I think it's safe to think they have considered that already :)
Would you say it's unlikely they just maxed out what they can do internally and want new eyes to work on it ?
When did that occur? They're still selling $40K+ cars while their competitors are selling cars in the $20K range; Tesla cars continue not to make financial sense, they're a luxury good.
Dollar per dollar the best bang for your buck is still likely hybrid vehicles followed by the cheapest electric vehicle you can find.
The Roadster definitely challenged a lot of those assumptions. Tesla proved they could make an electric car people wanted, rather than one they hated but tolerated out of a sense of moral obligation.
> made electrical vehicules economically realistic
To cast some perspective, Nissan has sold about 380k Leafs - the most popular electric car in the world - worldwide over the past 8 years. Tesla has shipped over 160k Model 3s in the US alone over the past 14 months (and currently continues to sell another 20k or so per month).
The vehicle market is huge, and Tesla has by no means conquered it, but they've put a much larger dent in it than any other electric vehicle manufacturer, and have been instrumental in changing public opinion on EVs.
Volkswagen, post diesel fiasco, is best situated to hard-pivot to electric. Nissan is alreday succeeding. Others will follow suit as soon as it's economically viable, and mostly this depends on battery tech improving a little bit more.
Tesla is not the leader: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bertelschmitt/2017/05/01/who-is...
Your article is nearly two years old, though; 2018 was a very different year for EVs because of the Model 3. Here's some actual sales data for you: https://insideevs.com/monthly-plug-in-sales-scorecard/
The Model 3 accounted for 38% of all EV or hybrid vehicles sold in the US in 2018 and 60% of all BEV vehicles. Tesla's 3 vehicles accounted for over 50% of all EV/hybrid sales, and 82% of all BEV sales in the US in 2018. How you can look at that and conclude that they aren't the leader in that space is beyond me.
The US market is not the world market, and world-wide Tesla is inconsequential. Even in the US it's highly localized, and in those areas it's still inconsequential.
The Model 3 has suffered from ridiculous levels of mismanagement and process problems. They are so far behind on targets it's amazing their entire management team hasn't been sacked and replaced with people who know what they're doing.
One day a company that's competent, like Toyota, will brush Tesla aside without even trying. Until then Tesla has a fraction of a fraction of the sales in the US.
The US (well, North American) market comparison is apt because that's the only market that Tesla is manufacturing and selling in in any appreciable quantity right now. It's somewhat difficult to quantify demand response in markets where supply isn't available.
Toyota may well come from behind and eclipse Tesla. I'm not particularly concerned if they do or not, but I do think it's ignorant to look at the EV landscape and not conclude that Tesla has created demand and interest in a market previously marked by tepid apathy. You're arguing global auto markets, I'm talking about impact on consumer sentiment towards EVs. Two totally different discussions (and frankly, a rather clumsy strawman on your part).
I'd say that counts as "economically realistic", even if it doesn't meet your further-back goalpost of "best bang for the buck". If the Model 3 isn't economically realistic, someone should tell that to Audi and BMW and Cadillac and Mercedes-Benz.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/08/teslas-model-3-was-2018s-bes...
It's not safe to say anything about Tesla's capabilities or competencies at this point.
I feel pretty confident in my right to criticize Tesla for it's presumptive and poorly executed overreach.
The market for clean vehicles exists because Toyota and Nissan showed there was demand for it. Tesla came in and made better-looking cars (from a distance, they're quite shoddy looking up close), but they're competitively only because Toyota and Nissan have chosen to stick with their distinctive designs rather than put their EV tech into mainstream vehicles.
And Tesla's big problem is that the rest of the industry is finally getting around to putting their EV technologies into mainstream vehicles, almost all of which are better made and far more reliable.
Munroe's teardown also had some interesting findings (both good and bad, but that was the goal):
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/04/29/munro-tesla-model-3-tea...
A suspension worthy of formula one was quite a compliment. I'd say there are some things that Tesla does uniquely well. Safety is another one. Remember that time the NTHSA literallyu broke their testing machine when testing the Model S for crash safety? No? Here are some videos:
https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/videos/a5238/watch-the...
That reads like an ad paid for by Tesla
You can "engineer" the hell out of something and still do a terrible job as an engineer. Tesla's infatuation with novel, clever things often gets in the way of shipping. Their fiasco with the model X gull-wing doors is just one example of a billion.
It's easy to make your car better when you can charge vastly more and you've got tons of VC money you can blow through in pursuit of some distant goal. Established car companies have no such luxury.
This is not to say Tesla hasn't had some wins, but on the whole they're losing.
Arguably Tesla is the Juicero of cars.
Isn't that called "disruption" and is the entire reason Silicon Valley exists?
It's easy to make a billion dollar start-up if you get two billion in cash you can blow on acquisitions. It's hard to make that company survive more than ten years.
When Tesla runs out of VC money, which they will, things are going to turn ugly in a hurry. All this money they've blown on door hinges and sending cars into space will be gone and they'll have to turn a profit. I'm not sure they can without massively cutting back and radically simplifying their product.
That aside, i don't trust any car maker to make good software. Especially infotainment. Especially if it has bluetooth/wifi. And especially if there's internet involved. Let's just say i'm holding back words here.
Grand majority of software development is not very strict on best security practices. But a two ton object that can easily move at speeds over 100kmh demands insane security measures. That's my opinion, at least. I know people will sooner buy a car with spotify. And i know people won't just hack other peoples cars and make them crash. But still, it weights two tons and moves at two hundred kilometers per hour.
As a side note; someone else wrote how Teslas are advanced in terms of computer technology then other cars and how many computers they have in their cars. Lots of other cars have a ton of computers in them. It's nothing new.
Since I'm not giving any evualation in any way about the quality of the software resulting in those actions, is your comment stating that I'm wrong, in a way I couldn't understand ?
Anyway. One of the mails was an infotainment engineer at some car company. Before that I, for some reason, thought that such a big and serious industry is very serious when it comes to software. But right then it clicked that car software makers are just as any other software writers (maybe a bit more serious). This was before two hackers hacked a Toyota. And later a Range Rover (or something) over bluetooth. Bout those companies are much older and much more serious then Tesla, and probably have plenty of world class coders at their disposal.
As for the first part of what I wrote above (that i forgot by now). Teslas are not the first commercially viable electric car. They may be among the first to have nice range (over 300km). And Teslas are not the most affordable, that goes to the Nissan Leaf (2017 and above). Granted the Nissan is not a big car, closer to a Clio.
On another though, they could just hire a security company to do a deep audit. Maybe they have. Maybe that's why they are incentivizing crackers. I do not and probably can not know.
edited for readability
EDIT: I'd maybe trust Rolls Royce. But i don't have money for that so it doesn't matter.
I see that you had many experiences with failing engineering, and so have I. What's more, car manufacturers have been involved in more and more scandals, and this does include code quality. As a matter of fact, I did meet people with direct experience on car systems code that reported deep quality problems.
It's then logical to say there is a possibility Tesla screw up.
However, electrical cars have been holding computers since day one. Tesla demonstrated the ability to create, build and sell at scale complex electronic systems with generally well considered performance. Also their will to allow outsiders to attack it can be interpretted as a desire to improve the system, and hence it makes sense to think this desire existed before, and they that did their homework (which is the original topic of this thread).
We are discussing ability to setup a process, not to succeed in it.
Anyway. I'm sorry. I forgot for a second that I don't want to take part in these kinds of discussions. Tesla, in this case. You can have your faith.