5 ms·

I dunno, when the article said "Tesla fanboys" that seems like a good indicator that the author is a bit biased against Tesla.

by eridius 10y ago

dogma1138 10y ago
No, it's a good indicator that there are "Tesla Fanboys" out there, and they exist and some of them like any other fanboy are pretty fanatical and not all the time logical.
- eridius 10y ago
  That makes no sense. Declaring that there are "Tesla fanboys" is not proof of their existence. Sure, I'll grant you they do exist, but they exist for a lot of different companies/products and are usually a much tinier base of people than the speaker believes, and almost certainly when someone accuses someone else of being a "fanboy" they're wrong and are just using that to try and discredit the other speaker instead of addressing their points. In this particular case, the author didn't even cite any behavior that indicates being a fanboy, they're just claiming that anyone who points out that Tesla's car has more luxury options, can upgrade to the autopilot, has access to the supercharger network, has brand cachet, and will be more profitable at scale is a fanboy. All of these are legitimate things to say about Tesla and do not require some sort of blind devotion to Tesla in order to point out.
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    I've seen them on HN on more than one occasion. I once dared to make the comment that one day a Tesla battery pack would catch fire or explode and out of the woods they came with their pitchforks and downvotes explaining in length like why it can never happen and how safe are 18650's and the Tesla power bank, and the car, and how smooth Elon Musk's skin is. About 3 weeks later just that thing happened, a Tesla caught fire due to the power pack malfunctioning, since then there were 2-3 more similar cases. There are Tesla and more Elon Musk in general fanboys out there. And I don't really understand why you are taking offense, no one made those claims here, no one even argued that there are no advantages to the Tesla. However those advantages come at a cost, a Model 3 won't be a 30,000 car, it would be close to it after the rebate, you will have to pay extra for luxuries, as well as potentially access to the supercharger network. And I'm not sure about the rest of your arguments, profitability is in question here, it's doubtful that the Model 3 will be as profitable, infact it won't be by design, the question would then be how many Model S/X's Tesla can sale because that would be the limiting factor in it's ability actually ship Model 3's as those partially fund it. As for the brand strength, the brand is considerably more limited than what you think, sure on HN and in a few other circles it has a huge presence but if you think that in the middle of nowhere America, or the rest of the world Tesla has a brand presence you are going to be disappointed, most people do not know what Tesla is. If you ask the average person to name car companies Tesla is about as likely to be named as Alpina, heck i would be that more people are aware of Aplina world wide than Tesla.
    - eridius 10y ago
      > […] and how smooth Elon Musk's skin is. It's really hard to take you seriously when you say something like this. If someone's behavior really is remarkable, then there should be no need to exaggerate. If you exaggerate, it suggests that maybe your complaint isn't legitimate. > it's doubtful that the Model 3 will be as profitable, infact it won't be by design Why do you say that? People seem to be in agreement that GM can sell their car at a loss because they make up for it in the ability to sell other gas-guzzling cars. Tesla can't sell their cars at a loss because they don't have any way to make it up. The people who claim Tesla is losing money on their cars are doing so by including R&D costs as part of the cost of the car, which is nonsense. If Tesla sells 10k more cars, they didn't just lose a bunch of money, they made money on each car. Sure, if Tesla doesn't sell enough to recoup their R&D then they've taken a loss overall, but the idea is that they should sell enough cars to make a profit, which they can then plow back into R&D to make even better cars. And they can take a loss in the short term if it leads to profitability later, what they can't do is take a loss on each unit sold. In fact, if I search for "tesla model 3 profitability" on DDG, the very first result is a Fox Business article from March saying that a goal of the Model 3 is to be profitable, something the other cars haven't been (I assume here that it means after taking R&D into account, as opposed to being a loss on each unit sold) - http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/03/31/tesla-counts-on-model-3-for-profit.html http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/03/31/tesla-counts-o.... > If you ask the average person to name car companies If you ask the average consumer that cares about electric vehicles, they probably do know about Tesla. The average person doesn't really care much about that, beyond maybe thinking that a hybrid car is a good idea (or even thinking it's a bad idea because those usually compromise on power). Edit: Corrected "Business Insider" to "Fox Business". Not sure why I mixed those two up.
      - dogma1138 10y ago
        >It's really hard to take you seriously when you say something like this. If someone's behavior really is remarkable, then there should be no need to exaggerate. If you exaggerate, it suggests that maybe your complaint isn't legitimate. It's also hard to take them seriously, and you to some extent since you decided to take offense about an issue that no one in this thread even raised, usually the first sign of "irrationality" is taking offense when not only it wasn't directed at you, but also wasn't even given to anyone. >Why do you say that?... Because even Elon Musk said so, they are banking on the Model S and X to push the Model 3. Overall the profitability of the Model 3 is still questionable, they are using very expensive materials and platform even for the base model, they are betting on state based rebates to keep it close to 30K (which is risky since those rebates can disappear) and their overall profit margins would be relying on the people that buy the premium modules and upgrades for the model 3, as well as of course buying the very expensive Model S and X's especially the higher end models of those like the P100D. That's where the money is some Core i3/5s are effectively Xeons (or the otherway around depending on how you want to look at it) but Intel sells them for as low as under 100$ while their Xeon counterparts go for 3-5 times the price, what Tesla is doing is effectively binning and selling very minor upgrades at very high relative costs (e.g. using Intel again akin to the 6700 vs 6700K same CPU 50$ difference (300 vs 350$) for an unlocked multiplier which is effectively a microcode patch) which may or may not work for cars. >If you ask the average consumer that cares about electric vehicles, they probably do know about Tesla. This is an utterly irrelevant question to ask if you want to make a change in the world, even Elon Musk made this same argument, the point of the cars like the Bolt isn't to sell them to people who want to buy an electric car specifically but to anyone who wants to buy a car in general. This is why range and price point are so important, if you are able to bring an electric car to a range equivalent to a gas car (without refueling) under the 30,000 price point you have yourself the ability to push for real change in the automotive industry and more important a real environmental change both locally and globally. The whole idea is to make the fact that a car is electric so irrelevant that it would be akin to asking if a car has power steering in this day and age. So pretty much when we get to the point of: >The average person doesn't really care much about that Is when we "win".
  - serge2k 10y ago
    For proof see a great many HN threads about Tesla. Or /r/technology, which I removed from my subscriptions because it was becoming all tesla all the time.

I dunno, when the article said "Tesla fanboys" that seems like a good indicator that the author is a bit biased against Tesla.

by eridius 10y ago

I dunno, when the article said "Tesla fanboys" that seems like a good indicator that the author is a bit biased against Tesla.

dogma1138 10y ago

No, it's a good indicator that there are "Tesla Fanboys" out there, and they exist and some of them like any other fanboy are pretty fanatical and not all the time logical.

eridius 10y ago
That makes no sense. Declaring that there are "Tesla fanboys" is not proof of their existence. Sure, I'll grant you they do exist, but they exist for a lot of different companies/products and are usually a much tinier base of people than the speaker believes, and almost certainly when someone accuses someone else of being a "fanboy" they're wrong and are just using that to try and discredit the other speaker instead of addressing their points. In this particular case, the author didn't even cite any behavior that indicates being a fanboy, they're just claiming that anyone who points out that Tesla's car has more luxury options, can upgrade to the autopilot, has access to the supercharger network, has brand cachet, and will be more profitable at scale is a fanboy. All of these are legitimate things to say about Tesla and do not require some sort of blind devotion to Tesla in order to point out.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  I've seen them on HN on more than one occasion. I once dared to make the comment that one day a Tesla battery pack would catch fire or explode and out of the woods they came with their pitchforks and downvotes explaining in length like why it can never happen and how safe are 18650's and the Tesla power bank, and the car, and how smooth Elon Musk's skin is. About 3 weeks later just that thing happened, a Tesla caught fire due to the power pack malfunctioning, since then there were 2-3 more similar cases. There are Tesla and more Elon Musk in general fanboys out there. And I don't really understand why you are taking offense, no one made those claims here, no one even argued that there are no advantages to the Tesla. However those advantages come at a cost, a Model 3 won't be a 30,000 car, it would be close to it after the rebate, you will have to pay extra for luxuries, as well as potentially access to the supercharger network. And I'm not sure about the rest of your arguments, profitability is in question here, it's doubtful that the Model 3 will be as profitable, infact it won't be by design, the question would then be how many Model S/X's Tesla can sale because that would be the limiting factor in it's ability actually ship Model 3's as those partially fund it. As for the brand strength, the brand is considerably more limited than what you think, sure on HN and in a few other circles it has a huge presence but if you think that in the middle of nowhere America, or the rest of the world Tesla has a brand presence you are going to be disappointed, most people do not know what Tesla is. If you ask the average person to name car companies Tesla is about as likely to be named as Alpina, heck i would be that more people are aware of Aplina world wide than Tesla.
  - eridius 10y ago
    > […] and how smooth Elon Musk's skin is. It's really hard to take you seriously when you say something like this. If someone's behavior really is remarkable, then there should be no need to exaggerate. If you exaggerate, it suggests that maybe your complaint isn't legitimate. > it's doubtful that the Model 3 will be as profitable, infact it won't be by design Why do you say that? People seem to be in agreement that GM can sell their car at a loss because they make up for it in the ability to sell other gas-guzzling cars. Tesla can't sell their cars at a loss because they don't have any way to make it up. The people who claim Tesla is losing money on their cars are doing so by including R&D costs as part of the cost of the car, which is nonsense. If Tesla sells 10k more cars, they didn't just lose a bunch of money, they made money on each car. Sure, if Tesla doesn't sell enough to recoup their R&D then they've taken a loss overall, but the idea is that they should sell enough cars to make a profit, which they can then plow back into R&D to make even better cars. And they can take a loss in the short term if it leads to profitability later, what they can't do is take a loss on each unit sold. In fact, if I search for "tesla model 3 profitability" on DDG, the very first result is a Fox Business article from March saying that a goal of the Model 3 is to be profitable, something the other cars haven't been (I assume here that it means after taking R&D into account, as opposed to being a loss on each unit sold) - http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/03/31/tesla-counts-on-model-3-for-profit.html http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/03/31/tesla-counts-o.... > If you ask the average person to name car companies If you ask the average consumer that cares about electric vehicles, they probably do know about Tesla. The average person doesn't really care much about that, beyond maybe thinking that a hybrid car is a good idea (or even thinking it's a bad idea because those usually compromise on power). Edit: Corrected "Business Insider" to "Fox Business". Not sure why I mixed those two up.
    - dogma1138 10y ago
      >It's really hard to take you seriously when you say something like this. If someone's behavior really is remarkable, then there should be no need to exaggerate. If you exaggerate, it suggests that maybe your complaint isn't legitimate. It's also hard to take them seriously, and you to some extent since you decided to take offense about an issue that no one in this thread even raised, usually the first sign of "irrationality" is taking offense when not only it wasn't directed at you, but also wasn't even given to anyone. >Why do you say that?... Because even Elon Musk said so, they are banking on the Model S and X to push the Model 3. Overall the profitability of the Model 3 is still questionable, they are using very expensive materials and platform even for the base model, they are betting on state based rebates to keep it close to 30K (which is risky since those rebates can disappear) and their overall profit margins would be relying on the people that buy the premium modules and upgrades for the model 3, as well as of course buying the very expensive Model S and X's especially the higher end models of those like the P100D. That's where the money is some Core i3/5s are effectively Xeons (or the otherway around depending on how you want to look at it) but Intel sells them for as low as under 100$ while their Xeon counterparts go for 3-5 times the price, what Tesla is doing is effectively binning and selling very minor upgrades at very high relative costs (e.g. using Intel again akin to the 6700 vs 6700K same CPU 50$ difference (300 vs 350$) for an unlocked multiplier which is effectively a microcode patch) which may or may not work for cars. >If you ask the average consumer that cares about electric vehicles, they probably do know about Tesla. This is an utterly irrelevant question to ask if you want to make a change in the world, even Elon Musk made this same argument, the point of the cars like the Bolt isn't to sell them to people who want to buy an electric car specifically but to anyone who wants to buy a car in general. This is why range and price point are so important, if you are able to bring an electric car to a range equivalent to a gas car (without refueling) under the 30,000 price point you have yourself the ability to push for real change in the automotive industry and more important a real environmental change both locally and globally. The whole idea is to make the fact that a car is electric so irrelevant that it would be akin to asking if a car has power steering in this day and age. So pretty much when we get to the point of: >The average person doesn't really care much about that Is when we "win".
- serge2k 10y ago
  For proof see a great many HN threads about Tesla. Or /r/technology, which I removed from my subscriptions because it was becoming all tesla all the time.