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Comment by danhak | Hacker News Reader

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danhak

> The experience of sitting in a $70k+ Tesla is below that of a Honda Civic.

As someone who has owned two Honda Civics and now owns a Model 3 you are laughably off the mark here.

> Tesla is pretty much done the day BMW and MB and Audi get the hang of the electric thing.

"Netflix is pretty much done the day Blockbuster gets the hang of the online thing."

"Apple is pretty much done the day Nokia gets the hang of the smartphone thing."

It's astounding to me how a community of technologists and entrepreneurs still can't grasp the innovator's dilemma at play here. Tesla's lead is accelerating every year as a new Tesla killer has been perpetually "around the corner." Cadillac ELR, BMW i3, Chevy Bolt, Chevy Volt, Audi E-Tron, Jaguar I-Pace were all supposed to eat Tesla's lunch. Just look at the sales numbers. Not even close.

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It may be off the mark to compare to a Civic, but I've spent some quality time in a Model 3, and the only folks who think it compares favorably to a BMW/Merc/Audi are diehard fans.

Is there a single competitor to the Model 3 on the market yet? They should be doing really good with the lack of competition.

If Model 3 doesn't have a competitor yet, why is anyone worrying about the potential of the competitor to win through fit and finish? When that competitor comes, what is to stop Tesla from releasing Model 3 Mk II with better design??!?!!?!

Why would it have a competitor from any big makers? To them it's still just a niche market.

What cars are they comparing? BMW has i3 and i8, Mercedes doesn't have an electric car yet and Audi has e-tron. The only car you could say is in the same category is the i3 and those are totally different cars.

The i3 is being discontinued in favor of a CUV thing in 2022:

https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1114966_todays-bmw-i3-t...

Mercedes is debuting Real Soon Like Now (I think it's out in Europe as of.. the past few days?) the EQC electric GLC-looking SUV thing. Jag has the i-Pace, which is still uncommon here in the bay area, though I saw quite a few in Norway.

The new Audi e-tron was all over Norway, and I just saw my first 3-4 here in the Bay Area this week. (but they had permanent CA license plates so they must have been out for at least a month or so).

My point was more to the OPs comment that his friends are comparing Tesla 3 to Audi/Mercedes/BMW. I was pointing out that they don't share vehicles in the same category so a bad comparison.

"electric cars" is not the only category a Tesla might fall in.

> Mercedes doesn't have an electric car yet

The Mercedes EQC is here now, maybe not in your region yet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JTew1D5Tk8

The actual sales numbers of BMW and Audi vs. the Model 3 tell a different story.

In the US the BMW 3-series sales fell of a cliff since the Model 3 was announced, and Model 3 Q2 sales in the US are 3,000 shy from beating the BMW 3-Series, Lexus ES, BMW 5-Series, and Mercedes C-Class (those are the #2-#5 in that segment)... combined.

[1] - https://cleantechnica.com/2019/08/10/tesla-model-3-outsold-b...

But compare BMW ICE sales of similarly priced vehicles to Tesla and it's not even close.

BMW and the rest of the big makers have no reason to push electric car sales and increase electric R&D over the more profitable ICE models.

Same goes for the dealers. They are the ones stealing sales and they make their money on service. Which will be less with electrics.

Right now, if you want the best electric car all other factors be damned, you get a Tesla.

But the miniscule amount of sales that Tesla has compared to the large manufacturers indicates that market is still exceedingly small.

What incentive does BMW have to compete with Tesla? At the very best, they build an electric that blows the Tesla out of the water and take 100% of Tesla's sales. That amounts to about one month of their current revenue.

Perhaps when demand for electrics at that price points really takes off, they will be caught flat footed without a competitive product. But that day is yet to come and the full weight of their R&D apparatus and sales force remains to be seen when it comes to electrics.

Same goes for all the other big manufacturers.

Tesla Model 3 outsold BMW 2, 3, 4 and 5 series combined. What BMW that is similarly priced to a Model 3 am I missing? The only BMWs that are still selling well are the SUVs.

I think your narrative is 3 years out of date. BMW is dying at the hands of Tesla in the US right now, along with all the other “premium” carmakers.

When the Model Y starts shipping, I imagine X3 and X5 sales will likewise be hit quite hard.

BMW sells about as many units each month as Tesla sells all year right now. And they have been hitting all time unit sales records as of this year.

https://www.bmwblog.com/2019/04/11/march-2019-best-ever-worl...

That is worldwide. I am talking about the US.

In the US, BMW’s YoY in 2018 for 3 Series was -25%! [1]

Because you know, it makes just a bit more sense to compare them just within the US, where Tesla has had a chance to establish itself somewhat, compared to the 103-year old BMW.

The fact that Tesla sells almost 1/10 as many cars as BMW sells worldwide is actually pretty amazing, considering Tesla is selling purely EVs, all made in a single factory in the US.

When Tesla builds Giga4 in Europe in a couple years, then you’ll see the same effect there too.

There’s a reason BMW just fired their CEO.

[1] - https://www.press.bmwgroup.com/usa/article/attachment/T02893...

Not sure if you realize that the first portion of your comment is precisely the mechanism described in Innovators Dilemma.

The greatest revelation for me was that good data-driven management decisions can cause a company to fail. In other words: good management can equal bad management.

I spend quality time every single day in a Model 3 and the only people that think there's a sport sedan as good as it is in the market right now are diehard fans of the brands you mentioned.

My previous car was a BMW M3 and my Tesla has been a breath of fresh air along any possible imaginabile axis except the ergonomics of the air conditioning system that I'm not fan of.

Every time I take someone for their first ride in the Model 3, it’s the AC controls which wow them the most. Living with it is different, but it’s a great selling feature of what you’re selling is “Why hasn’t anyone else done it that way? - this is the future”

...and this is how we end up with people driving through fire trucks. I haven't sat in the 3, but I did drive Model S and also played with the e-Tron's controls while waiting for an oil change (which ids pretty much the only advantage of an electric car I could possibly think of). Controlsd in both are very "neat". As long as you are sitting on a showroom floor. The very thought of actually trying to live with either while driving makes me pine for my very first car, a rusted through Chevy Citation that I paid $300 for.

Just because it is a good selling point for a certain subset of population that likes new and shiny and does not mind mowing people over in the process does not make it a good thing.

I’d prefer a physical knob too, but with adjusting temp controls, I don’t find myself fiddling with it while underway.

That's certainly a valid approach, but most people (me included) actually want to adjust the climate control while driving, for various reasons.

Really, once I was quite happy with a car that had roll-down windows and no a/c, but when we are talking about a premium-priced car in 2019 expectations are somewhat different.

Car controls are a good use case for voice control (as long as it's guaranteed to be processed locally and recordings are not being sent to the car company).

The Mercedes EQC has voice control, but they need to move to a different triggering phrase. They're using "Mercedes" currently and that has too many false positives, particularly when someone is trying to review the car:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JTew1D5Tk8

I'm not sure, to be really useful in general case it would have to understand a good number of languages (what if you rent a car on vacation abroad and find that you can't control anything unless you learn the local language?), work in noisy conditions, understand accents, and apart from navigation entry (although that usually serves as an exercises in zen and meditation, as you're trying not to put your fist through the dashboard as it tries to navigate you anywhere except where you actually want to go) it is much faster to turn the knob than expressing what you need in spoken word... Makes for a nice marketing video though.

Plus their infrastructure lead is literally gargantuan. Charging stations are everywhere, without them you might as well not have roads they can drive on.

I must be missing something because I'm not sure why this matters when Tesla has made their patents open. Can't someone else make a car that can use a Tesla supercharger? Why wouldn't another manufacturer make their cars compatible with Tesla's charging network, then sell that as a massive feature?

Tesla's network is not open-access, there is authentication involved so that even if you implement the physical standard you can't use their chargers without their consent.

Tesla has indeed offered to share the Supercharger network, with anyone who is also willing to split the cost.

You cannot just plug in and get charge with the right adaptor. You need to be authorized by the billing software to get juice. This happens automatically when you plug in a Tesla to the charger.

I figured there'd be a billing issue to sort out, and that Tesla might even charge a non-Tesla a little more to use their chargers, and maybe other manufacturers really don't like the idea of giving their competition money, but...c'mon. Certainly you could sell a lot more cars if you advertised being able to use Tesla's network, even if you had to pay a small premium to use it.

I believe the offer is any car maker who wants to use it has to pay for half of the whole infrastructure / build out cost for the network.

No way someone can come in and use the network and just pay the cost of electricity, or even a premium on the electricity.

Tesla is going to want someone to share the cost of building it out. Of course since they sell way more EVs by quantity, it would benefit them more than anyone who might come and offer to split the cost. Which is why no one will take them up on it until they can see a way to selling 6 digit quantities of EVs.

> Tesla has indeed offered to share the Supercharger network

Tesla should standardize on CCS like everyone else has and enter into billing agreements with the other charging networks. That's what Electrify America and ChargePoint have done:

https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/electrify-america-chargep...

Yeah...I will not miss their infrastructure at all. If you live in a moderately-populated area (anywhere on the west coast), the stations have been laughable. They're overcrowded and many stalls are VERY OFTEN broken. I may wait up to 30 minutes in line and sometimes up to a quarter of the stalls are either outright broken or trickle-charge. Not to mention the complete lack of a proper queue system leading to disagreements every single time about who was there first, etc. If you own a home, this is probably a non-issue. For the rest of us (which is most of us, at least in California), good luck. FWIW, when I first purchased I was one Tesla of a handful in the entire city (east coast). Moving here, I am one in a handful in every square mile.

I just ditched my Model S after 3 years and I feel great about it. I absolutely won't miss the charging, but I also won't miss the laughably barebones interior, litany of software bugs, or unjustifiably high price tag, either. The driving however, I absolutely will miss, but there's much more to the experience than that with a fully-electric.

Their infrastructure may be laughable when compared to the experience that we've grown accustomed to as people raised with gas stations everywhere. However it _does_actually_exist_. Which isn't exactly something you can say for the offerings of say Nissan or Chevy. I'd also imagine that if your experience with their charging network was that frustrating it makes you an atypical user; as I can only assume the bulk of people drive their commute everyday, and that's about it, maybe pick up the kids, maybe run a few errands, but not running 200+ miles per day. Meaning you get to charge at night.

I'm not surprised about the bugs, the bugs that are in my parents' Priuses (Prii?) are obnoxious to say the least, and Teslas software is many times more complicated. When you say barebones you mean like lack of cup holders or arm rests, etc? Or just the lack of _stuff_, in much the same way a room painted white feels empty?

I believe Nissan Leaf is the still the most sold electric car, more than Tesla Model 3. The Model 3 is catching up though.

The Leaf came out in 2010, and its sales in the USA has been declining since 2014. Model 3 didn't start deliveries until Q3 2017, but didn't really take off until Q2 2018.

Catching up very, very quickly.

https://www.torquenews.com/7893/why-tesla-model-3-outselling...

In the US in Q2 the Leaf sold 3,323 units compared to Tesla Model 3’s 47,000 units.

Over all time Model 3 is at ~225,000 units to Leaf’s ~400,000.

So napkin math says Tesla will catch up by this time next year. I think with production acceleration due to the new China plant, it will be sooner though.

> Tesla's lead is accelerating every year as a new Tesla killer has been perpetually "around the corner."

There won't be a single Tesla killer. It'll be more like a death from a thousand cuts.

Tesla's lead won't last long. Tesla's problem now is that other car companies will release multiple EV models across multiple brands every year from now on. Volkswagen is building VW, Audi, SEAT, Skoda, and Porsche EVs (and their very high end brands will have EVs eventually). Hyundai has a number of nice EVs, Mercedes EVs are rolling out, Ford EVs are on the way, the Honda e is a nice car (although not enough range). Even Toyota has moved up their battery electric timetable, and if Toyota's solid-state battery work pans out they may even end up bringing the best EVs to market.

Netflix IS pretty much done, it is just Disney and Amazon that will do it, not Blockbuster.

Their market cap is down to ~US$132B from a high over US$150B, but the market is definitely not calling them done.

Sure, but that is about half of Disney’s market cap.

And there is still a lot of Disney owned content on Netflix that will presumably dry up soon.

I'm sure the market is uncertain how that will affect viewership. Could hurt them more or less than expected.

I mean Netflix and Apple both face extremely fierce competition, just not from those actual companies you mentioned. Replace Nokia with Samsung and Blockbuster with Amazon and Comcast (Hulu) and you'd make a little more sense.

Making cars efficiently is hard and Tesla is great at powertrain and batteries, two important but specific parts of the process, and awful at the rest. The German companies are incredible at everything else, including reliability and efficiency.

Sure maybe they'll just never be able to catch up in making (or sourcing) batteries and electric motors. Wouldn't bet on it though.

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