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Comment by odammit | Hacker News Reader

Sure, I’ve owned multiple Volts, and I’ll keep buying them because they’re affordable (until a “luxury” car is mostly* electric).

I’d love to have a BMW. I’m finally in the bracket I can afford it, but I refuse to own a non-electric vehicle.

People want electric vehicles and they want luxury, but Tesla’s are out of the price range for most people (for now).

BMW can wait til 2020, but by then they’ll have missed the boat.

* by mostly I mean a daily commute round trip

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>BMW can wait til 2020, but by then they’ll have missed the boat.

What boat? Are people going to stop buying cars in 2 years?

We aren't talking about cellphones here, 2 years, or even 5 years is nothing in the automotive industry. The current 3-series is 6 years old and a good 3-4 years behind competitors and is still selling strong.

Having a 2-3 years lead in this industry is literally less than half the lifecycle of a model.

The boat that has all the $100k sales on it from people that don’t want to wait 2-3 years for a BMW.

That boat. It’s red row boat in case you’re curious.

That boat is super niche. Numbers of $100k cars Tesla sells per year is very small and actually is not growing. So that boat is quite small and I don't see the issue for BMW.

You have to remember Tesla is losing hundreds of millions of dollars, so clearly that boat is not going to get far until they can start making money. Even Elon Musk won't be able to raise big rounds of new capital indefinitely.

That super niche boat is in a fleet of boats that are killing off old businesses that are lagging behind. Sure BMW may be doing great today, but how long until they’re a Borders.

I don’t agree with you, but I did use your golang auth project the other day. Good work! Thanks!

That would be the boat of early adopter people who are willing to pay top dollar for a car that, apart from Superchargers and a large screen is not on par with BMW and the like in things that actually matter to luxury car buyers, like build quality and comfort and handling? Actually, on build quality Tesla doesn't really compete with cars that are half the price.

Does not seem to be a huge boat to me. Not that BMW couldn't screw it up before then, but they will need to try really hard to screw up.

Yeah so to my orginal point - I want a BMW, but I also want a fully electric vehicle. The later is more important to me.

You'd just have to wait then...

Also, BMW and Tesla operate and vastly different scales, and I am not sure there are enough people who consider electric more desirable (or feasible) than "a bimmer".

>> That super niche boat is in a fleet of boats that are killing off old businesses that are lagging behind. Sure BMW may be doing great today, but how long until they’re a Borders.

But is it killing businesses? At least from my European perspective I don't see VW, BMW, Daimler losing business to Tesla really, they seem to be doing fine (the only problems they are dealing with are of their own making like the emission scandal). In Asia I also don't see automakers like Toyota losing to Tesla at all. The moment Hong Kong stopped electric car subsidies the number of sold Teslas dropped to 0.

Maybe your American perspective is different? Do you think US car companies like GM, Ford etc are losing badly to Tesla? Is Tesla so popular? I thought owning Tesla was something akin to owning Porsche of Ferrari, it is a status symbol for very small minority of wealthy people. But I don't see Tesla becoming mainstream car for middle classes any time soon.

And then in 5 years when it's time for them to buy a new car and they're sick of the cheap plasticky interior of the Tesla, BMW will be there ready for them.

Many would also say that Tesla's are only luxury in price. The interiors are not nearly as nice as those from BMW or Mercedes.

Exactly! Besides maybe the “entertainment package”.

I’ll end up buying a Tesla because it’s fully electric. I was on the wait list for a Model 3, but my previous volt lemon’d and I couldnt wait until an unknown delivery date, so I bought another Volt.*

The volt for now gets me the round trip. I need to charge anything beyond going to work and back.

I’m at 5000 miles with NO GAS! It’s rad!

* I know “you bought another volt when your first one lemon’d?!” Yeah totally. It was an awesome car and between GM and California’s lemon law I pretty much sold my old one back to GM for just shy of the original purchase price.

Luxury is the wrong word for the segment Tesla is competing in. “Premium” is closer, but still wrong.

“High end” feels a lot closer. A kitchen aid mixer isn’t a luxury item, but it has a good profit margin and people who love mixers will buy it.

Tesla is more like that... there’s no hand stitched Italian leather or whatever, but the software is top of the line, the drivetrain is top of the line, it has unique features that make it a better car, without competing on who can make the prettiest mahogony inlay.

Like, not having to stand at a smelly gas station in your heels and pump your gas is a luxury. But Tesla doesn’t sell you a wall charger with gold accents.

But then it's not even that they are competing in that segment, they are that segment. Outside of people with sufficient disposable income who hate fossil fuels so much they are willing to wait for a full charge (and I've seen some of their supercharger centers; might be better than your average gas station ion a middle of nowhere, but not really a place where I'd want to spend well over an hour for a full charge, when I can be in and out of a gas pump in 5 minutes). It's a legitimate niche, but not necessarily a very large one.

Also, I am not sure if they really make a better car. Unique, for sure. Myself, if it doesn't have AWD, I don't buy it...

I think all of Tesla's lines have AWD?

They do, eventually, but as many things with Tesla it is sometimes hard to tell what is actually available (as in you can go and buy it) and what is to be available "real soon now" for several years. It is not cheap, either.

2 of 3 shipping cars -- while dual-motor Model 3's have been spotted in the wild, you can't order one yet.

Didn't AWD on Model S become widely available only relatively recently? I seem to remember it being an option last time I looked at it.

October 2014 is when it became available, not sure what you mean by 'widely available' and 'an option'. From launch it was available at both smaller and larger battery sizes, now they've started offering it as the only choice for some battery sizes.

Well, an option, as an option on Model 3, yeah. Can't quite buy it.

In any case, yes, it seems that it is more available now than I thought. Now if it only felt as a 70K+ car...

Their build quality is atrocious, too. When stuck behind one on 101, I can see that gaps are uneven right from my driver seat. For a Yugo it might be OK. For a car with a luxury price tag that's just wrong.

2020 is less than two years away. They will not have missed the boat by any stretch of the imagination. Most people will still be buying petrol cars in 2020.

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