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Comment by dominicl | Hacker News Reader

The swing of the article "Look we told you so" really rubs me the wrong way. But it seems to represent the view of a large part of the Automotive industry. Instead of driving innovation forward, they shy away of the problems that introducing such innovation could have. Instead it seems the industry relies on shaming innovators for the issues of first generation future tech. This reminds me a lot of Steve Ballmer mocking the first iPhone: https://youtu.be/eywi0h_Y5_U

The most likely outcome is that they will figure it out, and much earlier than any of their competitors.

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Tesla made a bold trade off and it was a clear win - until they stopped replacing the failing units.

But now the "good will" repairs are over, the smug attitude of the article is more or less deserved.

Buying off the shelf parts is not innovation. Especially when they are not suited to purpose and you ignore the vendor's own reliability figures.

I agree, but I bet we begin seeing other car companies using large displays and suddenly display manufacturers will start selling properly-designed, large displays.

Well, just to be fair, that's something that would have happened with or without Tesla. You saw those prototype screens at auto shows like Detroit years ago. Crucially, the prototypes were all automotive grade.

In this case, Tesla simply wanted to be ahead of the curve. Worked for a while, then the known failure rate of the parts caught up.

Whether or not it was worth it depends on the strategic intent and whether or not that bet paid off. We'd really need more information to make that call. And Tesla is not going to give anyone on this thread access to the strategic and financial information necessary.

Not that I've put much thought into it and not that it really matters in the context of the conversation, but if I was a manufacturer building a concept car I wouldn't bother using automotive grade components. It's not like they're built to drive any kind of serious mileage (if at all).

Most cars STILL have garbage grade(usability wise) ugly looking touchscreen interfaces, i think you over estimate tesla's competition

The companies displaying display screens at any given automotive show, would not be Tesla competitors. They would be the display parts manufacturers. The point was that display parts guys have been trying to up sell auto makers for years. So the larger screens would have, and did, exist in any case. It's just that no one was buying. Too expensive.

But yeah, with or without Tesla, obviously the screens would have existed.

Yes, but this is the point - they stick to ugly looking touchscreens that are guaranteed to work. They could take screens from some tablet for few bucks, but they know that when they sell 100000 of cars and 20% would fail within two years it would cost them a lot to fix within warranty. If they start to fail after warranty, it would be huge impact on their good will and resale value on those cars would be damaged.

Reading between the lines, I think some of the owners who have the problem are really rubbed the wrong way by Tesla's decision to stop replacing broken units.

> The most likely outcome is that they will figure it out, and much earlier than any of their competitors.

Disagree. The most likely outcome is that many folks who paid a lot of money for a car end up with a car with a screen that's flawed in some way. (I own an S that has the yellow box.)

It is also possible Tesla "figures it out" earlier than their competitors; but that's less likely as the former is now a certainty.

I would prefer innovation to be driven by durability and usability standards, rather than huge, bright, addictive LCD touchscreens.

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