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Comment by brmgb | Hacker News Reader

Most definitely and everyone knew Tesla was going to suffer from the manufacturing side of things. They went at it with the wrong attitude while it's by far the hardest part of being a car company pushing large volume.

Where I was wrong is that I thought the market would punish them heavily for that as customers for a car in this price range would care. I totally missed that the segment of rich people with enough disposable income to buy an average electric car as a statement was big enough to be viable. So, well played Tesla I guess.

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> I totally missed that the segment of rich people with enough disposable income to buy an average electric car as a statement was big enough to be viable. So, well played Tesla I guess.

This is pretty dismissive. I'm not sure how many Tesla owners are trying to make a statement, nor are all Tesla owners over the moon with the product. You can see a prior comment I made: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21173756

There is probably much wider variation in Tesla quality than other car manufacturers, as the Model Y stories (detaching roof, hardware store wood trim hack jobs to hold assemblies) suggest. Their lack of respect for "legacy" practices throws the baby out with the bathwater. There's lots of valid criticism for Tesla.

All that being said, if you get a unit without the worst of those issues, you quickly learn to see the bigger picture and realize no competitors have yet built a comparably-capable EV. That is what drives the sales. They are here today.

EVs are not for everybody. But if they fit your automotive use case, when you need a car for transportation duties rather than the kind of pleasure that comes from driving a high-performance combustion-driven vehicle, they are so clearly the future. It's like using an LCD flat-panel monitor with a VGA connection in the early 2000s. Even before they got to the high standards they have now, those early units presaged that LCD monitors were obviously going to make CRTs obsolete. Tesla cars are the automotive equivalent of those LCDs. And it will be great for the consumer when Tesla no longer has the enormous lead that it still enjoys (years away).

> This is pretty dismissive

Well, actually, I found your post to be mostly in agreement with me.

> There's lots of valid criticism for Tesla.

So it could be said they are an average car (in the sense that their quality is neither exceptional nor bad enough to be considered poor).

> EVs are not for everybody. But if they fit your automotive use case, when you need a car for transportation duties rather than the kind of pleasure that comes from driving a high-performance combustion-driven vehicle, they are so clearly the future.

We do agree they are the future, keyword being future. If you buy one today that's what you want to be seen as buying and are ready to suffer the pain points for it. That's what I call making a statement.

> That's what I call making a statement.

Most people would interpret "making a statement" to be a matter of signaling to others. I tried to make clear that people who buy these cars appreciate the benefits to themselves as the ones that drive and experience it, and that it has little-to-nothing to do with signaling to others. Early on in Tesla history, particularly with the Model S, I think you could argue there was a signaling element. Particularly well into in the Model 3 era, I don't think that holds to any major degree.

Alternatively, the car is so much better than the alternatives that small build issues aren't as big of a deal. That's my experience anyway, though I haven't had any major headaches. (It's not much of a statement car anymore, loads of people own them in my city.)

This was sort of how many felt about iPhone at its debut. Ridiculous pricing, can’t cut and paste text.

But the customer satisfaction scores were off the charts. It was the right mix of things. I suspect this is what’s boosting Tesla.

The overall experience is beyond what other companies are striving for.

That’s not quite the same thing. Apple knew how to execute on hardware extremely well, the phone was basically perfect physically. What I mean is it didn’t have gaps on the side or the back falling off or some other issue like that.

Software features, like cut and paste, can be added later. Indeed it was.

But Tesla is getting fundamental build quality issues wrong.

You have the luck of hindsight of the iPhone winning to be able to say that.

We know roof can't be fixed by software update.

>But Tesla is getting fundamental build quality issues wrong.

“Fundamental build quality” must be subjective because it is not getting in the way of orders.

From the sound of the video, the problem seems to be variant, with paint problems one month then fixed the next.

The examples I gave for iPhone are representative of customers overlooking obvious problems.

The iPhone’s EDGE only internet, terrible screen resolution, low battery life.

These were hardware (and sw) based limitations of mass production that customers overlooked and apple handles in later gens.

Terrible screen resolution? It had by far the largest screen resolution, double the size of its competitors. The only common criticisms were EDGE and the high price. Otherwise it was universally acclaimed.

It was not universally acclaimed. Blackberry users were not at all convinced away from hardware keys at the start, and there were no enterprise integrations. Enterprise was hostile to the product on its networks.

You have to look at this from the perspective of Windows mobile users at the time. I.e the Wizard. That is what people who don’t get Tesla are using right now.

I read this and wonder "have you test driven one". The driving experience Tesla offered from just the EV drivetrain alone, not even all the software gadgetry, was so different that anything any ICE luxury car offered that it was immediately apparent.

It was technology. It was cutting edge. The potential was instantly and tangibly apparent.

There was definitely an "early adopter" feel to it as well. But you were hopping onto something fundamentally different that yet another turbocharged BMW with 400HP and leather.

I guess you either drive in one and get that feeling, or, well, you don't.

People looking to spend a lot of money on a car that isn't used are going to look for something that justifies the cost. A lot of people look at BMWs and think that's a waste of money, you can get a used german auto, a cadillac, or similar. The Tesla has instant differentiation.

Sure the big companies are talking a big game about getting into EVs...

People trump up Rivian and Lucid as "they'll show them how its done". Ditto with Porsche, even though I have great faith in their engineers eventually.

With whose battery factories? You could say the same about Lucid, VW, GM, Hummer, Cadillac. VW is at least starting on this, as is the EU, but they are behind.

It's like a small group of knights walking up to an army challenging them to a fight. Sure they may have slightly better armor and weapons, but an army is .. an army, and they get to say "you and what battery factory?"

I used to think that the possibility for solid state batteries would close the gap overnight, but I suspect that steady progress on lithium ion cells will simply match/outpace any headline splashing battery tech.

Tesla still has a big big lead in the battery, drivetrain, and architecture over the new players. The chinese companies are likely the biggest competition over the next 10 years.

Aside from VW, I don't have faith the execs will follow through on what is at least a decade long push. They're all just dabbling, and we'll see what happens when activist investors, earnings misses, stock options lost, and CEO turnover happens.

Many car parts are outsourced. Headlights, seats, airbags etc. I don't see how the batteries could be different. It's not like Tesla itself makes cells that are assembled into batteries in their factories, is it? Even if it does (I honestly don't know, last time I had this discussion about a year ago it had cells made by Panasonic though Panasonic line was located in their factory), Sony, Samsung, LG and aforementioned Panasonic still make these cells and sell to anybody who is willing to buy.

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