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Comment by Kranar | Hacker News Reader

Those in the know said electric cars in general were an unpractical waste of money. I also remember three years ago hearing those in the know saying a self landing rocket would not be possible, and if it ever were made it would also be done at great cost and waste.

Heck, those in the know said even a couple of months ago that Tesla would not be able to achieve 5000 Model 3s by today.

The truth is, there aren't really any people we can claim are "in the know" when it comes to new, innovative approaches to manufacturing.

Maybe Tesla will fail, maybe it will succeed. I don't think anyone actually knows one way or another. Elon Musk and his crew are trying something no one else has bothered to try before and we just have to see how it goes and what lessons can be learned from it.

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Well as a first point, I think that there's a huge difference between 'This very difficult thing is probably so difficult that X' and 'I have physically seen this production line, and there's no way it's doing X'.

The first is an estimation of difficulty - probably an educated guess that could be wrong. The second is a statement based on the evidence in front of you.

Secondly, whilst it's true that people have been saying Tesla won't get to 5k/w, it's also true that Tesla were claiming they'd have a fully automated production line. If Tesla gets to 5k/w by hand-building them all then in most people's eyes they've failed. The value of Tesla is not the actual production of cars. It's the IP of their self-driving technology, and the IP for their fully automated production line. There's a reason Tesla's valuation is completely unlinked from their production capacity.

>>The first is an estimation of difficulty - probably an educated guess that could be wrong.

Difficult things have been done all time and being done even as we speak now. Its not very hard to be positive about difficult things happening even in the present.

The real problem is the discomfort with anything new, and the fear of new order of things.

There is also a certain amount of risk taking ability that goes away when you become intelligent(expertise). That's because expertise is an investment in time, and there fore a good part of one's life. Watching that get washed away, or giving it up to start a new life is very hard. Its a huge mountain of emotion which you have to scale up and then down. People would rather let existing order of things prevail as they are.

The second part is people find it hard to put what is already done aside and start afresh. I have even forgotten the count of number of people who I have heard telling they can't learn something new, or begin on a new heading because they have travelled too long down the current path. Sometimes this is for things as simple as starting a new hobby.

So Tesla will likely win, and people won't be happy seeing it win. People are not comfortable watching live anti-thesis to their excuses.

"The value of Tesla is not the actual production of cars. It's the IP of their self-driving technology, and the IP for their fully automated production line. " I highly doubt that but if you have any link/proof pls share. Their value is in providing a product people are head over heels about. And their valuation is much like any other company, based on guestimates of success.

Musk's "new, innovative approaches to manufacturing" are the status-quo from around 40 years ago. Maybe he doesn't know that...

And are they really "trying something no one else has bothered to try before"? Altogether, an electric car is simply not that much more new or different from a conventional one, these days. In fact it's much simpler. A lot of the learnings of the last 40 years would absolutely apply.

We'll see!

> Those in the know said electric cars in general were an unpractical waste of money.

Really? Who said that?

I would like to point out that you go to any article written about tesla from "the industry" viewpoint from at least 2008 to 2010. It's actually quite vitriolitic, actually.

His question was about electric cars in general, not Tesla in specific.

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