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> When Tesla's competitors stop designing and electric car and start designing a really great car that just happens to be electric then Tesla will have competit

by LeonM 7y ago

> When Tesla's competitors stop designing and electric car and start designing a really great car that just happens to be electric then Tesla will have competition. Until then all the supposed Tesla competitors will be a joke. This. I never understood why car manufacturers all make such weird wacky electric cars. When the Model S came out it was such a relief that finally there was a _normal_ looking electric car. What I want is an electric 5-series, not the wacky i3. Don't change the appearance, just the drive train.

kylecordes 7y ago
Tesla is trying to make cars to compete with other makers’ non-electric cars. Other makers are trying to make cars to compete with Tesla, without competing with their own non-electric cars. Currently, it is probably impossible to achieve a good profit margin on a mass-market electric car. Battery costs are too high this early in the manufacturing process. Tesla is willing to operate at the bare edge of fiscal viability while they scale… maybe even below viability. Other makers would have to take a gigantic drop in profit to compete with that.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  Sometimes it's worth taking some temporary losses to get a new foothold in a growing market.
- solarkraft 7y ago
  Model 3 is estimated to be "solidly profitable": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17542864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17542864 Tesla operates at no profit, but not because they couldn't with the hardware, but rather because they still need to scale. The old manufacturers wouldn't even need to do much of that.
athenot 7y ago
I had the 2013 then the 2015 Nissan Leaf. At least from the outside it meets the "Weird whacky" criteria. If you look at the 2019 Nissan Leaf, it looks very conventional. It turns out there's a very good reason to do that: these early models appeal to early adopters. The range kinda sucked. And yet I was happy to be an early adopter because of my nerdiness—and the financial incentives made it hard to refuse. But it definitely required planing insofar as range was concerned. At the same time, knowing that I'm putting up with these inconveniences for benefit of having some new early tech that few others have... that was worth it to me. It was also worth it to some of my friends but definitely not to most of them, who wanted first and foremost a car that didn't come with a peculiar usage pattern. Now the 2019 Nissan Leaf has twice the range as those older models, it looks "normal", doesn't require much forethought in terms of destination distances, and is marketed to a broader audience. At the same time, the tax incentives have almost all disappeared (the $5k Georgia one is gone) and that is the normal course of action because these cars don't carry the inconvenience that they used to.
ryandrake 7y ago
Maybe I’m alone in this opinion but I’m tired of all these boring looking sedans. It seems all cars out there on the road look like identical bars of soap. Maybe the grill of this car looks a little different and the tail light cluster on that car has a different style but in general they all look the same. If a modern sedan is 10 meters away I can’t tell you if it’s a Camry, Civic, Accord, Taurus, Jetta, Altima, or any other model, unless I look at the badges. Let’s get some more variety.

by LeonM 7y ago

kylecordes 7y ago

Tesla is trying to make cars to compete with other makers’ non-electric cars. Other makers are trying to make cars to compete with Tesla, without competing with their own non-electric cars. Currently, it is probably impossible to achieve a good profit margin on a mass-market electric car. Battery costs are too high this early in the manufacturing process. Tesla is willing to operate at the bare edge of fiscal viability while they scale… maybe even below viability. Other makers would have to take a gigantic drop in profit to compete with that.

CydeWeys 7y ago
Sometimes it's worth taking some temporary losses to get a new foothold in a growing market.
solarkraft 7y ago
Model 3 is estimated to be "solidly profitable": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17542864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17542864 Tesla operates at no profit, but not because they couldn't with the hardware, but rather because they still need to scale. The old manufacturers wouldn't even need to do much of that.

athenot 7y ago

I had the 2013 then the 2015 Nissan Leaf. At least from the outside it meets the "Weird whacky" criteria. If you look at the 2019 Nissan Leaf, it looks very conventional. It turns out there's a very good reason to do that: these early models appeal to early adopters. The range kinda sucked. And yet I was happy to be an early adopter because of my nerdiness—and the financial incentives made it hard to refuse. But it definitely required planing insofar as range was concerned. At the same time, knowing that I'm putting up with these inconveniences for benefit of having some new early tech that few others have... that was worth it to me. It was also worth it to some of my friends but definitely not to most of them, who wanted first and foremost a car that didn't come with a peculiar usage pattern. Now the 2019 Nissan Leaf has twice the range as those older models, it looks "normal", doesn't require much forethought in terms of destination distances, and is marketed to a broader audience. At the same time, the tax incentives have almost all disappeared (the $5k Georgia one is gone) and that is the normal course of action because these cars don't carry the inconvenience that they used to.

ryandrake 7y ago

Maybe I’m alone in this opinion but I’m tired of all these boring looking sedans. It seems all cars out there on the road look like identical bars of soap. Maybe the grill of this car looks a little different and the tail light cluster on that car has a different style but in general they all look the same. If a modern sedan is 10 meters away I can’t tell you if it’s a Camry, Civic, Accord, Taurus, Jetta, Altima, or any other model, unless I look at the badges. Let’s get some more variety.