6 ms·

Where is the revolution? There are competitive cars vs tesla for electric. Even if tesla have an edge, it's evolutionary, not at all revolutionary.

dotnet00 4y ago
I assume revolutionary in that other companies have only really started taking EVs seriously due to the success of Tesla.
- adventured 4y ago
  People constantly attempt to pretend Tesla didn't spark the EV revolution, because they can't stand to give Musk and or a US company credit. It's the same reason they aggressively pretend Apple didn't spark the smartphone revolution (when it all very obviously derived from the iPhone and its dramatic impact, right down to the design of the phone and interface being copied by everyone else). It's the same reason if you say the US invented the Internet here on HN, you'll get confused replies by people from outside of the US that are entirely ignorant of that fact, because of foreign revisionist history and the desperate desire to deny the US credit for its vast accomplishments (the America bad brigade). The same goes for eg the transistor, microprocessor and countless other prominent technologies that revolutionized the world.
  - MisterBastahrd 4y ago
    So what? It's still a business and it is tiny compared to the big players. Tesla is only a slightly better value than crypto given how insanely overvalued the stock is. If the company had an $80B market cap, it would still be vastly overvalued.
    - mensetmanusman 4y ago
      Tiny compared to ICE sales which will soon be regulated out of existence in many countries in the coming decades.
    - ckw 4y ago
      If Tesla had a market cap of $80B it would be trading at 6.06 times Q1 earnings annualized. Having grown revenue 81% and gross profit 147% in the prior year… It’s currently undervalued at 10x that price. Re being small: its operating income was greater than Toyota in Q1, and it has two new factories that are yet to ramp production.
- sudosysgen 4y ago
  Nissan and Renault took EVs seriously before Tesla came out with the Model S - Renault was working on the Zoe since before 2008.
  - dotnet00 4y ago
    Renault were working on the since before 2008 (2005 apparently), yet they only brought a product to market in 2012. The Tesla Roadster was developed around the same time, yet deliveries started in 2008. By the time Renault got around to actually making the Zoe available to customers, Tesla had been selling the Model S for 6 months. I don't think they were taking EVs particularly seriously if they took that much longer to put out a less sophisticated product despite having vastly more resources at their disposal.
    - sudosysgen 4y ago
      Sure, because the Tesla Roadster is half a car, and cost is no object. They literally took an existing car, and built an EV conversion kit, money be damned. Making the first mass-market EV was going to take multiple years, no matter what. You need to engineer the entire car, at scale, and you need to hit a price-point. Tesla didn't have such an issue. I can't stress enough how much more difficult it is to make an affordable product than one where price is no object.
paganel 4y ago
> There are competitive cars vs tesla for electric It is my belief that those "competitive cars" wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for Tesla.
- Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
  MySpace, BlackBerry come to mind. At least those were new markets. At the end of the day you can't explain love and people love Elon Musk. Guys from all over the world are in a sort weird parasocial relationship with the guy. That never happened with the CEO of MySpace and BlackBerry
  - SemanticStrengh 4y ago
    I feel like the growth of people that bash him is higher than people that worship him. In any case there is a parasocial component to it indeed.
    - hackerfromthefu 4y ago
      I think you will find a much bigger 'silent mainstream' of those who Respect him for the significant progress he's brought into our world. Worship and bashing/hate are the domain of the crazies/extremists/zealots who are a vocal minority, really a small proportion of the world. Most people thankfully are more balanced and rational in their perspectives.
- SemanticStrengh 4y ago
  But why? Did tesla open source key scientific innovations in the scaling of batteries? Don't think so. See e.g. The seres f5 from Huawei. I don't know wether it's great but about the main metric, it has a higher range than teslas (1000km)
  - toyg 4y ago
    This is a bit of a "why dropbox when i can rsync" comment. Tesla brought glamour and practicality to a field stymied by boredom and theoretical concerns. They pledged to build an EV people would actually want to use, bringing all the latest tech to drive UX with no regard for tradition. They set to solve consumer problems, and they are succeeding in doing that.
zamfi 4y ago
Tesla produced the first ICE-equivalent EV sedan that was not merely a "compliance vehicle" in decades. Then, it turned out, people bought them by the hundreds of thousands, single-handedly recreating the market for EVs. Then, other manufacturers noticed, and started realizing they might be left behind if they didn't take EVs seriously. Now, sure, there are many competitors, but even still they have only been built in small quantities. How long Tesla's edge will last is an open question, but there's no question that Tesla has single-handedly exploded the demand for EVs in the consumer vehicle market.
- sudosysgen 4y ago
  By the time Tesla had sold 100,000 Model S cars in the US, Nissan had already sold over 110 000 Leafs. Tesla created the market for high-performance EVs. They did not create the overall EV market. The high-end market is only a small part of the numbers.
  - alvah 4y ago
    "The high-end market is only a small part of the numbers" correct, but in a parallel universe where Tesla didn't exist & the typical EV looked & performed like a Leaf, would anyone actually want an electric car? Marketing and psychology are important.
    - sudosysgen 4y ago
      Sure, as evidenced by the fact that more people bought cars that performed like the Leaf and Zoe than Model S's. Also the Renault Zoe looked just like the Renault Clio, that is, a normal car.
      - alvah 4y ago
        bought != wanted...
  - zamfi 4y ago
    The Leaf that Nissan sold while the Model S was Tesla’s only sedan (ie 2012-2017) was not an ICE-equivalent vehicle. It was explicitly a city vehicle with a < 75 mile official range, an effective 40-50 mile range, and no fast charging. If “high-performance” means “can handle the daily driving needs of > 50% of the population” then I guess you’re right, Tesla only created that market.
ckw 4y ago
The revolution is in manufacturing and vertical integration: you have to look at margins. Tesla’s operating margin was 19.2% in Q1, and is apt to rise. Very few other companies even make a profit on their EVs, and none that do are anywhere close to Tesla’s margins, to my knowledge. This means that nominally competitive electric cars aren’t. In principle Tesla could squash its pure EV competitors by selling below their cost of production, and any legacy auto company transitioning to EVs will be in a similarly dire position. Incidentally, these margins are also far higher than those of ICE manufacturers. For example, Toyota in Q1 had lower operating income than Tesla, despite having 4x the revenue.

dotnet00 4y ago

I assume revolutionary in that other companies have only really started taking EVs seriously due to the success of Tesla.

adventured 4y ago
People constantly attempt to pretend Tesla didn't spark the EV revolution, because they can't stand to give Musk and or a US company credit. It's the same reason they aggressively pretend Apple didn't spark the smartphone revolution (when it all very obviously derived from the iPhone and its dramatic impact, right down to the design of the phone and interface being copied by everyone else). It's the same reason if you say the US invented the Internet here on HN, you'll get confused replies by people from outside of the US that are entirely ignorant of that fact, because of foreign revisionist history and the desperate desire to deny the US credit for its vast accomplishments (the America bad brigade). The same goes for eg the transistor, microprocessor and countless other prominent technologies that revolutionized the world.
- MisterBastahrd 4y ago
  So what? It's still a business and it is tiny compared to the big players. Tesla is only a slightly better value than crypto given how insanely overvalued the stock is. If the company had an $80B market cap, it would still be vastly overvalued.
  - mensetmanusman 4y ago
    Tiny compared to ICE sales which will soon be regulated out of existence in many countries in the coming decades.
  - ckw 4y ago
    If Tesla had a market cap of $80B it would be trading at 6.06 times Q1 earnings annualized. Having grown revenue 81% and gross profit 147% in the prior year… It’s currently undervalued at 10x that price. Re being small: its operating income was greater than Toyota in Q1, and it has two new factories that are yet to ramp production.
sudosysgen 4y ago
Nissan and Renault took EVs seriously before Tesla came out with the Model S - Renault was working on the Zoe since before 2008.
- dotnet00 4y ago
  Renault were working on the since before 2008 (2005 apparently), yet they only brought a product to market in 2012. The Tesla Roadster was developed around the same time, yet deliveries started in 2008. By the time Renault got around to actually making the Zoe available to customers, Tesla had been selling the Model S for 6 months. I don't think they were taking EVs particularly seriously if they took that much longer to put out a less sophisticated product despite having vastly more resources at their disposal.
  - sudosysgen 4y ago
    Sure, because the Tesla Roadster is half a car, and cost is no object. They literally took an existing car, and built an EV conversion kit, money be damned. Making the first mass-market EV was going to take multiple years, no matter what. You need to engineer the entire car, at scale, and you need to hit a price-point. Tesla didn't have such an issue. I can't stress enough how much more difficult it is to make an affordable product than one where price is no object.

paganel 4y ago

> There are competitive cars vs tesla for electric It is my belief that those "competitive cars" wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for Tesla.

Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
MySpace, BlackBerry come to mind. At least those were new markets. At the end of the day you can't explain love and people love Elon Musk. Guys from all over the world are in a sort weird parasocial relationship with the guy. That never happened with the CEO of MySpace and BlackBerry
- SemanticStrengh 4y ago
  I feel like the growth of people that bash him is higher than people that worship him. In any case there is a parasocial component to it indeed.
  - hackerfromthefu 4y ago
    I think you will find a much bigger 'silent mainstream' of those who Respect him for the significant progress he's brought into our world. Worship and bashing/hate are the domain of the crazies/extremists/zealots who are a vocal minority, really a small proportion of the world. Most people thankfully are more balanced and rational in their perspectives.
SemanticStrengh 4y ago
But why? Did tesla open source key scientific innovations in the scaling of batteries? Don't think so. See e.g. The seres f5 from Huawei. I don't know wether it's great but about the main metric, it has a higher range than teslas (1000km)
- toyg 4y ago
  This is a bit of a "why dropbox when i can rsync" comment. Tesla brought glamour and practicality to a field stymied by boredom and theoretical concerns. They pledged to build an EV people would actually want to use, bringing all the latest tech to drive UX with no regard for tradition. They set to solve consumer problems, and they are succeeding in doing that.

zamfi 4y ago

Tesla produced the first ICE-equivalent EV sedan that was not merely a "compliance vehicle" in decades. Then, it turned out, people bought them by the hundreds of thousands, single-handedly recreating the market for EVs. Then, other manufacturers noticed, and started realizing they might be left behind if they didn't take EVs seriously. Now, sure, there are many competitors, but even still they have only been built in small quantities. How long Tesla's edge will last is an open question, but there's no question that Tesla has single-handedly exploded the demand for EVs in the consumer vehicle market.

sudosysgen 4y ago
By the time Tesla had sold 100,000 Model S cars in the US, Nissan had already sold over 110 000 Leafs. Tesla created the market for high-performance EVs. They did not create the overall EV market. The high-end market is only a small part of the numbers.
- alvah 4y ago
  "The high-end market is only a small part of the numbers" correct, but in a parallel universe where Tesla didn't exist & the typical EV looked & performed like a Leaf, would anyone actually want an electric car? Marketing and psychology are important.
  - sudosysgen 4y ago
    Sure, as evidenced by the fact that more people bought cars that performed like the Leaf and Zoe than Model S's. Also the Renault Zoe looked just like the Renault Clio, that is, a normal car.
    - alvah 4y ago
      bought != wanted...
- zamfi 4y ago
  The Leaf that Nissan sold while the Model S was Tesla’s only sedan (ie 2012-2017) was not an ICE-equivalent vehicle. It was explicitly a city vehicle with a < 75 mile official range, an effective 40-50 mile range, and no fast charging. If “high-performance” means “can handle the daily driving needs of > 50% of the population” then I guess you’re right, Tesla only created that market.

ckw 4y ago

The revolution is in manufacturing and vertical integration: you have to look at margins. Tesla’s operating margin was 19.2% in Q1, and is apt to rise. Very few other companies even make a profit on their EVs, and none that do are anywhere close to Tesla’s margins, to my knowledge. This means that nominally competitive electric cars aren’t. In principle Tesla could squash its pure EV competitors by selling below their cost of production, and any legacy auto company transitioning to EVs will be in a similarly dire position. Incidentally, these margins are also far higher than those of ICE manufacturers. For example, Toyota in Q1 had lower operating income than Tesla, despite having 4x the revenue.