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Comment by qaq | Hacker News Reader

"It's relatively easy to build an expensive luxury car." Would be nice to back this up with examples. Especially in volume segment like here's another example of a company entering luxury car market making a competitive vehicle that's for the sake of argument just hits top spot in sales in the S class segment.

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Tesla has made large gains in their production compared to other manufacturers in the same class of cars[0]. However, from what I've heard the interior build quality on Teslas is that it is of the lowest quality in their price bracket. As such, while the numbers are promising they are at a bit of a discontinuity point in their market that might show these numbers to be more favorable than they actually are.

[0] https://cleantechnica.com/2016/01/15/1-large-luxury-car-in-u...

What are the criteria that go into quantifying interior build quality?

Tesla's interior is definitely spartan, with things like center console and extra cupholder set available only after-market, but that seems to fit into the story of "design the most lightweight vehicle possible in order to increase the range".

Are there reports of numerous interior-level problems, like fobs or panels or lights or switches falling off, etc.? Because honestly there's not much of "interior" there to discuss its quality.

The comment above is exactly right. There are dozens of high-end car makers for this very reason. Because this is a small but profitable market, they just need to have engineering that is good enough and provide esquisite features that are perceived as luxurious and exclusive. Just buy any specialized magazine or visit the show rooms to see how these high-end cars manufacturers churn one expensive car after another...

These high end car manufacturers are mostly parts of conglomerates sharing part bins with far less exotic vehicles. Most of them were underwater before they were acquired by respective conglomerate. Many of them are money losers kept alive for prestige and halo effect. There is not a single independent volume luxury car manufacturer that was able to enter the market in a very long time.

its not only easy to build them its easy to profit off of them. they are the biggest profit makers for car makers because it really doesn't cost that much more to reach that point.

I don't understand your doubt, there are many examples of boutique car companies who sell on either luxury or performance and sometimes both. They are all low volume adventures. There simply is more room to profit and that is attractive. Plus its very easy to feed off of pretentious people, pretentious geeks are even simpler.

50,000 a year is not boutique. It's hard to build competitive production luxury vehicle, the only success stories in that segment are Lexus, Acura and Infiniti and they are obviously subsidiaries of existing large automakers. Majority of boutique luxury brands are owned by major conglomerates and with exception of few are actually loss leaders that primarily exists for prestige purposes.

> few are actually loss leaders

Nothing could be further from the truth. Brands such as Lexus, BMW, and Mercedes are extremely profitable, because they offer cars that cost just a little bit more than a "normal" car and charge up to 30K or more for that privilege. The only constraint on the growth of these car makers is that there are not enough people who want (or afford) to pay that price just for the extras.

That was about boutique brands Lexus, BMW, and Mercedes are not boutique brands are they? Bugatti is not profitable niether are majority of other boutique brands owned by major automakers.

These aren't the few that are loss leaders. But also a BMW 3 series costs less than my minivan, so I would hardly call that a luxury vehicle. Of course you can get a high end BMW, but somehow I doubt they would be very profitable without the lower end of the market. And that's the point for Tesla as well. By introducing a car that starts around the same price as a 3 series BMW, and selling in similarly high volumes, they can also be extremely profitable.

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