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Comment by azhenley | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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

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.

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.

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