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Comment by egypturnash | Hacker News Reader

Monroe & Associates has been tearing down cars and other things as their sole business for quite a while. https://jalopnik.com/the-fascinating-company-that-tears-cars... is a pretty good overview of their business and the insane depths of knowledge that their engineers have.

They’ve accumulated a ton of knowledge about How To Cars. Of course it is possible that Tesla is making a bunch of design decisions that M&A thinks are weird because they are optimizing for very different things than most other carmakers; it would be pretty interesting to be a fly on the wall in a discussion between Tesla’s engineers and M&A’s.

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It makes sense. Munroe knows their stuff and it could be wise for Tesla to employ their services at some point for a little analysis. Such a cool and obscure business. There’s a little doc about the company. The extent to which they breakdown and analyze a product is anxiety-inducing.

The only reason Tesla is making bad decisions is because of schedule, everything else stems from that. That said I am pretty positive on Tesla because even thought they release half baked products they still improve and innovate at a breakneck pace. Turns out shit happens when you have a charismatic leader attracting a bunch brilliant and driven people and telling them to go change the world.

Would you be happy that your $70K car was "half baked" so that Tesla could improve more rapidly?

Interesting parallel question: "Would you be happy if your $800 phone didn't have copy-paste functionality, no 3G, and no app store?"

It's an interesting question to consider because that was basically what the iPhone was when it launched. It was behind the state of the art at the time in many important ways (not having 3G was a big deal), but it was so incredibly far ahead in several very critical ways (multitouch display, 100% touch-based OS, full fledged browser, next level music player) that it didn't ultimately matter.

Now the question is, does Tesla strike that balance? The second question is, can they iterate rapidly and close the gap (which the iPhone ultimately did)?

It's an interesting parallel to consider because iPhone was revolutionary, it was something no one had seen when it came out, it was literally the first smartphone.

So, are you saying Tesla's cars with their design flaws are revolutionary like the first smartphone?

It absolutely was not the first smartphone; Nokia E-series predated by several years.

Nor was it the first keyboardless touch-screen phone, that was the LG Prada.

The iPhone was a clever subset of well-polished features very well marketed. The usual Apple approach.

Yes.

Mass produced viable electric cars, with a mileage of 300 miles.

A bigger revolution than the iPhone.

Yes, go test drive one and see for yourself.

My phone can't kill me, nor others.

Good thing body panel gaps don't kill many people as well!

I would not, which is why I do not have a model 3. People who have Teslas right now are early adopters.

A question back: would you be happy if Tesla did not kick-start electric car ramp up?

I don't own one; don't plan to buy one. So I'm indifferent.

I’d rather the structure were over-engineered where it counted.

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