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ICE autos are locked into three near-monopoly supports: - Manufacturing scale is enormous, with vast supply chains and deeply ingrained middlemen & unions lock
by ctdonath 7y ago
ICE autos are locked into three near-monopoly supports:
- Manufacturing scale is enormous, with vast supply chains and deeply ingrained middlemen & unions locking in prices.
- Sales is via local monopolies(-ish) which dictate what models & variants of a few brands are available & manufactured.
- Power comes from an infrastructure of commodity stations which are not controlled by vehicle manufacturers.
Most EVs are a modification of this: made by the same few brands, defined & sold by the same few dealers, powered by a mundane infrastructure of independent power suppliers.
Tesla has transcended this model:
- Manufacturing is extremely concentrated & efficient, built ground-up in-house.
- Sales is online to-your-door. The few showrooms are just that: show rooms, letting you experience a couple premium builds. (I expect one benefit of self-driving is your by-credit-card purchase will literally deliver itself; ~$0 delivery cost.)
- [Inter-]national "supercharger" network assures you can go anywhere; owned by Tesla, it is optimized for the vehicle and cuts out independent business' cut of profits.
This is huge.
Apple succeeded in large part because it's a one-stop-shop for personal information tools; the entire ecosystem is owned & optimized by one business, keeping TCO relatively low yet profits for that business high & sustained. Not beholden to anyone else, Apple can perfect a few devices for a total 24/7 user experience.
Tesla is following similar: I can tap a couple buttons on my phone and a car will appear a couple days later, having extreme longevity & desirability, powered mostly at home and nationally by cheap & optimized chargers - with no third-party overhead & complications. That vs the EV I last had, involving needless extra costs & confusion from a dealer, unable to fast-charge, and otherwise (while nice) failed to go above-and-beyond.
Eagerly awaiting Cybertruck.
- erk__ 7y agoThere is one place where it currently is a pretty large failure, and that is repair shops. The waiting times are very large compared to other manufactures.
- ctdonath 7y agoYes, repair still needs sorting out. HOWEVER, other manufacturers build for repairs: there are high-cost repair services provided at every dealership. Yes you can get a car fixed, but that's because it's built to need fixing often & terminally.
- erk__ 7y agoHOWEVER, other car manufactures follow the law* and makes it possible for independant shops to buy replacement parts and sells service manuals. Witch as far as I am aware Tesla still does not do. *: in the EU: > Easy and clear access to information on vehicle repair and maintenance (RMI) is key to guaranteeing free competition on the vehicle aftermarket. Manufacturers must ensure that independent operators have easy, restriction-free, and standardised access to information on the repair and maintenance of vehicles. Discrimination with respect to authorised dealers and repair workshops is not allowed. Source: https://ec.europa.eu/growth/sectors/automotive/technical-harmonisation/vehicle-repair-maintenance_da https://ec.europa.eu/growth/sectors/automotive/technical-har...
- ctdonath 7y agoDifferent problems. Designing high-maintenance cars to keep in-network repair shops busy is one thing. Limiting access to repair information is another. Like Apple, Tesla faces (more than most manufacturers) the problem of a 3rd-party repair going awry and making the primary manufacturer look bad.