Hacker News Reader

Comment by finchisko | Hacker News Reader

Few years ago, CEO of Audi and others was making fun of Tesla and today all of them jumping on same boat as Tesla did, because of FOMO. Reminds me classical quote: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." I hope Tesla wins, because they deserve it. There was no real innovation for ages, as auto companies only did minimum to keep their profits. Also we should not forget diesel gate scandal. They didn't want to invest into cleaner cars and rather cheated. I've personal aversion agains this industry, because of that.

View on HN

And Tesla even affords the attitude to say they don't want to claim the whole market and they're happy to let others use their ideas, because they want a world with fewer carbon. So, even if they don't win, they can claim it was their plan all along ;)

Tesla and Elon Musk are not the same entity. Tesla is controlled by a board of directors unlike SpaceX it's a public company. Elon Musk took the reign because he had the vision, if his ideals will eventually come to an impasse with Tesla's financial future he can be just as easily removed. Tesla opening its patents and IP was more than just sharing it was a brilliant move to prevent a future patent war in the EV space that could put Tesla at risk by claims brought forth by the car behemoths, now it's much easier to claim previous work. A single company cannot corner the market and its unrealistic for Tesla to have 50% or more of the EV market in the long term but if you think they are OK with just packing it up and going home as long as some one else picks up the tortch you really do not understand how companies work. If anything it looks like Tesla wants to evolve into being a service provider in the automotive space, batteries, charging networks, auto-pilot tech and many other technical solutions on top of having a production line. Heck I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla drops car production completely in 10 or so years if they can corner the battery manufacturing and automotive charging market.

The traditional car companies will catch up with them (Apple was 5 years ahead of the competition at the time of the iPhone too for example), but by then Tesla will have over 50% of the world's battery production, and guess what all electric cars need? Batteries, and lots of them, and they will need to be replaced every 7-10 years.

Tesla right now does pretty well as a car manufacturer and the Model 3 will probably do well too, but by 2025 when the established car companies (like the German ones) have caught up, unless Tesla innovated far beyond those, it'll be a marginal car company - but a huge battery and energy company, as well as a "fuel" company with their supercharger networks.

> but by then Tesla will have over 50% of the world's battery production

I'm not sure whether you are referring to control or consumption, but in case it's the former: the cells Tesla uses are produced by Panasonic, so technically, they would be in control.

>Apple was 5 years ahead of the competition at the time of the iPhone too for example

A highly doubtful statement. At the time Apple released it, there were smartphonese capable of steamrolling over and over, just nobody sold them in US

> unless Tesla innovated far beyond those, it'll be a marginal car company

You mean just like Apple became a marginal tech company?

I find it fascinating how people make bold claims here in the comments, predicting the future like this...

First video of Elon I saw was him saying that. He said that if Tesla fail because others do it better as a result, then that's still worth while.

> There was not real innovation for ages, as auto companies only did minimum to keep their profits.

I wouldn't say that. ICE has improved a lot in the last 50 years and so have other elements of a car, from structural integrity to braking systems. The ICE car we have today is an amazing machine compared to the ones we drove in the 50s or 60s.

It is true that traditional car companies have not done enough to push the electric car forward but a lot of innovation has happened, and some of it will benefit electric cars directly (regenerative braking, for example).

I'm with you, though. I hope Tesla comes out of this as a powerful car company because they deserve to be an example for the rest of the industry.

Not only have not done enough. They effectively killed electric car, because it was cheaper to maintain status quo rather then innovate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F

> There was not real innovation for ages, as auto companies only did minimum to keep their profits.

You are very, very mistaken, and anybody who's driven a few different cars can tell you that. Any car made 25 years ago was basically a coffin with wheels.

I agree. Also, consistent, sub 1% innovation is very important, but people like to forget that and (over-)value the 10X or "disruptive" innovation everyone keeps talking about recently.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com