Comment by forgetfreeman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by forgetfreeman | Hacker News Reader

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You're a smallholding farmer. The last couple of years crops have done well enough you've managed to pay down enough of your debt to the ag supply corp that you've got enough financial wiggle room to finance a new equipment purchase. Are you going to go with the incumbent player with four generations of history in the industry and a network of dealerships across the planet or Bay Area BushelMaster's new offering that's been on the market for 18 months, is advertised largely in Facebook Groups, who's sole dealership is a job trailer behind a carwash in Fresno? Hell, Mahindra makes more tractors than any other manufacturer on the planet and they're just now starting to make inroads into the 20 acre hobby farm, homestead, and landscaping market niches (hearafter referred to as the Bullshit Tractor Market or BTM for short). It'll be another 20 years before you start seeing fleets of Mahindra combines cruising the seas of wheat in the midwest, if ever that day comes.

In this situation the usual solution is for the new entrant to offer much better warranties etc.

Warranties are based on trust. If you warrantee equipment for say 10 years I need to be reasonably sure you'll be in business 10 years from now. And I need to trust that you'll honor the warrantee and not have dome sort of weasel condition.

Or, to put it another way, warrantees offered by new entrants carry precisely zero weight in my purchasing decisions. If you are new, then -expect- you to fail, and that factors into my decision.

Warranties can be outsourced to third parties, or have insurance clauses to avoid such issues.

Warranties aren't worth the paper their printed on when there's nowhere close by to service your equipment. Anyway farmers don't want a warranty they want their equipment to work.

Is the personal vehicle market much different? Tesla seemed to upset all the incumbents, against what look to me to be similar issues.

These two markets are so different that the only properties they share is both items cost money and are made out of roughly the same raw materials (steel, plastic, wiring, etc). Tesla managed to claw their way into the industry through a brilliant marketing campaign that nailed the subset of the (entirely suburban) market that believe an expensive car is a status symbol and new always means better. This line absolutely does not scan in the context of agricultural equipment, where the defining ethic is one of hard work and rugged dependability, both of which have to be proven in action. All the hyper-macho cargo-pants-and-a-tactical-vest advertising in the world isn't going to make a dent in an industry where the only two considerations are price and proven durability. So you've got a chicken-and-the-egg problem. To prove durability and workability you have to have product in the field, but nobody's buying unproven equipment. Put another way: the ag industry doesn't have a cohort of suburbanites with loose cash and a taste for novely to tap into.

…and absolutely not because EVs are superior to ICE cars in many critera?

I didn’t buy my Tesla as a status symbol, I bought it because of the 0-60 time.

Choosing a car based on 0-60 time is basically choosing a status symbol unless you do track/street racing on a weekly basis.

Or maybe they just think its fun.

Yeah, I should have put “because it’s fun to drive without contributing towards global warming” (I live in a hydro-power area) - guilt-free pleasures are hard to come by.

Nah. Here's why: anyone who actually engages the vehicle to it's full capabilities outside of a closed track is going to eat some combination of racing or careless/reckless charges and lose their license for sure, and likely the car as well. They think it sounds fun, think it's fun to tell folks around the watercooler, and putter along at the same speeds as the Toyota Yaris in the lane next to them.

My Tesla Model 3 cut my commute down from 50 minutes to 40 minutes. And I'm not driving any faster, in fact I'm one of the few drivers who do not exceed the legal speed limit.

But the Model 3, with 498 horsepower, lets me overtake lumbering trucks on the narrow, winding, hilly, one-lane-in-each-direction road that makes up my commute. In my previous vehicle I could not overtake safely. With the Model 3 I can be in and out of the opposing land quickly without endangering myself or other motorists.

They are certainly superior in may ways now, none of which was true when Tesla made their debut. There is also the raft of basic build fuckups, gross fitment issues, and bullshit software problems to consider, none of which dissuaded the early adopters required to have the brand hit critical mass and go mainstream. My next vehicle will almost certainly be an EV, and absolutely will not be a Tesla. Thank you for illustrating my point in any case.

Brilliant marketing campaign? I'm pretty sure that Tesla does not advertise. What marketing campaign are you talking about?

And you're proposing customers found out about the company through what? Tarot cards? ESP? Marketing takes many forms.

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