chain from raw lithium to the moment you drive off the lot is controlled by one company. The Gigafactory concept is where this becomes a weapon. Tesla's factory in Nevada is one of the largest buildings on Earth by footprint. Raw materials enter one end and finished battery packs exit the other. By owning the manufacturing process end to end, Tesla eliminated the margins that suppliers and dealers extract at every step. A traditional car manufacturer loses fifteen to twenty percent of the vehicle's final price to the dealership network alone.