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This article insinuates GM is beating Tesla to the punch on the "everyman" electric car as though it's some big surprise that an auto manufacturing giant is abl

This article insinuates GM is beating Tesla to the punch on the "everyman" electric car as though it's some big surprise that an auto manufacturing giant is able to produce something at scale much quicker than a scrappy upstart. The bigger story is that it took this scrappy upstart and its "[c]ocky billionaire" CEO for this lumbering behemoth to inch their rudder 1 degree away from cranking out SUVs.

jhugg 10y ago
What scale? Tesla has hundreds of thousands of pre-orders. How many of these will GM sell? It’s not like there’s a wait-list for Volts.
- brohoolio 10y ago
  The Ford Escape sells 600,000 units a year in America. That's one SUV from one manufacturer. That's more than the entire minivan segment. If GM can leverage one of their platforms for most of the Bolt it can dramatically lower the cost. What they do with the Bolt can bleed back over to the rest of the platform.
objclxt 10y ago
> as though it's some big surprise that an auto manufacturing giant is able to produce something at scale much quicker than a scrappy upstart I'm not sure I'd call Tesla a "scrappy upstart". They're a publicly traded company with a market cap of $28B, versus GM's $47B. They employ 14,000 people. That's a lot less than GM, but it's also not an insignificant amount. At what point does one stop being a scrappy upstart, and start being a mature company?
- codeulike 10y ago
  Tesla is truely both an upstart and a startup. They are barely 10 years old and its only in the last 3 years that they've produced more than 10,000 cars a year. Their huge market cap reflects their huge plans, not their current state.
  - FireBeyond 10y ago
    "Barely 10" - the company was founded over 13 years ago, and Musk had been talking about it for a few years prior. It may not seem like much of a difference, but when you're trying to spin as a new arrival... Similar to the DPR / Silk Road case, where Ross's attorneys tried to paint him as "just a young kid making some silly mistakes". "Youthful indiscretion". Ross was about to turn thirty. Not the "same" thing, but how many teenagers do you know who wouldn't be offended by being called "barely 10"?
    - codeulike 10y ago
      13 = barely 10 is OK in my book, when we're comparing to GM which is 108 years old.
      - serge2k 10y ago
        You mean barely 80 years old right?
- greglindahl 10y ago
  A startup is a company that looks like it's rapidly going out of business. If you look at the financial press, they accuse Tesla of this situation quite frequently.
saosebastiao 10y ago
I remember the bolt announcements happening during some massive criticism of Detroit automakers for asking for bailouts, and them needing some justification for congressional intervention to keep them alive. It's obviously more complex than that, but I would give more credit to the threat of dying than (what was at the time) a niche electric sportscar manufacturer run by a guy with extremely divided attention.
- sammydavis 10y ago
  I believe the announced the Volt (the plug in gas battery car) during that time of bailouts, I never heard of the b-Bolt until much later.

jhugg 10y ago

What scale? Tesla has hundreds of thousands of pre-orders. How many of these will GM sell? It’s not like there’s a wait-list for Volts.

brohoolio 10y ago
The Ford Escape sells 600,000 units a year in America. That's one SUV from one manufacturer. That's more than the entire minivan segment. If GM can leverage one of their platforms for most of the Bolt it can dramatically lower the cost. What they do with the Bolt can bleed back over to the rest of the platform.

objclxt 10y ago

> as though it's some big surprise that an auto manufacturing giant is able to produce something at scale much quicker than a scrappy upstart I'm not sure I'd call Tesla a "scrappy upstart". They're a publicly traded company with a market cap of $28B, versus GM's $47B. They employ 14,000 people. That's a lot less than GM, but it's also not an insignificant amount. At what point does one stop being a scrappy upstart, and start being a mature company?

codeulike 10y ago
Tesla is truely both an upstart and a startup. They are barely 10 years old and its only in the last 3 years that they've produced more than 10,000 cars a year. Their huge market cap reflects their huge plans, not their current state.
- FireBeyond 10y ago
  "Barely 10" - the company was founded over 13 years ago, and Musk had been talking about it for a few years prior. It may not seem like much of a difference, but when you're trying to spin as a new arrival... Similar to the DPR / Silk Road case, where Ross's attorneys tried to paint him as "just a young kid making some silly mistakes". "Youthful indiscretion". Ross was about to turn thirty. Not the "same" thing, but how many teenagers do you know who wouldn't be offended by being called "barely 10"?
  - codeulike 10y ago
    13 = barely 10 is OK in my book, when we're comparing to GM which is 108 years old.
    - serge2k 10y ago
      You mean barely 80 years old right?
greglindahl 10y ago
A startup is a company that looks like it's rapidly going out of business. If you look at the financial press, they accuse Tesla of this situation quite frequently.

saosebastiao 10y ago

I remember the bolt announcements happening during some massive criticism of Detroit automakers for asking for bailouts, and them needing some justification for congressional intervention to keep them alive. It's obviously more complex than that, but I would give more credit to the threat of dying than (what was at the time) a niche electric sportscar manufacturer run by a guy with extremely divided attention.

sammydavis 10y ago
I believe the announced the Volt (the plug in gas battery car) during that time of bailouts, I never heard of the b-Bolt until much later.