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Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

They've built over 100,000 vehicles, built out a massive nationwide charging network (plus a huge network in Europe and a decent-sized one in China), produced the best highway auto-drive system available today, and currently have the best selling car in their price segment in many areas.

Yes, clever doors and gimmicks like their new Summon feature aren't worth the hype they put into them, but that's not the only thing they're doing.

That's not a hobby company by any stretch of the imagination. Yeah, they have problems. Specifically, communications during the delivery process has always been troublesome for them, and there's no reason it should be. But that doesn't make it a "hobbyist organization." That's just silly.

I mean, GM's failed processes meant that their products spontaneously shut off and killed people, and they sat on their hands doing nothing while people were still dying, but we don't call that a "hobbyist organization...."

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Oh I know they sell a lot of cars, I've seen hundreds if not a thousand locally since the debut.

>That's not a hobby company by any stretch of the imagination. Yeah, they have problems. Specifically, communications during the delivery process has always been troublesome for them, and there's no reason it should be. But that doesn't make it a "hobbyist organization." That's just silly.

Based on the descriptions of the behavior of Tesla's internal customer service, it actually sounds worse than a hobbyist organization. This is personal perspective though, based on multiple professional and grunt-level jobs over the years.

>I mean, GM's failed processes meant that their products spontaneously shut off and killed people, and they sat on their hands doing nothing while people were still dying, but we don't call that a "hobbyist organization...."

GM is, if memory serves correctly, facing significant legal ramifications (monetary) for their bad oversight and will, presumably, be held accountable in court. Like Ford and Firestone. Or Takata. Pretty much every legacy auto manufacturer started off as a 'hobbyist organization' and after enough success and longevity, they grew into large enterprises that we know today. Can Tesla weather a GM-ignition swtich type lawsuit? Maybe, time will tell.

GM being held accountable is irrelevant here. My point is simply that large organizations we'd never call "hobbyist" do vastly more stupid things than what Tesla has done here.

I will note that Tesla did just weather what could have been the equivalent of the GM ignition switch problem. They discovered a problem with the front seat belts which could have easily have been fatal in a crash. They pretty much immediately recalled every single vehicle they had on the road to inspect them. As far as I know the problem only ever existed in the one car where they found it, but they immediately took charge of the problem instead of covering their ears and trying to wish it away until they couldn't.

All kinds of companies are dysfunctional in all sorts of ways. That doesn't make it right, but I don't see how the label "hobbyist" applies just because of it.

Honestly I think we're in a semantics loop of sorts. I view the Tesla auto company through the same lens as Kanye West's shoe line with Adidas. Yes, Kanye and Tesla sell as many units as they want. But, and this is a big but, neither the automotive or shoe industry are the primary field of expertise for the person at the top (Elon, Kanye) and thus can reasonably be viewed as an outsized 'hobby' until they return to their core competency. Some hobbies can be extremely profitable, no doubt.

That would put SpaceX in the "hobby" group too, which I would find to be very weird.

Heck, lots of pretty big, serious companies have CEOs whose expertise doesn't line up well with the business. That's why you delegate.

It is just about how you define the word, though. It's obviously open to a lot of interpretation, and if your interpretation is one way, I can hardly say it's wrong, even if I might say it should be a different way.

Well John Carmack spent 10 good years on Armadillo Aerospace and eventually went back to his day job, so I'm still comfortable viewing certain enterprises by people with means as being 'hobbies' as a general term, insofar as if they wake up one morning and decide to do something else, they still have money, a home, and other opportunities. The IRS has some pretty interesting perspectives on 'hobbies' as well, as I've discovered over time.

I'd have no problem calling Armadillo a hobby company, they never had any paying customers (I think) and never produced anything of practical value. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I'd personally say SpaceX fit that category through the Falcon 1 days, but moved past it once they moved to the Falcon 9. YMMV.

As you said though, they've only sold ~100k vehicles and only in select markets. Try doing that to the 3 series, Golf or Corolla.

The Takata airbag recall shows that can be done too. That's been a bit slow, but only because the affected cars actually need stuff replaced, not just inspected, and supplies of replacement parts are limited. Even with tens of millions of cars affected, car companies can jump out ahead of a problem and fix it properly.

The point wasn't 'can car companies do it', it was 'can this car company do it'.

Relative size counts for a lot. Honda can recall five million cars because they're big, and they produce almost that many cars every year.

But my point was just that big car companies can still fuck up big time in very stupid ways, but we don't say they're hobbies. My point with Takata is simply to show that GM didn't have to approach their ignition switch problem in a stupid way.

They are experiencing reliability issues which is why Consumer reports said they cannot recommend the Tesla Model S. http://www.consumerreports.org/cars/tesla-reliability-doesnt...

I fail to see the relevance.

I'm not saying they're perfect in every way. Merely that they're big enough and serious enough that it makes no sense to refer to it as a "hobbyist company" anymore. I could see it in the Roadster days, and the early Model S days, but not now.

Over 16 million cars are sold each year.. So really in comparison to the actual market they are small; If they wish to scale without a buy network they need to answer the phone.

I agree, they're relatively tiny. But they're plenty big enough to be more than a hobby. I just don't see how it makes any sense to use that term to describe a company with billions of dollars in annual revenue.

A hobby is something you enjoy that doesn't make you any money. It becomes a business when it starts making you money.

All those billion-dollar unicorns showing up on the front page of HN are just hobbies, then?

The ones that continue to lose money year after year I still consider a 'hobby company'.

I wish I could get billion dollar funding for my hobbies!

s/hobbies/hobby horses/

;-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_horse_%28toy%29

The circle is complete:

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ii5wNiMRq8o/VGAZVysO5nI/AAAAAAAAN...

GM didnt exactly do nothing - what they did was fix the part on later models but keep the part number exactly the same so that no body would suspect that the original part had an issue and they wouldnt have to do a recall.

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