7 ms·
>>The “flip-flop” on retail strategy, he added, “makes it seem like Musk is winging it and the board is letting him wing it.” That sounds like a founder who is
by kumarm 8y ago
>>The “flip-flop” on retail strategy, he added, “makes it seem like Musk is winging it and the board is letting him wing it.”
That sounds like a founder who is not afraid to experiment and course correct when necessary to me.
- benj111 8y agoI can't make my mind up on the closures. I just think, in 5 years time when they're having to sell to average people, not just Tesla fans, how are they going to compete with everyone else. Is your Mum or Dad going to buy a (new fangled electric) car, on the internet, sight unseen? Now its still not necessarily a bad decision now to be closing stores they don't need, but is it going to hamper them later?
- setquk 8y agoHaving watched people in the Tesla retail store at Westfield here in the UK, it was basically a playground for kids and adults alike. I reckon they sold very few cars if any through that outlet. I'd buy one off the Internet. I bought my current car, a Citroen, off the Internet unseen. It's pretty low risk if you pay deposit with credit card here in the UK.
- benj111 8y agoYou are with respect, a Hacker News reader, so closer to Tesla fan than the proverbial Mum and Dad. Plus I take it the Citroen was a petrol/diesel, so a known quantity. Did you have a test drive at all?
- setquk 8y agoI’m a proverbial dad as well. No didn’t test drive it. Petrol.
- benj111 8y agoOk fair enough. Personally I wouldn't buy a car without a test drive, checking the boot fits a pram etc. Doubly so for an EV where things like how the accelerator and brake pedals work are still in flux. So from our highly scientific study, we can conclude Tesla are cutting themselves off from 50% of the market!
- kumarm 8y agoWhy would anyone buy a book online and wait for 3-5 days? -- Almost everyone in 1995.
- benj111 8y agoA book is a bit different to a car. If I don't like a book I can take it to the charity shop and buy a new one, can't really do that with a car. And if lack of 'test drives' for books did turn out to be a problem, it is at least a trivially solvable problem, technologically speaking. Plus you might need to add at least 5 years to that date.
- threeseed 8y agoRidiculous comparison. Books just work. There are no moving parts and unless something has gone really wrong you won't have quality control issues. Also they cost like $20 so any losses are minimal. Cars are highly complex, require regular servicing, are a once in every 5/10 year purchase and cost $40,000. And they are also highly personal as the driving and interior experience needs to work for just you. It's more akin to asking someone to buy a house online without ever looking inside.
- braythwayt 8y agoPossibly. But not necessarily. In any business, management needs to "inspect and adapt." Agile businesses do so more frequently. But change is not necessarily inspection and adaptation. It can sometimes be throwing things at the wall and hoping they will stick, without properly evaluating each of the things thrown at the wall. Inspection and adaptation also works best when done with discipline. Experiments should are conducted with explicit falsifiable conjectures to test. It may very well be that this course correction is the result of an experiment, and the results have been inspected, and Musk is adapting. or it could be a knee-jerk reaction to cash-flow problems. I am not disagreeing that this may be a founder courageous enough to try experiments and abandon those that invalidate his conjectures. But I want to point out that drastic changes in and of themselves do not necessarily indicate the presence of "inspect and adapt" management.
- danso 8y agoApple building retail stores seemed absolutely crazy at the time, but was clearly an interesting experiment (regardless of whether it succeeded, which it happens to have done). Shutting the stores down 2 years after the pilot stores debuted would have felt like Jobs was "winging" it when he came up with the idea. Tesla's time between debut and shutdown feels less like an experiment than a bold cost-cutting move. At least with Apple, they knew they had strong product sales before doing dedicated retail. Obviously, Tesla will sell plenty online, but how certain are they of the impact of online-only?