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Comment by notfromhere | Hacker News Reader

It's probably going to turn out that the guys who've been building cars for a century can figure out battery technology faster than the battery guys figuring out how to scale auto manufacturing

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I'd be skeptical about this. The extreme/rare event is Tesla got hundreds of thousands of people to put a down payment on a car with zero marketing costs. Unfortunately, Solar-city and taking on convertible debt vs. equity have shrunk down their runway. Had they not done the related party transaction and issued equity, I think they could ramp production at a slower rate without the quality issues you hear about. I don't think Elon's episodes have helped his case either the last year. An interesting question though is whether there was anyone else in the world who could have created a car company in the 21st century, and gotten it to as far as he has?

> The extreme/rare event is Tesla got hundreds of thousands of people to put a down payment on a car with zero marketing costs.

According to their SEC filings Tesla spends tens of millions of dollars per quarter on marketing costs. Where does the idea that they spend zero on advertising come from?

Zero is an under statement, but relative to the $4B Ford spends for example, Tesla's $70M advertising costs are tiny. You could also say that about the number of cars Tesla has sold too, but auto companies typically have an incredibly large ad spend.

> Zero is an under statement, but relative to the $4B Ford spends for example, Tesla's $70M advertising costs are tiny. You could also say that about the number of cars Tesla has sold too.

Yeah, from the numbers I can find, Tesla sold around 255,000 cars in 2018, Ford sold around 6 million. While I'm not sure what time period those advertising figures are, per car sold in 2018 they aren't wildly in different leagues; Tesla's are lower, but presumably marketing has diminishing marginal returns.

Marketing != Advertising. You might want to look up the definitions.

Isn’t that sorta like what Steve Ballmer said about the iPhone, and then laughed?

Cars don't have network effects like smartphones do

People talk to each other about their cars and whether they like them. That's a network effect.

All the German car manufacturers have in terms of engineerig talent and cultural is mostly mechanical, and brilliantly so.

But, the electronics suck.

Some of the most talented chemical, physical materials and electrical engineers work for Musk’s companies.

You can just tell that Tesla’s were not designed with teams in silos. I don’t think car makers are currently capable of that.

Germany has a lot of electric and chemical engineering talent - you might have heard of Bosch and BASF. These companies are already involved in the car manufacturing supply chain. "Working in silos" allows engineers to specialize and get in-depth knowledge.

> You can just tell that Tesla’s were not designed with teams in silos. I don’t think car makers are currently capable of that.

Toyota was, at one point. I don't know if they are anymore.

uhh, Germany has been the center of the chemicals industry since the late 19th century

You mean like GM and Bolt ?

One word... patents

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