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Comment by hyperthesis | Hacker News Reader

Edison is famous for his lightbulb, but more significant was his electric power stations and infrastructure (via GE). Similar for Birdseye frozen fish and freezer infrastructure in supermarkets.

Selling some of the cars is one thing; selling fuel to all of the cars is another. Who's richer: car manufacturers or oil companies?

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While it's a good point, I think the electricity/oil comparison breaks down slightly when you remember that, at best, you are probably selling a small minority of the total fuel. Most people charge most of the time at home and buy from their home electricity provider. This will continue to be true probably forever, with fast chargers only providing energy only longer road trips. I don't know what percentage of driving occurs on those kinds of trips, but my guess is "not very much".

Yes, you have the issue with many urban dwellers not having a garage/private parking space in which to install a home charger, but I think that cheap, ubiquitous, lvl 2 chargers are going to become more and more common in apartment parking complexes, office parking lots, parking structures, and more. And these much cheaper, slower chargers are always going to have more competition simply by virtue of not needing a large "network" and therfore having very low entry costs.

Tesla very well might come to completely dominate the lvl 3 fast charging space. But I think that that is always going to remain a pretty small part of EV fuel sales.

Renters might be an interesting case. Though in the long term charging at home will be available for renters, too.

Also home solar...

Fast chargers for long trips is an objection-overcomer, that is important and is used, but daily commute is the main use (as you say). 0 < fast-chargers < oil

Supercharger stations are Tesla’s killer app though. Say what you want about their cars or Elon but no one else comes close to their Supercharger network in both coverage and reliability. It’s one objective reason why you’d pick a Tesla versus another EV.

Now that they’re opening it, it’s a competitive advantage lost. You could argue that it was always a matter of time before everyone else caught up, but this is accelerating the schedule.

Tesla (the company, the stock) seems to be a time bomb of trying to outrun the competition before they catch up. Lately they seem to be squandering the massive lead they had, partially because of Elon’s stupid shenanigans.

Forcing all of their competitors to pay 35% more at their fast charging network and being known as the only viable EV in North America is enough of a benefit still.

Nobody is selling NACS cars with the Tesla connector yet. They will soon but why bother with a cheap imitation of Tesla when you could go with the clear market leader and not do any mental gymnastics?

Seems simple to me

Depends if you see Tesla cars as the best EVs or not, especially if the Supercharger network is no longer exclusive.

I don’t, and I know a lot of other people think likewise. I see this becoming a wider phenomenon as the competition continues to grow. Hence, what I referred to as the “time bomb”.

I say this as someone with a huge number of TSLA shares, albeit someone that wants to dump them sooner rather than later because of reasons like this.

The argument could be made that as they're losing the advantage in the vehicle space, they're transitioning to be the leader in the charging station space, which I think is honestly a wise move on their part

I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad move, per what you say.

If you go by what Elon and fanatical TSLA “uberbulls” say, Tesla is no longer a car company but an AI company that just happens to make cars on the side. So there’s that.

Then it’s a matter of whether you think that’s a worthwhile investment, or just more Elon BS.

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