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Comment by goodweeds | Hacker News Reader

Tesla produces publicity rather more than cars.

Very well said! Tesla is in the business of marketing their brand and begging for corporate welfare, they only manage to build products as a side-effect.

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In the meantime, Nissan sold more than 20,000 Leafs. That's tiny compared to the 2 million Priuses sold, but it's still 10 times the number of Roadsters out there.

You do realize that they're not at all comparable, right? The Roadster was a luxury sports car (and having ridden in one, it is batshit insane how fast it is), and it's priced in that range. They're hand-built. They were never meant to be a volume car, they were meant to build a brand, which they've done quite successfully.

Now comes the second phase, where Tesla makes a luxury sedan that seats 7 and has the 0-60 times of a 500 horsepower BMW M5. I don't know about you, but I plan on buying one as soon as I can, and I bet a lot of other people do to. I wouldn't buy the Leaf at half the price, because it has an unusable range. Model S doesn't have that problem.

That's true, but my (poorly-made) point was that the Leaf is an actual mass-produced car, delivered to real customers. Creating a niche, hand-made product is in itself hard, but it's the jump to mass production that has killed most new car manufacturers. I hope you are able to buy a Model S in the not-too-distant future, but I wouldn't count on it.

Ah I see, "one's real and one's not real yet". That's fair, only time will tell how the Model S works out in mass production.

And yet their products are the best there are.

By which objective system of measurement do you make this claim? I'm curious.

They're currently the only pure electrics that I know of with a range that will get me to the airport and back without a charge (the Leaf has an EPA tested range of 73 miles). The performance is incomparable. Fit and finish is good. They're expensive, but if we're just talking quality here, I think it can be objectively said that they're the best of that small field.

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