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Comment by nolangerner | Hacker News Reader

"In theory, Tesla shouldn't be worth what it is because the tech behind it is increasingly getting commoditized (though they work hard to stay slightly ahead). But people love Tesla and it's the first choice EV because they've really thought through the UX of a semi-self driving car EV thoroughly".

No need to theorize at this point. Plenty have pointed out how overinflated Teslas value is at this point. It's pretty much cult of personality that is propping them up at this point. Tesla is actually very similar to Apple in that they "pioneered" a new market and that has created an identity of leadership in that market. I'm not sure Tesla is going to be able to keep up as the competition continues to grow rapidly.

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Have you driven Tesla and other comparable EV's?

From my experience, Tesla's tech (I drive a VW) is ahead of their competition pretty handily.

The new Ford Mustang Mach looks competitive, but even that is still at least 9 months away.

The VW id4 EV is sold out, and they are taking pre-orders for the next batch.

Tesla has first mover advantage when it comes to mass market EV's. It's not just cult of personality.

> first mover advantage

Did you mean second? There actually can be a lot of advantage to being the second mover. Nissan had already sold 100000 units of the Leaf between 2010-2014, while Tesla had sold up to that point only 16k cars. Clearly, Tesla wasn't the first mass-market EV. Indeed, it seems obvious in hindsight that Tesla's success owed mainly to ignoring the mass market and selling very expensive cars at first.

People forget the smartphone market before the iPhone came out. There was actually some pretty decent smartphones that looked like they came from the future. I remember dreaming about being able to buy a Nokia N95 with a touchscreen and pen. It actually wasn't that far off from what an iPhone does. From the N95 wiki:

"The N95's main competitors during its lifetime were the LG Prada, Apple's iPhone, Sony Ericsson's W950i and K850. The N95 managed to outsell its rivals. Despite Apple's much-hyped iPhone with its multi-touch technology, thin design and advanced web capabilities, the N95 had several key features against the iPhone, such as its camera with flash, video camera, Bluetooth file sharing, 3G and 3.5G connectivity, GPS, third-party applications and several other features."

Apple saw what everyone else was doing and triangulated something differentiated on what they know Apple users want. They will do the same thing with this car. It is much better to be Apple than to be Tesla at this point if your goal is to ship 100k's of cars. Most of Apple's target market for a car is still driving german cars. Apple has learned everything it didn't already know from Tesla, and can now execute on what it does know best to win. Tesla is a Nokia N95 that has the stock price of an iPhone. Short TSLA, long AAPL.

Well i guess Tesla means a lot of things nowadays:

- Most advanced Technology in a Car at this moment both battery-wise or SW. - People are starting cults around Tesla, specially geeks and nerds. Similar to Apple :) - Tesla means today EV.

Everybody identifies Tesla with the most advanced EV.

You are right, they were probably not the first ones, but the ones easily identifiable as the EV and Car Technology. This is what they have as advantage compared to other EVs.

Yes, that slipped my mind. I was thinking the first mass market EV company.

Which you can consider Nissan to be as well.

If even Ford is able to deliver something close to Tesla, this is big proof that they don't have anything unique to offer.

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