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Comment by whalesalad | Hacker News Reader

It’s only a matter of time. These companies are huge, with massive infrastructure, partnerships, supply chain strength, R&D power and wisdom, etc... they also do not want to see Tesla eat their lunch.

Electric vehicles are also not rocket science. A company who has been making vehicles for a century will have a substantial leg up once they get some momentum. They’re far more simple as far as the driveline goes than an ICE powered vehicle would be. No transmission. No oil coolant lines. No engineering the engine and trans to work together. No fuel tank, no fuel lines, no injection system, no fuel pumps. The list goes on.

With an electrified powertrain it’s basically just a motor and juice (I’m over simplifying, electric motors and batteries require cooling as well for instance).

These companies are going to eat Tesla for breakfast as soon as they get caught up.

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There isn’t any evidence of this yet. These sales are in the home turf of Tesla’s bigger three competitors, and these aren’t revenues, they are units. Would you rather sell one $80K car for a $10K profit or four $20k cars with a $1k profit in each?

It’s like saying Apple is in trouble because of $40 Android phones.

This line of thinking happens in a lot of tech companies and it's why these companies eventually die. It's documented in [0] though the book is incredibly hard to read.

The gist is that companies very rarely move downmarket when threatened with competition and instead move upmarket to protect their high margin customers. Over time, the entry level competitors gain more and more features and move up, squeezing the original players.

So you're correct that a $40 Android phone is not a worry to apple, but when those manufacturers start releasing a $300-$500 phone that has most of the features of the iPhone, that's when Apple has to be worried. But by the time they notice, it's too late. If we look at [1] we see that iPhone sales peaked in 2015, and then have been slightly down since then. But it took until 2020 to release a new lower-end phone.

0. https://www.amazon.com/Product-Strategy-High-Technology-Comp... 1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/276306/global-apple-ipho...

Apple is always doomed. So doomed they just released a $399 phone that’s faster than any android device ever made.

It’s not just the device, it’s the system and that includes software.

The one thing you have wrong is that they are not "getting caught up". They have been patiently watching and waiting. In no way have they been caught on the back foot, now scrambling.

Yup, as soon as the "real" auto companies start selling EVs Tesla will be doomed. Any day now, surely...

I think this link seems to suggest that that day is closer than we think...

You’re ignoring Tesla’s software and super charging network, neither of which the legacy automakers seem capable of duplicating.

I thought their software was impressive until I started driving a base model 2020 Forester that autopilots itself on highways. I’m not saying it’s as good as Tesla’s but it surprised me, showing me that no it’s not rocket science either and soon every car will have these features.

Adaptive cruise control has been available on mainstream cars for at least 5 years, and on fancy cars before that.

That is not is what is interesting about Tesla. It's the developer like OTA updates with massive new features. Vs... the Forester gets an infotainment system when you buy it, and likely never gets a change for the life of the car. Compare to a 2 year old model 3 which is getting brand new features monthly.

Ahh interesting. What kinds of features are showing up every month? Often people just like the concept of free features, but I'm curious if they're actually real value adds.

This might be useful: https://www.notateslaapp.com/index

Tesla's Supercharger network is certainly a significant infrastructure investment, at least in the US. But what's so special about their software? The German luxury carmakers certainly have pretty significant assistive driving features and other software-based capabilities. They just don't pretend they are more than they are.

When was the last time a legacy automaker added a new feature to their cars and pushed it out over the air as a free update? Tesla does that about once a month.

Their software is better because they listen to customer feedback and continually improve it. It’s not one massive thing related to autonomy that’s better, it’s the 100 small things that Tesla has been adding over the past three years that when combined make the overall package superior.

I don't know about others, but I actively do not want my car to download ota updates. I'd highly prefer it to be programmed so well that it doesn't need any patches at all and for the controls to stay the same indefinitely. Actually, a touchscreen in a car is already considered a critical design flaw by me. Give me knobs and dial to tune settings, not some flat surface with zero feedback. If VW can create a car that feels like I'm in a cockpit and doesn't require Internet access, it'd be an instant buy from me.

What advantage does Tesla software has which is not achievable by others. I think a lot of those features can be commoditized with something like Android Auto.

If you are talking about "Autopilot", I think a lot of people will have different perceptions on what it is marketed as and what it does.

A lot of the infotainment can be commoditized (and should) by Android Auto and Apple Car Play instead of the various levels of awful put out by the legacy manufacturers but where Tesla shines is the interplay of the actual car hardware and software for non entertainment purposes and it gets better over time. A real world example: they recently pushed an update to include the side cameras when the rear view camera is loaded https://electrek.co/2020/06/18/tesl-software-update-2020-24-...

You can argue that it should have been included from the get go, but at the very least it could be after the fact, so it was.

The example you gave is again, perfect example of something that can be commoditized and I am sure it would be commoditized quite soon.

We already have traditional desktop OSs or even mobile OSs allowing OEMs to plug the hardware they bring.

It would need some willingness on part of individual auto manufacturers to let go of some amount of control, but I think they would see the advantage of it.

Sure, it can be done and I'm all for it, but historical track record hasn't been great here with automakers keeping their systems pretty close to the chest.

Yeah, that hasn't been great. But I think as cars get more "smart" features, it would become expensive for low/mid volume manufacturers to compete against each other, specially to build an ecosystem.

They will probably see the value in it, Tesla might still be at an advantage and able to nail a seamless and predictable experience as Apple was able to do on Macbooks.

I'm hopeful and generally agree with your points, actually. The Tesla value prop is very much the seamless/tight experience, and that has its pros and cons much does Apple vs others. Consumers win when there's both. My overall point is that there is a slice of the market that they've so far successfully cornered and I think they'll retain it as long as they can scale the quality and service. That doesn't mean they'll dominate and leaves plenty of room for the other players who can make the transition.

1. super charging network

2. brand name , a car is still a status symbol, owning a bmw, kia ect is not a social signal.

3. autonomous driving and software

Wait, I must have missed something. Is BMW's image bad? That wouldn't explain them able to survive some of the high price points, they sell cars at.

Depends which BMW :D

In Poland, BMW can mean "expensive luxury sports car", or "Bolid Młodzieży Wiejskiej", a pejorative name that means "Village Youth Vehicle", as a lot of used BMW from specific series were available cheap and with good performance. To the point that road police started stopping cars based on them being specific BMW models.

I think this sort of image, high end car plays like Jaguar, Lexus avoid to an extent. I don't see how Tesla would maintain an edge of luxury over them if they can get good performance in their EVs.

He said social signal, not status symbol.

Both cars say something about how much money you make. It's the other stuff that's different.

Its not its bad, different type of signaling.

BMW = money is king, capitalism, golden toilet, 1990, closed minded to new things.

Tesla = environmentally conscious, "i care" , forward looking, open to trying new things.

Most people in Germany consider BMW and Porsche to be highly prestigious, while Tesla is seen as a wannabe hipster toy. If you consider that most CEOs are 40+ and have driven BMW for 20 years, that kinda makes sense.

> most CEOs are 40+ and have driven BMW

This precisely proves the point i was trying to make, thank you :)

BMW, Mercedes ect represent old school "money is everything" mentality. Porsche is famously a "doubhebag" car

https://www.gq.com/gallery/douche-cars-jamie-lincoln-kitman

Tesla's super charging network is essentially the future of gas stations, and there's no reason to believe that Shell, Chevron, et al don't re-purpose their petrol pumps to become battery superchargers once the demand for ICE falls.

As someone looking to buy an EV in the next few years, I don't see the benefit of the supercharger network. It locks me into a proprietary charger when there seem to be thousands of CCS Combo chargers from Electrify America, EVgo, and others.

I do think there's something to be said for both. Tesla software truly is pretty impressive and it's unheard of for a car to get better over time and supercharger helps alleviate a lot of range anxiety.

That all said, it's a question of whether the legacy players can catch up fast enough before Tesla can work out its affordability AND quality + service issues at scale. The latter should not be slept on as even the worst of the old guard are still far more consistent and IMO a quite serious issue for Tesla.

Tesla's autopilot is basically what all normal German cars already had 5 years ago, but they called it lane and distance assistant.

As for the Superchargers, most people prefer an open standard over vendor lock-in.

> Tesla's autopilot is basically what all normal German cars already had 5 years ago, but they called it lane and distance assistant.

No sir. I've had those two things you mentioned on my mazda, subaru for many years too. But thats not what tesla autopilot is.

Tesla has just 2,000 Supercharger stations for the whole Europe.

BDEW has 5500 publicly accessible stations in Germany and 10000 more planned. All petrol stations in Germany will be required to offer electric vehicle charging points. German government is throwing few billions for subsidies for pubic charging stations. At least 7,000 fast-charging points are planned.

As EVs go mainstream, a charging network will need to be provided on a vastly larger scale than anything Tesla has ever done so far, and it will need to be standardised so all vehicles can use it. Whether or not Tesla's existing charging network provides a useful advantage by then remains to be seen.

The important parts of the software don't seem to be anything special with Tesla so far either. Many other brands have had driver assistance for years too, they just don't slap fancy titles on it and pretend the car will soon be fully autonomous.

If anything, it seems like the biggest real lead Tesla might have right now is in battery development, but again as EVs go mainstream we're going to need to solve that problem on a much larger scale so it remains to be seen whether Tesla's progress to date will provide a decisive advantage.

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