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Comment by feld | Hacker News Reader

They're not going to be a monopoly. They will be the only company on the planet that can produce the motors and batteries(!!) that are required for high quality and reliable EVs.

Tesla will make some cars for Tesla fans. Tesla will make billions selling key parts to everyone else. So they'll be the new Bosch of EVs, really.

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I am not convinced they have the best battery technology or even EV technology. They are certainly best at touting their technology. They make choices and when questioned on it they talk over the subject.

I do hope they succeed this is a major market; automobiles and such; that needs new infusions to move forward both in technology and design. However they are at a very dangerous point in their history and how they execute over the next six months is most important.

Motors aren't a secret technology. And Panasonic makes the batteries and sells to Tesla. The only thing Tesla can sell as technology is Autopilot, which is just hyped up driver assistance.

Have you even heard of electric cars like Renault Zoe, Chevy Bolt, BYD ev300? All with range from 180-230 miles, selling since 2016.

I really doubt the other car companies will let that happen. Either they'll work out the battery and motor tech themselves OR they'll push for hydrogen. The automotive industry isn't going to let a company like Tesla bully them around.

Just like how BlackBerry, Palm and Nokia held off Apple, right?

Tesla has been around for a while and GM actually has a car that directly competes with Tesla Model 3, and many are coming. Sure Model 3 will be marquee model, but it did not have surprise element of iPhone nor people buy Cars every two years. Even to this day, building EVs with big batteries is not economical or profitable, that may change now, but building EV is not a rocket science. Every major Auto manufacturer has the know-how, they may be constrained by the supply-chain in the future. With low gas prices, people want SUVs not Sedans, if Model 3 was economic SUV, Tesla would have voraciously eaten couple of Car companies, its a Car and so the rest of the ICE world, will survive them!

Gas prices and EV sales are, perhaps counter-intuitively, unrelated [1]. It has been widely reported that low gas prices do not affect EV sales [2].

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/17/demand-for-electric-vehicles...

[2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/electric-car-sale...

More like how IBM held off Sun Microsystems.

> The automotive industry isn't going to let a company like Tesla bully them around.

They already have. Its too late. Who else is going to be producing 500k EVs a year in the next 3-5 years? No one.

To be honest, I'll be surprised if Tesla is producing EVs at that rate too... They have 3 models of cars. I'm not even sure there is a market for 500k/year of those three models. Even expanding that to 4 models (Y) would still leave those numbers hard to hit.

17 million new cars are sold each year in the US alone. The market is there and proven.

And how many of those new cars sold for > $35-40k?

Tesla certainly has a market, but it isn't competing for the same consumers that Honda is. The market Tesla is competing for is significantly smaller than 17M.

The amount of people who can afford any new car is not the same as the number of people who can afford a new Tesla.

Have you driven a Tesla? If not, then you should. Might change your view.

I've had my Model 3 reservation since the day they opened... but it's highly unlikely to assume that Tesla can hit those production marks with the (admittedly) limited line up it has.

Across their entire lineup BMW sold 2.4M cars in 2016 (including MINI) [1]. I just don't see them selling 500k/year in the immediate future. Once they add models (the Y, a replacement for the Roadster, and a Truck), then they very easily could blow through that rate. But baby steps... I'd rather see Tesla exceed modest expectations than fail to meet unrealistic ones.

[1] https://www.press.bmwgroup.com/global/article/detail/T026708...

Elon rarely makes categorical statements about future goals, usually throwing in a few weasel words, or "we project" or "we plan", but during Tesla's last earnings call he said:

“What people should absolutely have zero concern about, and I mean 0, is that Tesla will achieve a 10,000 unit production week by the end of next year. […] I think people should really not have any concerns that we won’t reach that outcome from a production rate.”

And I have no doubt that they will reach a 10000 unit week. And they will probably have that production capacity. But once their backlog of orders has been filled, how many orders will they realistically have per week? I think that is the outstanding question.

Eh... assuming demand is there. I guess it could be, but price of the car matters, prices of oil matter, politics and lobbyists matter, success of this rollout matter. There's some risks here before you call it "too late".

Also... nissan has an interesting play here. Waiting to see what they do.

Who else is going to be producing 500k EVs a year in the next 3-5 years? No one.

Renault-Nissan already produce around 100k EVs per year. Is it that hard to imagine them doing 500k in 5 years?

What about China? They're certainly making plans for these kinds of volumes.

Audi already had to scrap one of their EV models, because its technology was so far behind Tesla's by the time it was ready to hit the market.

Traditional car makers are just extremely slow to adjust, because they have never faced any real disruption. They've effectively been selling the same product for decades with only some marginal and incremental improvements. Tesla, on the other hand, is using the SV model of doing business: First create an MVP, then iterate rapidly until you have something that is so good, it can steamroll the market. When Tesla was founded, traditional car makers laughed at them, claiming they would never be able to even build a proper car. These comments are eerily similar to what the Palm CEO had to say about Apple and the IPhone ten years ago: That a couple of computer people from SV would never be able to build a proper phone.

Traditional car companies are entirely unprepared to deal with the kind disruption that is coming to their market. And that does not only concern EVs but also self-driving cars and the sharing economy. I don't think they can stop Tesla. The real question is how much of their business they will be able to save.

> Traditional car makers are just extremely slow to adjust, because they have never faced any real disruption

Is there a term for the dismissive attitude tech people have for any older company?

I think the term you're looking for is "history" [1] as in, "tech people tend to adopt a historical view of older companies." With extremely few exceptions, the older a company gets the more obsolete it becomes [2].

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2017/03/22/sears-to...

[2] http://io9.gizmodo.com/25-obsolete-technologies-that-future-...

Er... you cannot use future tense to claim that.

It can be your fantasy, your dream, your oprinion, that's all very fine. But you cannot say that is what is going to happen, that's just one bet, one possibility (and not the most likely IMO) amongst several possibilities.

Fair enough, but Bosch only trades at a 44 PE, which is about double the market's PE, but not crazy high.

the reference is to Germany's privately held Robert Bosch GmbH: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bosch_GmbH

Robert Bosch GmbH, the - amongst other things - automotive supplier is not a publicly traded company, but the German equivalent of a LLC. (Some subsidiaries are traded on the stockmarket, though)

This is exactly the kind of junk that makes HN the cesspool that it has become. Do you really think that only Tesla can make electric motors, despite it being a mature, 150-year-old industry in which Tesla ships only about 15% of the electric cars? Where Nissan ships product at a dramatically lower price? Did you know that trains and elevators and blenders are also electric, and companies like Alstom and Kawasaki and Bosch make them?

By the way Tesla hasn't made a battery, ever. They are made by Panasonic. Tesla packs them into little metal boxes.

Musk already stated Tesla will be a battery company. If he's telling his investors that, what do you think he's going to do?

Make same batteries but cheaper than Chinese?

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