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They don't need to constantly change, it's just that yes: they're being outcompeted, and pretty hard. The legacy automakers are fully in the game and everyone

They don't need to constantly change, it's just that yes: they're being outcompeted, and pretty hard. The legacy automakers are fully in the game and everyone now remembers: oh wait, they know how to make cars. Tesla... ehhh Kia, Hyundai, even GM are really giving Tesla a run for their money in every segment.

pfannkuchen 1y ago
So maybe it’s just me, but I hate how the legacy auto makers, even the luxury ones, nickel and dime everything. You buy a $75k car and the frequently touched places are metal, but if you go looking at all you find cheap $15k car tier plastic. With Tesla, the entire car is made of a few middle of the road materials. I don’t want the cheap plastic, but I also don’t want a facade. I just want reasonable quality everywhere. I feel like cars that don’t do that are lying to me. Also Tesla basically succeeded at replicating an iPad as the screen, which to this day no one else has done. I think they actually poached part of the iPad team to do it. Tesla makes their own fabrication machines in house, so their body panels don’t have to look like every other manufacturer that uses standard supplier machines. And I’m not referring to the cyber truck, the shape of the main line cars is not achievable with the standard equipment, which is why they are able to stand out visually. Where are the competitor electrics beating out Tesla? Are the acceleration dynamics better? Is the handling better? Is the screen better? I’m guessing the seats are more comfortable, and the interior is bifurcated into nicer and less nice parts with the average niceness being about the same. They might be dumping here though since they are still burning through cash on these cars AFAIK, so I think it remains to be seen whether whatever advantages they have in the comfort and materials areas are sustainable. (For the record, the electric door openers and the self driving labeling are both moronic, but when you have a dictator you can’t really avoid getting some bad stuff where the individual guy turns out to be wrong about something).
- array_key_first 1y ago
  Well it's nice that Tesla cars are uniquely made, but they are very ugly to the average consumer. More traditional cars produced by legacy makers just... look better. To most people. Legacy makers are producing cars with things consumers actually want. Higher quality interiors, nice exteriors, good ride dynamics, Apple car play, and competitive price points. I think the reality is that most people actually don't care about Teslas big screen or autopilot. They want a car thats somewhat normal that does car things and does them well. They want good range, comfy seats, and steering wheel stocks. Kia provides that, Hyundai provide that, pretty much everyone provides that except Tesla. The extra acceleration points doesn't matter. It's never really mattered, that's just a spec sheet bragging point.
  - pfannkuchen 1y ago
    > Teslas big screen I am not talking about the size. Capacitive touch screen hardware and software seems to be really difficult to nail. The actual touch interface on Tesla is at the iPad level. Also the material quality is very good. All other cars I’ve tried recently have all had a touch screen, it was just bad. If I have to have a screen, I want it to feel like a first class citizen and not some cost cut afterthought. I don’t really get why people would want CarPlay instead of the native Tesla OS? I have another car with CarPlay which was more expensive than my Tesla (so apples to apples or better comparison), and I find CarPlay on the B tier screen to feel extremely clunky by comparison (though still much better than what came before in the legacy makers). Have you daily driven a Tesla before? Have the other car makers released some crazy breakthrough? I might test drive some, I’m curious now. It seems to me like the biggest difference is the media turned against Elon, and so we went from having positive coverage of Tesla to negative. I think that alone could explain the sentiment shift, based on how people all around me seem to be brain-led by the media.
    - bdangubic 1y ago
      one has to be out of their mind to prefer carplay over tesla’s native, literally out of their mind. tesla’s tech is far superior than any other car and it isn’t even close. the problwm with tesla is that it is a dinosaur. I own 2014 Tesla S, my neighbour latest one - it is same f’ing car. tesla X was cool looking… in 2016, now it looks like it belongs in a museum. model 3 is chopped up S and Y is blown up 3. the cars are sooooo outdated it is nuts people still buy them
      - jonway 1y ago
        Tesla is married to the designs because of the way that they’re manufactured. For example Tesla uses a very large press to make the Y monocoque body in one or two pieces. They get a lot of their manufacturing capability this way, reducing assembly costs and weld time, but then they do weird stuff like bolting the control are inside the passenger wheel well interior under the carpet. This kind of stuff isn’t replicable , each vehicle is for the most part a siloed manufacturing process This is fine for a one off model, but now the manufacturing process is bespoke across the board. Any other maker can switch out parts of the line and make a different vehicle, Tesla needs to redesign the process, supply new assemblies, get another Gigafactory Press from Idra Group, and then retrain everybody. So they don’t. Instead you get Full Self Driving. Pretty much every Tesla product has been seen more than a decade ago (cybertruck was first discussed in think 2014) except the Semi, which doesn’t exist, but had lots of press regardless.

pfannkuchen 1y ago

So maybe it’s just me, but I hate how the legacy auto makers, even the luxury ones, nickel and dime everything. You buy a $75k car and the frequently touched places are metal, but if you go looking at all you find cheap $15k car tier plastic. With Tesla, the entire car is made of a few middle of the road materials. I don’t want the cheap plastic, but I also don’t want a facade. I just want reasonable quality everywhere. I feel like cars that don’t do that are lying to me. Also Tesla basically succeeded at replicating an iPad as the screen, which to this day no one else has done. I think they actually poached part of the iPad team to do it. Tesla makes their own fabrication machines in house, so their body panels don’t have to look like every other manufacturer that uses standard supplier machines. And I’m not referring to the cyber truck, the shape of the main line cars is not achievable with the standard equipment, which is why they are able to stand out visually. Where are the competitor electrics beating out Tesla? Are the acceleration dynamics better? Is the handling better? Is the screen better? I’m guessing the seats are more comfortable, and the interior is bifurcated into nicer and less nice parts with the average niceness being about the same. They might be dumping here though since they are still burning through cash on these cars AFAIK, so I think it remains to be seen whether whatever advantages they have in the comfort and materials areas are sustainable. (For the record, the electric door openers and the self driving labeling are both moronic, but when you have a dictator you can’t really avoid getting some bad stuff where the individual guy turns out to be wrong about something).

array_key_first 1y ago
Well it's nice that Tesla cars are uniquely made, but they are very ugly to the average consumer. More traditional cars produced by legacy makers just... look better. To most people. Legacy makers are producing cars with things consumers actually want. Higher quality interiors, nice exteriors, good ride dynamics, Apple car play, and competitive price points. I think the reality is that most people actually don't care about Teslas big screen or autopilot. They want a car thats somewhat normal that does car things and does them well. They want good range, comfy seats, and steering wheel stocks. Kia provides that, Hyundai provide that, pretty much everyone provides that except Tesla. The extra acceleration points doesn't matter. It's never really mattered, that's just a spec sheet bragging point.
- pfannkuchen 1y ago
  > Teslas big screen I am not talking about the size. Capacitive touch screen hardware and software seems to be really difficult to nail. The actual touch interface on Tesla is at the iPad level. Also the material quality is very good. All other cars I’ve tried recently have all had a touch screen, it was just bad. If I have to have a screen, I want it to feel like a first class citizen and not some cost cut afterthought. I don’t really get why people would want CarPlay instead of the native Tesla OS? I have another car with CarPlay which was more expensive than my Tesla (so apples to apples or better comparison), and I find CarPlay on the B tier screen to feel extremely clunky by comparison (though still much better than what came before in the legacy makers). Have you daily driven a Tesla before? Have the other car makers released some crazy breakthrough? I might test drive some, I’m curious now. It seems to me like the biggest difference is the media turned against Elon, and so we went from having positive coverage of Tesla to negative. I think that alone could explain the sentiment shift, based on how people all around me seem to be brain-led by the media.
  - bdangubic 1y ago
    one has to be out of their mind to prefer carplay over tesla’s native, literally out of their mind. tesla’s tech is far superior than any other car and it isn’t even close. the problwm with tesla is that it is a dinosaur. I own 2014 Tesla S, my neighbour latest one - it is same f’ing car. tesla X was cool looking… in 2016, now it looks like it belongs in a museum. model 3 is chopped up S and Y is blown up 3. the cars are sooooo outdated it is nuts people still buy them
    - jonway 1y ago
      Tesla is married to the designs because of the way that they’re manufactured. For example Tesla uses a very large press to make the Y monocoque body in one or two pieces. They get a lot of their manufacturing capability this way, reducing assembly costs and weld time, but then they do weird stuff like bolting the control are inside the passenger wheel well interior under the carpet. This kind of stuff isn’t replicable , each vehicle is for the most part a siloed manufacturing process This is fine for a one off model, but now the manufacturing process is bespoke across the board. Any other maker can switch out parts of the line and make a different vehicle, Tesla needs to redesign the process, supply new assemblies, get another Gigafactory Press from Idra Group, and then retrain everybody. So they don’t. Instead you get Full Self Driving. Pretty much every Tesla product has been seen more than a decade ago (cybertruck was first discussed in think 2014) except the Semi, which doesn’t exist, but had lots of press regardless.