3 ms·

> People can insist that Tesla is effecting some positive changes in the world, but it seems to me that mostly they have been good at repackaging and reselling

by smoll 9y ago

> People can insist that Tesla is effecting some positive changes in the world, but it seems to me that mostly they have been good at repackaging and reselling the tech of other companies in creative ways. I've seen this critique leveled at Apple and it makes more sense there (the Mac borrowing heavily from stuff they witnessed at Xerox PARC and the original iPhone just doing what a lot of other phones at the time were doing, except simpler and more mass-adoptable), but what evidence do you have for this applying to Tesla? Even if you admit that battery technology improvements that made EVs viable were implemented elsewhere, the entire automotive industry was 100% behind the combustion engine before Tesla, and now almost every car company is building EVs. This isn't merely Tesla effecting "positive change in the world", they proved that EVs were manufacturable, that the public wanted it, and solved numerous obstacles to actually bring it to market. The EV would literally not exist (to the public) in 2017 if not for Tesla. How is that merely repackaging tech?

IBM 9y ago
People who level that critique at Apple are the equivalent of sports fans of rivals to the Yankees constantly talking trash about the Yankees. That is, it may make fans of Apple angry (and it did all throughout the 90s and 00s) but it had no impact on the fundamentals of Apple's business. While people were leveling that critique against Apple, Apple was selling millions of iMacs, then hundreds of millions of iPods, and now over a billion iPhones. Now I would say it's extremely shallow analysis of Apple as a business to say they were just repackaging tech (you don't do hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue over the past 20 years if you aren't actually innovating [EDIT: actually iOS devices alone have done almost a trillion in revenue], especially if you don't have a monopoly in the relevant markets). Tesla is not Apple though. In order for the analogy to Apple to work, Tesla would have to be shipping a massive amount of EVs (and a growing amount as well) while they were being criticized. They haven't. In fact the penetration of EVs as a % of all cars sold is single digits. If you want to take the perspective of the author of the article, then we can at least say that Tesla may have induced rival car makers to at least get interested in EVs and demonstrated a small market exists for them, but it's not clear that once every automaker begins shipping EVs at scale that it's going to replace non-EVs in the market in a significant way. What if EVs just top out at 20%? On another level it's kind of a silly perspective to take because real people have invested their money in Tesla. A lot of them might be rich tech workers who no one will shed tears for, but big institutional investors like Fidelity own significant stakes in Tesla, and they're managing 401ks for regular people. I don't think too many investors who invested in telecom companies during the tech bubble took comfort in the fact that at least society was left with a lot of fiber and infrastructure. What would Tesla even leave behind anyway? The only thing I can think of is the battery factory which hopefully would be able to produce batteries for other manufacturers. But even that is not clear to me since China is pouring billions into doing that as well (and they're going to have a lower cost of capital compared to some private entity without state backing).
friendzis 9y ago
> The EV would literally not exist (to the public) in 2017 if not for Tesla. According to wikipedia a rather well known EV Nissan Leaf predates Tesla Model S by 2 years. First hybrid Toyota Prius is 20 years old. Toyota had concepts of plug-in hybrids for quite some time. Countless local teams make electric swaps. We had electric golf cars and what not for quite some time. What Tesla more or less pioneered is premium class performance EV and proved that there is market in this segment. They proved that not only "convenient home-work-home trip" (free parking, bus lanes, subsidies) can be market for EVs.
- ZeroGravitas 9y ago
  Semi-random historical aside, one of the original founders of Tesla (no longer at the company) makes the claim that Al Gore "invented" the Prius by featuring the work of some academics on hybrid engines in a televised hearing. Although ignored by the American companies he was trying to convince, Toyota ran with the idea.
- thedaemon 9y ago
  GM created the EV1 in 1996. They eventually scrapped the project and all of the cars. They didn't want to compete with the petrol car industry.

by smoll 9y ago

IBM 9y ago

People who level that critique at Apple are the equivalent of sports fans of rivals to the Yankees constantly talking trash about the Yankees. That is, it may make fans of Apple angry (and it did all throughout the 90s and 00s) but it had no impact on the fundamentals of Apple's business. While people were leveling that critique against Apple, Apple was selling millions of iMacs, then hundreds of millions of iPods, and now over a billion iPhones. Now I would say it's extremely shallow analysis of Apple as a business to say they were just repackaging tech (you don't do hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue over the past 20 years if you aren't actually innovating [EDIT: actually iOS devices alone have done almost a trillion in revenue], especially if you don't have a monopoly in the relevant markets). Tesla is not Apple though. In order for the analogy to Apple to work, Tesla would have to be shipping a massive amount of EVs (and a growing amount as well) while they were being criticized. They haven't. In fact the penetration of EVs as a % of all cars sold is single digits. If you want to take the perspective of the author of the article, then we can at least say that Tesla may have induced rival car makers to at least get interested in EVs and demonstrated a small market exists for them, but it's not clear that once every automaker begins shipping EVs at scale that it's going to replace non-EVs in the market in a significant way. What if EVs just top out at 20%? On another level it's kind of a silly perspective to take because real people have invested their money in Tesla. A lot of them might be rich tech workers who no one will shed tears for, but big institutional investors like Fidelity own significant stakes in Tesla, and they're managing 401ks for regular people. I don't think too many investors who invested in telecom companies during the tech bubble took comfort in the fact that at least society was left with a lot of fiber and infrastructure. What would Tesla even leave behind anyway? The only thing I can think of is the battery factory which hopefully would be able to produce batteries for other manufacturers. But even that is not clear to me since China is pouring billions into doing that as well (and they're going to have a lower cost of capital compared to some private entity without state backing).

friendzis 9y ago

> The EV would literally not exist (to the public) in 2017 if not for Tesla. According to wikipedia a rather well known EV Nissan Leaf predates Tesla Model S by 2 years. First hybrid Toyota Prius is 20 years old. Toyota had concepts of plug-in hybrids for quite some time. Countless local teams make electric swaps. We had electric golf cars and what not for quite some time. What Tesla more or less pioneered is premium class performance EV and proved that there is market in this segment. They proved that not only "convenient home-work-home trip" (free parking, bus lanes, subsidies) can be market for EVs.

ZeroGravitas 9y ago
Semi-random historical aside, one of the original founders of Tesla (no longer at the company) makes the claim that Al Gore "invented" the Prius by featuring the work of some academics on hybrid engines in a televised hearing. Although ignored by the American companies he was trying to convince, Toyota ran with the idea.
thedaemon 9y ago
GM created the EV1 in 1996. They eventually scrapped the project and all of the cars. They didn't want to compete with the petrol car industry.