15 ms·

I laughed out loud when I googled "tsla" after watching the video and the top headline in the news section of the google results was "Analyst doubts the new mov

I laughed out loud when I googled "tsla" after watching the video and the top headline in the news section of the google results was "Analyst doubts the new move by Tesla Motors." Clicking on the article for humor's value, I continued to read: > However, Edmunds.com, Inc. analyst Jessica Caldwell questions the value of purchasing a self-driving car before regulations catch up. Caldwell said that, meanwhile, competitors could introduce better solutions, potentially making Tesla’s hardware “obsolete almost as soon as it’s activated for prime time.” It's just hilarious the contortions of logic people will go to in order to put Musk down. Having the equipment ready and in action first is somehow a disadvantage by this argument, and now you're better off being later to market. These same people have written that Tesla will be left in the dust as its competitors beat it to the market because it can't keep up with their manufacturing, and thus being first to market is only an advantage if you're not Tesla. You can't win.

beambot 10y ago
> Having the equipment ready and in action first... That seems to be Ms. Caldwell's point: Without the software or regulations in place, it's impossible to know if the "equipment is ready." I don't disagree with her on this one. (And I am long TSLA.)
- aerovistae 10y ago
  The strategy Musk has clearly been using for a long time now with this is to put as much hardware and software into the field as possible, often even without the customers knowing it's there, and gathering vast amounts of data from it, and gradually forcing it into widespread availability and acceptance, all while letting the system learn and improve itself, which is a necessary step. He's doing what he does best: forcing a hard change on an established system. Autonomous driving not allowed? Well, we'll give them "Autopilot"-- make sure to keep your hands on the wheel! Nope, it's not autonomous, it's Autopilot! It just happens to have all the hardware needed to be fully autonomous, and Autopilot will "gradually gain new capabilities." Questionable? Sure. Best way to make an extremely hard industry transition? Almost definitely. It would be a chicken and egg problem if he didn't do this. Can't test the system extensively beyond the lab without regulations, can't have a system that doesn't meet regulations because it hasn't been tested enough yet. He's just sidestepping this dilemma.
  - beambot 10y ago
    I'm not disagreeing with you. I like the move; I think it's smart. But saying it's an "autonomous car" because it has the sensors and computers just isn't so. When it gets the software, then it's an "autonomous car." To use GPs analogy to the iPhone1: If Apple had just shipped the hardware without iOS, it wouldn't have been the iPhone.
    - aerovistae 10y ago
      That I agree with, yes. But he always stretches the wording. It's his version of advertising, and frankly I prefer it over dancing hamsters.
    - ethbro 10y ago
      I don't think the iPhone had iOS 10 ;). Apple is a pretty good analogy for what Tesla's HW/SW plans seems to be. "Reasonable" backwards software support (at least compared to the otherwise "none") while iterating hardware.
    - weaksauce 10y ago
      The iPhone couldn't cut and paste for a long while. Hell, iirc, there wasn't the App Store until iOS 2 or 3.
  - Fricken 10y ago
    It's an extremely bold commitment on Tesla's part. The available details are a bit ambiguous, but it appears they're putting $8k worth of hardware into every new car though Tesla owners need only pay for it if they want it enabled. All this in spite of tremendous uncertainty not just with regards to the regulatory environment but to the not yet fully developed capabilities of their own software.
    - codeulike 10y ago
      There's no way it's $8k of hardware. The hardware is pretty simple, it's the r+d that's expensive
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
artursapek 10y ago
Nobody would be developing mass-market self-driving cars right now if not for Musk.
- olentangy 10y ago
  That's ridiculous. My 2+ year old Mercedes self drives on the freeway quite nicely. They do require I keep my hands on the wheel, but other than that, it's doing the driving. Other manufacturers aren't simply responding to Elan.
  - sliken 10y ago
    I've read comparisons between the Mercedes and Tesla. It wasn't even close. Even through the comparison was with 2 versions ago of the hardware (the single camera) and at least one major software revision ago. Car and Drive has the details.
- radiorental 10y ago
  dude, tesla isn't even on the list.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#History
  - artursapek 10y ago
    It is on the list, and notice I said "mass market" vehicles. No other manufacturer, even today, has as many autonomous cars on the road as them. And the ones that do exist are not as advanced as Tesla's. These other car companies have had so much more time and resources, and they have not pushed the way Tesla has.
    - YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
      Because Tesla needs to make a lot of money, very quickly. The other makers are already big, and can afford to play it safe. Tesla has to keep risking everything in silly marketing tricks. They'll cool down in a few years (or disappear).
vkou 10y ago
> It's just hilarious the contortions of logic people will go to in order to put Musk down. It's probably because there is a substantial gap between what Musk spins, and reality. Take Tesla 3 pre-orders, for instance. Tesla spins 400,000 pre-orders for a car that you might not receive in the next three years as the most amazing innovation in automobile manufacturing. Historically, there have been a few other companies that had hundreds of thousands of pre-orders, where you would end up waiting years for your car to be built and delivered to you. Their names were Lada, Volga, etc. Soviet auto companies had the exact same problem Tesla has - inability to meet demand.
- drcross 10y ago
  >what Musk spins, and reality. The reality is that they are the first serious electric car company. A tiny enterprise that took on the old Detroit giants and is winning. When you see people putting down hard earned cash for something three years into the future, they are not being tricked, they are investing in disruption. He's such a terrible orator you couldn't describe him as a charlatan. It's his actions and people's wallets speak the loudest.
  - vkou 10y ago
    I'm not at all implying that the money will go poof. What I do mean is that inability to meet demand is actually an incredibly serious problem for a car manufacturer - one that's more closely associated with failing Soviet enterprises, regardless of spin to the contrary. Having three years of cars in your backlog isn't winning. Waiting three years for your car to arrive isn't revolutionary. Meanwhile, Detroit produces more cars then that in two weeks. Tesla might win eventually, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
    - denzil_correa 10y ago
      > Waiting three years for your car to arrive isn't revolutionary. Context : No other car manufacturer will have a comparable EV on the road in the next 3 years. I will take what Tesla gives me.
woodpanel 10y ago
> It's just hilarious the contortions of logic people will go to in order to put Musk down. As much as I anticipate more cool stuff from Tesla, one could say the same about akin-ness of people to find everything that Tesla does "super innovative" and "revolutionary" while the same features already existed in other cars for quite some time. I actually laughed out loud when I saw the Headline of this submission "Tesla released a video of a car driving itself" being the number one entry on HN - sorry but this speaks volumes about the "neutrality" of HN regarding Tesla.
- ddon 10y ago
  Could you provide couple links to videos of other cars driving like this and looking for parking without the owner :)
  - aerovistae 10y ago
    I too would like to see these videos.
    - woodpanel 10y ago
      It's not just self-driving cars. It's features like autonomous parking, lane-assitance, cruise control that automatically keeps the distance to the car in front of you and the like. Stuff like that has been repeatedly hailed by HN'ers as revolutionary when Tesla introduced it. Neglecting that other companies had those features for years. Whenever Tesla is the topic it's almost guaranteed every negative comment on HN will be downvoted (I just see that right now with my comment above. It's constantly gaining and losing me karma). Besides that, the self-driving Tesla isn't news. That is the joke here. It's a press release that gets frenzied on HN's #1 spot.
      - lonewolf_ninja 10y ago
        True. In a way this is kind of analogous to how Apple 'fanboys'/users behave when new features are introduced in iPhones but have already been present in Android for many years prior to that.
fitzroy 10y ago
No surprise since Edmunds makes money off of everyone except Tesla (no advertising, no dealers, no comparison shopping that converts to lead gen). "How does Edmunds make money? Edmunds sells advertising to marketers who have contextually relevant messages for site visitors. Also, car-shoppers who visit Edmunds have the opportunity to request price quotes from dealers and providers of insurance, financing and extended warranties. Edmunds is paid by the automakers, dealers and other service providers for the lead referrals." http://www.edmunds.com/about/faqs.html http://www.edmunds.com/about/faqs.html
- Alupis 10y ago
  Or, how about Edmunds observes car resell values and is predicting whatever Tesla puts in cars today, will not maintain it's resell value (relative to other vehicles in it's class) tomorrow since this market aspect is going to move rapidly before it "gets it right". The resell value may be less than a comparable "normal" car, and there's the risk that some government regulation makes all the technology in a Tesla today obsolete or illegal to use in the future. (and I believe Tesla quietly killed their promise to artificially inflate resell values by footing the bill themselves a while back) Some people naturally won't care about resell value - of course, others will.
- DavidWanjiru 10y ago
  My anecdote: I discovered Edmunds because of their review of first Tesla sedan. It was for me, a technically inclined but nevertheless technically naive reader, the best car review I've ever read.
dschiptsov 10y ago
Time to re-read Atlas Shrugged? Remember the complains about Colorado?) They will always say such things.
- simplemath 10y ago
  Never is a good time to re-read Rand.
  - dschiptsov 10y ago
    Any argumentation?
    - sqeaky 10y ago
      Apparently, it is very detached from reality. I cannot judge for myself having not read them yet. The only people who suggest them are people who I do not respect (rich assholes or people who think they should be rich assholes) or people I not do not know mixed with people insulting them.
      - dschiptsov 10y ago
        OK, I will try, given that I am mere a poor asshole. The classic literature (and Atlas without any doubt belongs to so called modern classic) much like classical music, is a complex and highly artificial phenomena. The word for referring to a piece of art is artifact. In the case of classical music there is absolutely no objective criteria to judge symphonies. It is possible to compare the pieces of music, and lots of pseudo-intellectual assholes do it for living, but it will be nothing but a joggling with a metaphorical jargon. Nevertheless, one almost always could distinguish some fragments from this or that piece of classical music which he likes for some not very articulable reasons. Bach, arguably, composed most of such sources of a beautiful fragments, Mozart is the second, etc. These notions could be applied to literature. Like a symphony, a big novel, even a small poem, cannot be judged by a single criteria, but some parts of it we might find delightful and beautiful. The question, as it is in the case of classic music, is who is the reader (or listener). In case of Atlas Shrugged, there are too many to count arguably beautiful parts (majoring in physics and philosophy is one of them), fragments or even passages, which appeals to the mind of modestly educated reader. The best personages she created were, ironically, not the central, heroic and positive, but all the crooks and weaklings, mediocrities and minor idiots. This, perhaps, is why Rand is hated so much. As a student of philosophy, Rand got most of the philosophic and economic aspects right. Indeed, her Hegelian professor is a true masterpiece, her bureaucrats are convincing, James Taggard is remarkable. Her main characters are overloaded with virtues.) Certain naivety of the plot - the miraculous alloy and especially the perpetuum mobile, for which the book has been criticized so often by idiots, actually are mere nuances. The real story is about focus and persistence, accepting the challenges, adapting and evolving and never giving up - all the postulates of a sound moral philosophy, which goes back to ancient Greeks. No one takes the plot of Atlas seriously. She is also right that the motivations which drive us should be simple and pure (the Greeks, again), should be grounded in our human nature (shaped by evolution, constrained by biology) not in some abstract nonsense, dogmas, fleeting fashions, or even social norms. Rigid social norms are always reflect the ugliness of urban societies. While her main characters are rather angular and clumsy, the driving forces behind them are clearly recognizable and proper. Let's not blame Rand for this angularity. I could do it for hours, but I think you got the idea. Good literature requires a "good" reader to be able to appreciate what is behind the words in a sentence.
sbierwagen 10y ago
If we're continuing the iPhone metaphor from the GP, note that Apple is almost always late to a market segment. When the iPhone was released, Windows CE had owned the smartphone segment for years. The iPod was hardly the first hard drive mp3 player. Apple Watch wasn't the first smart watch. Etc etc etc. Apple makes good products, not innovative ones. It is not at all unthinkable that someone else will release a better self driving car after Tesla, and win marketshare.
- woodpanel 10y ago
  Continuing that path I'd say: Tesla gets software right. Way better than what I've seen in other cars. But what stops that iPhone metaphor for me is Design, Materials and Finish. Apple Products look and feel like luxury. Where as Tesla only achieves that on the software side - and in your pocket.
  - jkchu 10y ago
    I wouldn't be surprised if most people disagreed with your notion that Tesla cars do not look luxurious.
    - StRoy 10y ago
      They only look luxurious from the exterior, the interior is really pitiful for the price when compared to a samely priced car from, say, BMW.
    - roel_v 10y ago
      At the risk of sounding like a nationalistic asshole, Teslas look very American - i.e., a mix of cheap and tacky. Put a 5 series bmw next to it - two different leagues really. I want to root for Tesla, and I'd buy one if I could park it somewhere where I could charge it, but I don't think they're doing great in the looks department, especially not to Europeans.
- tempestn 10y ago
  The iPhone was the first smartphone without a physical keyboard, allowing for a much more functional screen in a convenient form factor, right? I recall it seeming like a non-trivial difference at the time, and clearly a game-changing one.
cpwright 10y ago
> Having the equipment ready and in action first is somehow a disadvantage by this argument, and now you're better off being later to market. So I think it might be from an investment standpoint; just think of Tivo they made the DVR, but once others saw what they were doing there are plenty of other DVR choices and Tivo didn't win the category. Tesla might be forging ahead and blazing the trail for others, who will actually capitalize on it. I think that the Tesla brand is sexy enough that they'll maintain their niche (as Tivo has to some extent), I'm not sure if that will translate into investment returns.
- ssharp 10y ago
  Tivo lost because cable/sat went digital and it made a lot more sense to integrate the DVR into the digital receiver than it did to have a separate box that required using a CableCARD. I'm pretty sure most people don't even know what a CableCARD is. When Tivo was a simple as plugging in the analog coax signal from your cable or antenna, it made a lot of sense. But once the signal from the cable company needed digital decoding, it hurt them, despite Tivo having a better UI.
- spyspy 10y ago
  It's not a horrible comparison, but the barriers to entry between an electric car (+entire charging network) are much higher than a DVR. First mover advantage digs a bigger moat.
  - stcredzero 10y ago
    The stakes are higher and the margins are smaller. First mover advantage either digs a deeper moat or a trap for yourself. (Vercingetorix vs. Julius Caesar at Alesia.)
  - taeric 10y ago
    Meh. The advantage you will want in the vehicle space is who is the "most mover." Production pipelines will be a huge asset for big players.
  - mycall 10y ago
dghughes 10y ago
>It's just hilarious the contortions of logic people will go to in order to put Musk down. I see the opposite Musk seems to be the new Steve Jobs people are crazy over him and seem to think he can do no wrong.
- boznz 10y ago
  He does do wrong, but they are minor annoyances to the things he does right.
nashashmi 10y ago
Very grateful to misunderstandings like this. It had caused Tesla and several tech stocks to be severely undervalued in the market. At 40$, I knew Tesla was worth 140$. And sure enough it started to go up suddenly mostly because of media coverage. Traditional car investors look at certain tried and proven market indicators to judge stocks. When new tech comes along, they don't know what to think. So they think here and there like in this case. The real value in bringing self driving tech here is to provide cool features to the buyer, not necessarily bring the stock of the company up. If investors do not know how how to place value on this, I only shrug.
vonklaus 10y ago
I look at Tesla as the exception to a lot of rules. I agree with you here-- launching hardware which not only is a value add to users but also Tesla data teams, is so far ahead that this seemed like a dumb comment. That said, if some company had manufactured bluetooth hardware last year way in advance of the release and full spec, I would argue that it was a pretty bad move. Clearly this is not a perfect analogy, but it should illustrate that this can seem counter intuitive. Building in the cost of beta tech that doesnt fully work and is not legal is a huge gamble. I just wouldn't personally bet against tesla and for the reasons i outlined; it is likely the right call

beambot 10y ago

> Having the equipment ready and in action first... That seems to be Ms. Caldwell's point: Without the software or regulations in place, it's impossible to know if the "equipment is ready." I don't disagree with her on this one. (And I am long TSLA.)

aerovistae 10y ago
The strategy Musk has clearly been using for a long time now with this is to put as much hardware and software into the field as possible, often even without the customers knowing it's there, and gathering vast amounts of data from it, and gradually forcing it into widespread availability and acceptance, all while letting the system learn and improve itself, which is a necessary step. He's doing what he does best: forcing a hard change on an established system. Autonomous driving not allowed? Well, we'll give them "Autopilot"-- make sure to keep your hands on the wheel! Nope, it's not autonomous, it's Autopilot! It just happens to have all the hardware needed to be fully autonomous, and Autopilot will "gradually gain new capabilities." Questionable? Sure. Best way to make an extremely hard industry transition? Almost definitely. It would be a chicken and egg problem if he didn't do this. Can't test the system extensively beyond the lab without regulations, can't have a system that doesn't meet regulations because it hasn't been tested enough yet. He's just sidestepping this dilemma.
- beambot 10y ago
  I'm not disagreeing with you. I like the move; I think it's smart. But saying it's an "autonomous car" because it has the sensors and computers just isn't so. When it gets the software, then it's an "autonomous car." To use GPs analogy to the iPhone1: If Apple had just shipped the hardware without iOS, it wouldn't have been the iPhone.
  - aerovistae 10y ago
    That I agree with, yes. But he always stretches the wording. It's his version of advertising, and frankly I prefer it over dancing hamsters.
  - ethbro 10y ago
    I don't think the iPhone had iOS 10 ;). Apple is a pretty good analogy for what Tesla's HW/SW plans seems to be. "Reasonable" backwards software support (at least compared to the otherwise "none") while iterating hardware.
  - weaksauce 10y ago
    The iPhone couldn't cut and paste for a long while. Hell, iirc, there wasn't the App Store until iOS 2 or 3.
- Fricken 10y ago
  It's an extremely bold commitment on Tesla's part. The available details are a bit ambiguous, but it appears they're putting $8k worth of hardware into every new car though Tesla owners need only pay for it if they want it enabled. All this in spite of tremendous uncertainty not just with regards to the regulatory environment but to the not yet fully developed capabilities of their own software.
  - codeulike 10y ago
    There's no way it's $8k of hardware. The hardware is pretty simple, it's the r+d that's expensive

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

artursapek 10y ago

Nobody would be developing mass-market self-driving cars right now if not for Musk.

olentangy 10y ago
That's ridiculous. My 2+ year old Mercedes self drives on the freeway quite nicely. They do require I keep my hands on the wheel, but other than that, it's doing the driving. Other manufacturers aren't simply responding to Elan.
- sliken 10y ago
  I've read comparisons between the Mercedes and Tesla. It wasn't even close. Even through the comparison was with 2 versions ago of the hardware (the single camera) and at least one major software revision ago. Car and Drive has the details.
radiorental 10y ago
dude, tesla isn't even on the list.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#History
- artursapek 10y ago
  It is on the list, and notice I said "mass market" vehicles. No other manufacturer, even today, has as many autonomous cars on the road as them. And the ones that do exist are not as advanced as Tesla's. These other car companies have had so much more time and resources, and they have not pushed the way Tesla has.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
    Because Tesla needs to make a lot of money, very quickly. The other makers are already big, and can afford to play it safe. Tesla has to keep risking everything in silly marketing tricks. They'll cool down in a few years (or disappear).

vkou 10y ago

> It's just hilarious the contortions of logic people will go to in order to put Musk down. It's probably because there is a substantial gap between what Musk spins, and reality. Take Tesla 3 pre-orders, for instance. Tesla spins 400,000 pre-orders for a car that you might not receive in the next three years as the most amazing innovation in automobile manufacturing. Historically, there have been a few other companies that had hundreds of thousands of pre-orders, where you would end up waiting years for your car to be built and delivered to you. Their names were Lada, Volga, etc. Soviet auto companies had the exact same problem Tesla has - inability to meet demand.

drcross 10y ago
>what Musk spins, and reality. The reality is that they are the first serious electric car company. A tiny enterprise that took on the old Detroit giants and is winning. When you see people putting down hard earned cash for something three years into the future, they are not being tricked, they are investing in disruption. He's such a terrible orator you couldn't describe him as a charlatan. It's his actions and people's wallets speak the loudest.
- vkou 10y ago
  I'm not at all implying that the money will go poof. What I do mean is that inability to meet demand is actually an incredibly serious problem for a car manufacturer - one that's more closely associated with failing Soviet enterprises, regardless of spin to the contrary. Having three years of cars in your backlog isn't winning. Waiting three years for your car to arrive isn't revolutionary. Meanwhile, Detroit produces more cars then that in two weeks. Tesla might win eventually, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
  - denzil_correa 10y ago
    > Waiting three years for your car to arrive isn't revolutionary. Context : No other car manufacturer will have a comparable EV on the road in the next 3 years. I will take what Tesla gives me.

woodpanel 10y ago

> It's just hilarious the contortions of logic people will go to in order to put Musk down. As much as I anticipate more cool stuff from Tesla, one could say the same about akin-ness of people to find everything that Tesla does "super innovative" and "revolutionary" while the same features already existed in other cars for quite some time. I actually laughed out loud when I saw the Headline of this submission "Tesla released a video of a car driving itself" being the number one entry on HN - sorry but this speaks volumes about the "neutrality" of HN regarding Tesla.

ddon 10y ago
Could you provide couple links to videos of other cars driving like this and looking for parking without the owner :)
- aerovistae 10y ago
  I too would like to see these videos.
  - woodpanel 10y ago
    It's not just self-driving cars. It's features like autonomous parking, lane-assitance, cruise control that automatically keeps the distance to the car in front of you and the like. Stuff like that has been repeatedly hailed by HN'ers as revolutionary when Tesla introduced it. Neglecting that other companies had those features for years. Whenever Tesla is the topic it's almost guaranteed every negative comment on HN will be downvoted (I just see that right now with my comment above. It's constantly gaining and losing me karma). Besides that, the self-driving Tesla isn't news. That is the joke here. It's a press release that gets frenzied on HN's #1 spot.
    - lonewolf_ninja 10y ago
      True. In a way this is kind of analogous to how Apple 'fanboys'/users behave when new features are introduced in iPhones but have already been present in Android for many years prior to that.

fitzroy 10y ago

No surprise since Edmunds makes money off of everyone except Tesla (no advertising, no dealers, no comparison shopping that converts to lead gen). "How does Edmunds make money? Edmunds sells advertising to marketers who have contextually relevant messages for site visitors. Also, car-shoppers who visit Edmunds have the opportunity to request price quotes from dealers and providers of insurance, financing and extended warranties. Edmunds is paid by the automakers, dealers and other service providers for the lead referrals." http://www.edmunds.com/about/faqs.html http://www.edmunds.com/about/faqs.html

Alupis 10y ago
Or, how about Edmunds observes car resell values and is predicting whatever Tesla puts in cars today, will not maintain it's resell value (relative to other vehicles in it's class) tomorrow since this market aspect is going to move rapidly before it "gets it right". The resell value may be less than a comparable "normal" car, and there's the risk that some government regulation makes all the technology in a Tesla today obsolete or illegal to use in the future. (and I believe Tesla quietly killed their promise to artificially inflate resell values by footing the bill themselves a while back) Some people naturally won't care about resell value - of course, others will.
DavidWanjiru 10y ago
My anecdote: I discovered Edmunds because of their review of first Tesla sedan. It was for me, a technically inclined but nevertheless technically naive reader, the best car review I've ever read.

dschiptsov 10y ago

Time to re-read Atlas Shrugged? Remember the complains about Colorado?) They will always say such things.

simplemath 10y ago
Never is a good time to re-read Rand.
- dschiptsov 10y ago
  Any argumentation?
  - sqeaky 10y ago
    Apparently, it is very detached from reality. I cannot judge for myself having not read them yet. The only people who suggest them are people who I do not respect (rich assholes or people who think they should be rich assholes) or people I not do not know mixed with people insulting them.
    - dschiptsov 10y ago
      OK, I will try, given that I am mere a poor asshole. The classic literature (and Atlas without any doubt belongs to so called modern classic) much like classical music, is a complex and highly artificial phenomena. The word for referring to a piece of art is artifact. In the case of classical music there is absolutely no objective criteria to judge symphonies. It is possible to compare the pieces of music, and lots of pseudo-intellectual assholes do it for living, but it will be nothing but a joggling with a metaphorical jargon. Nevertheless, one almost always could distinguish some fragments from this or that piece of classical music which he likes for some not very articulable reasons. Bach, arguably, composed most of such sources of a beautiful fragments, Mozart is the second, etc. These notions could be applied to literature. Like a symphony, a big novel, even a small poem, cannot be judged by a single criteria, but some parts of it we might find delightful and beautiful. The question, as it is in the case of classic music, is who is the reader (or listener). In case of Atlas Shrugged, there are too many to count arguably beautiful parts (majoring in physics and philosophy is one of them), fragments or even passages, which appeals to the mind of modestly educated reader. The best personages she created were, ironically, not the central, heroic and positive, but all the crooks and weaklings, mediocrities and minor idiots. This, perhaps, is why Rand is hated so much. As a student of philosophy, Rand got most of the philosophic and economic aspects right. Indeed, her Hegelian professor is a true masterpiece, her bureaucrats are convincing, James Taggard is remarkable. Her main characters are overloaded with virtues.) Certain naivety of the plot - the miraculous alloy and especially the perpetuum mobile, for which the book has been criticized so often by idiots, actually are mere nuances. The real story is about focus and persistence, accepting the challenges, adapting and evolving and never giving up - all the postulates of a sound moral philosophy, which goes back to ancient Greeks. No one takes the plot of Atlas seriously. She is also right that the motivations which drive us should be simple and pure (the Greeks, again), should be grounded in our human nature (shaped by evolution, constrained by biology) not in some abstract nonsense, dogmas, fleeting fashions, or even social norms. Rigid social norms are always reflect the ugliness of urban societies. While her main characters are rather angular and clumsy, the driving forces behind them are clearly recognizable and proper. Let's not blame Rand for this angularity. I could do it for hours, but I think you got the idea. Good literature requires a "good" reader to be able to appreciate what is behind the words in a sentence.

sbierwagen 10y ago

If we're continuing the iPhone metaphor from the GP, note that Apple is almost always late to a market segment. When the iPhone was released, Windows CE had owned the smartphone segment for years. The iPod was hardly the first hard drive mp3 player. Apple Watch wasn't the first smart watch. Etc etc etc. Apple makes good products, not innovative ones. It is not at all unthinkable that someone else will release a better self driving car after Tesla, and win marketshare.

woodpanel 10y ago
Continuing that path I'd say: Tesla gets software right. Way better than what I've seen in other cars. But what stops that iPhone metaphor for me is Design, Materials and Finish. Apple Products look and feel like luxury. Where as Tesla only achieves that on the software side - and in your pocket.
- jkchu 10y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if most people disagreed with your notion that Tesla cars do not look luxurious.
  - StRoy 10y ago
    They only look luxurious from the exterior, the interior is really pitiful for the price when compared to a samely priced car from, say, BMW.
  - roel_v 10y ago
    At the risk of sounding like a nationalistic asshole, Teslas look very American - i.e., a mix of cheap and tacky. Put a 5 series bmw next to it - two different leagues really. I want to root for Tesla, and I'd buy one if I could park it somewhere where I could charge it, but I don't think they're doing great in the looks department, especially not to Europeans.
tempestn 10y ago
The iPhone was the first smartphone without a physical keyboard, allowing for a much more functional screen in a convenient form factor, right? I recall it seeming like a non-trivial difference at the time, and clearly a game-changing one.

cpwright 10y ago

> Having the equipment ready and in action first is somehow a disadvantage by this argument, and now you're better off being later to market. So I think it might be from an investment standpoint; just think of Tivo they made the DVR, but once others saw what they were doing there are plenty of other DVR choices and Tivo didn't win the category. Tesla might be forging ahead and blazing the trail for others, who will actually capitalize on it. I think that the Tesla brand is sexy enough that they'll maintain their niche (as Tivo has to some extent), I'm not sure if that will translate into investment returns.

ssharp 10y ago
Tivo lost because cable/sat went digital and it made a lot more sense to integrate the DVR into the digital receiver than it did to have a separate box that required using a CableCARD. I'm pretty sure most people don't even know what a CableCARD is. When Tivo was a simple as plugging in the analog coax signal from your cable or antenna, it made a lot of sense. But once the signal from the cable company needed digital decoding, it hurt them, despite Tivo having a better UI.
spyspy 10y ago
It's not a horrible comparison, but the barriers to entry between an electric car (+entire charging network) are much higher than a DVR. First mover advantage digs a bigger moat.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  The stakes are higher and the margins are smaller. First mover advantage either digs a deeper moat or a trap for yourself. (Vercingetorix vs. Julius Caesar at Alesia.)
- taeric 10y ago
  Meh. The advantage you will want in the vehicle space is who is the "most mover." Production pipelines will be a huge asset for big players.
- mycall 10y ago

dghughes 10y ago

>It's just hilarious the contortions of logic people will go to in order to put Musk down. I see the opposite Musk seems to be the new Steve Jobs people are crazy over him and seem to think he can do no wrong.

boznz 10y ago
He does do wrong, but they are minor annoyances to the things he does right.

nashashmi 10y ago

Very grateful to misunderstandings like this. It had caused Tesla and several tech stocks to be severely undervalued in the market. At 40$, I knew Tesla was worth 140$. And sure enough it started to go up suddenly mostly because of media coverage. Traditional car investors look at certain tried and proven market indicators to judge stocks. When new tech comes along, they don't know what to think. So they think here and there like in this case. The real value in bringing self driving tech here is to provide cool features to the buyer, not necessarily bring the stock of the company up. If investors do not know how how to place value on this, I only shrug.

vonklaus 10y ago

I look at Tesla as the exception to a lot of rules. I agree with you here-- launching hardware which not only is a value add to users but also Tesla data teams, is so far ahead that this seemed like a dumb comment. That said, if some company had manufactured bluetooth hardware last year way in advance of the release and full spec, I would argue that it was a pretty bad move. Clearly this is not a perfect analogy, but it should illustrate that this can seem counter intuitive. Building in the cost of beta tech that doesnt fully work and is not legal is a huge gamble. I just wouldn't personally bet against tesla and for the reasons i outlined; it is likely the right call