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Comment by bane | Hacker News Reader

There's something that's been bothering me about this whole thing. Not the Tesla, but the rest of the market. Is that it? Is it that easy? A guy who made his money selling a phonebook and then an online payment processor can read a few books, hire a few people out of the same industry he's disrupting and build a goddamn amazing car (electric or not)?

Why can't the existing industry do this? Why all the mediocre product that's the tail end of pumping billions of dollars into R&D staffed by largely the same folks Tesla has been hiring?

edit to be clear I'm not just talking about electric cars, but cars in general. There's a few Model S's in my area, and they're beautiful.

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> Why all the mediocre product that's the tail end of pumping billions of dollars into R&D staffed by largely the same folks Tesla has been hiring?

In an established firm, existing product lines pay the bills. No company is an island onto itself. Companies have partners, large clients, relationships, etc.

Bottom line? To keep existing product lines healthy, you must pay respect to your loyalties. You start seeing the behavior of purposefully undermining the new product to keep the old alive and kicking. You start using sub-standard parts, just to keep purchasing from the same suppliers. You keep on old hands that actively despise the new way of doing things. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Frequently, starting with a clean slate is a huge competitive advantage. No baggage.

It's easy for anyone to build and sell Linux PCs out of their home. Don't expect Dell or HP to do it, outside of limited-market "test releases".

Plus no autoworkers' union, and no inefficient dealer network.

He's still got an uphill battle on the dealer network thing. North Carolina being the latest problem:

http://insideevs.com/hearing-on-tesla-selling-cars-in-north-...

Sometimes I am embarrassed to be from North Carolina. sigh

For the record, not all of North Carolina is so backwards.

Don't sweat it. It actually has less to do about NC's citizens and a lot more to do with how the auto industry has dug it's claws into the legislatures of every state in the union. Your state isn't the only one in this situation.

FYI this is a good podcast explaining how we got to this point:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/12/171814201/episode-...

The exact same fight is being waged in Texas by the established dealers there.

Here's a little known but closely related fact about Congress: its membership has long contained a disproportionate number of car dealers, which leads to "wins" for America like this: "Last summer...Congress approved a financial reform bill that specifically exempted auto dealers’ financing from regulation."

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2011/04/11/3948/6-car-dealers...

This raises the larger point about car finance in general, which has become the heart and soul of the business. Essentially, the major car companies have become banks with manufacturing wings attached. The interests, skills, and motivations of their senior ranks tend to reflect this non-automotive set of priorities, so it's no wonder that Musk was able to poach serious talent. People who have obsessed about cars their entire lives finally found an employer who wouldn't leave them to die on the vine.

Which brings us back to point #1 about business in general: it's not about what's on the table. It's what's in the chairs.

> Here's a little known but closely related fact about Congress: its membership has long contained a disproportionate number of car dealers, which leads to "wins" for America like this: "Last summer...Congress approved a financial reform bill that specifically exempted auto dealers’ financing from regulation."

I'd never heard that before, but somehow, that Congress is full of used car salesmen is the least surprising fact I've learned in a long time.

The article you linked mentioned that six Representatives either owned or had owned a car dealership. I don't think this qualifies as disproportionate by any stretch. With 435 Representatives, that's about 1.4%. Compare that with Reps (and Senators) who were lawyers.

I personally would rather have a Congressman who had some familiarity with business rather than being gentry for life in Congress.

"I don't think this qualifies as disproportionate by any stretch."

Here are the actual facts:

A) US Population per the 2010 Census (i.e. the survey that determines levels of representation) ~ 308,400,000. B) 1.4% of this population = 4,317,600 (i.e. the number of car dealers that would need to exist for their current level of representation to be proportionate). C) Actual number of car dealers in America < 20,000.

In other words, their level of representation is not only disproportionate, but wildly so. Like, by a factor of 215.

Well, it's more that NC counts car dealers among it's citizens but not Tesla Motors employees, and nobody else particularly cares about the issue.

Ditto. I've pretty much just started telling people I'm actually from Boston. Reading the politics down there just makes me shake my head in shame.

And in Virginia, where they were denied a dealer license despite the investigators recommendation that it was in the public interest, seemingly because of an existing relationship between the DMV head and the dealership association's directors:

https://openwatch.net/i/40/why-did-the-virginia-dmv-deny-tes...

Add to that the ability to set up shop wherever is most convenient: http://elonmusktesla.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/tesla-motors-t...

Clayton Christensen at its finest :)

http://www.claytonchristensen.com/books/the-innovators-dilem...

My thought exactly.

I don't think this really speaks to his point though. It's not as if the Tesla is less expensive or disruptive in any way. It's a superior product in almost every way.

I don't think the innovator's dilemma applies here. I think the OP glosses over a lot of very complicated engineering and the fact the founder also happened to found a God damned space company.

So ... you're saying that Musk has disrupted disruption by turning the model on its head?

He took long-established product. And sold a _less_ capable, _more_ expensive version (the Roadster). And used that to sell a _slightly_ more expensive, but _more_ capable product (Model S). Aiming eventually for a comparably priced product with far better capabilities, but at mass-market marque.

That's actually somewhat like the Apple model, so it's not completely novel. But we're not used to thinking of cars as high-tech products (or at least haven't been for a century or so).

> In an established firm, existing product lines pay the bills.

In other words, the firm already is sitting on top of a machine that prints money. Of course the first instinct shouts, "Don't rock the boat!"

Why can't the existing industry do this?

It's pretty classic "innovator's dilemma" material but a more interesting comparison here is Fisker (probably going out of business) vs Tesla (currently making a small bit of money).

Fisker did exactly what you suggest, they took a bunch of 'off the shelf' components and bolted them together into a nicely shaped car body. They 'designed' an electric car where "car" was the most significant bit and "electric" was the least significant bit. Since existing off the shelf electric gear couldn't get the range they wanted they added a gas powered generator.

Tesla (and I put all of this on Elon) appear to have ripped up history and started from how do we build something you can drive around based on electricity. They seem to have started with what properties do the batteries have to have, what capacity, what weight does that impose etc. They took that very expensive engineering and thinking about power trains and then slapped a Lotus brand body on it to appeal to the elite geek crowd. And they instrumented the hell out of it.

Then they took all of that knowledge and said, ok, given what we know about how this stuff worked, what did and didn't work? Now lets incorporate that into what comes next.

I found that engineering focused direction very appealing, work from zero, develop an expertise, test that understanding, iterate and improve. Now at rev 2.0 they have a much better product than rev 1.0. Their X series should be really something to behold.

Elon also bet big on being able to create an electric drive train with range. Had he started a couple of years earlier he might have missed out by building with Nickel based batteries rather than Lithium based ones. So there is a timing component as well. The larger companies have all put their toes into the water (the EV-1 for example) but hadn't yet committed to jumping. They don't have to commit since they have a working business, building the equivalent to the Roadster or the Model S would have been merely incremental to their business rather than whether they lived or died. So I expect they were waiting for a bit more clarity on this stuff. They always have the option of buying Tesla later and they take no risk in the meantime. Clearly that was on Toyota's mind when they invested.

You can see the same forces at work in SpaceX so it suggests to me it's a management style that Elon expresses.

> Now at rev 2.0 they have a much better product than rev 1.0.

But really, what's amazing to me is that rev 2.0 is better than most cars on the road today which are at rev double digits, having developed in one of the more competitive markets in the world.

I think it really is what your parent said, for any other large existing automotive company, each car is a small piece to their overall offerings. With Tesla, they have a single car that they push extremely hard to perfect, because they need to make this kind of impact to get some remote chance of a stake in the automobile industry.

Basically, rev 2.0 desperately needs to be this good, otherwise no one would pay attention.

I think this is an underlying strength of Elon's success and the success of innovators in general (there were a few pages on this in Salman Khan's The One World Schoolhouse) -- starting from first principles. When you have an old model, it's come about due to whatever the situation in the industry was like at the time, and it's evolved due to past forces acting on the old model. To take a basic idea that seems figured out and "fine" (education, or a car) and get rid of any preexisting notions or ideas of how it should work, and start from first principles and think from the very start how it should be given modern advancements, is a difficult and powerful thing.

It is the investment in existing factories and supply chain. They invest billions into these calculating the returns over long periods of time (think 15 to 30 years). This is also the reason why we are able to afford cars. If we want new, innovative cars every 3 years the manufacturers will have to ensure their ROI over 3 years which means the price tag will go up x10.

Our world view is a little skewed because of our ability to launch software products over a weekend or release a new build every afternoon.

Great answer.

> There's a few Model S's in my area, and they're beautiful.

They're also luxury (the base Model S is twice an Audi S4) and on limited runs (the yearly production of Tesla is the same as AMG. Not Mercedes, the subsidiary which takes standard Mercedes cars and refits them with custom hand-built engines)

I mean I could make the same complaint wondering why the rest of the industry can't be Ferrari (7000 cars/year[0]) or Bugatti, but basic thinking will help me note that the market for that kind of money is sort-of exclusive.

[0] note: Tesla has ~250 more employees than Ferrari, expects to produce ~3 times as many cars in 2013 and has roughly 20% the revenue. The comparison turns out to makes way more sense than between Tesla and Audi or BMW, let alone Tesla and Ford or VW group.

As it happens, a Tesla/Mercedes partnership for a small electric MB is in the works for limited availability in 2014:

http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/27/autos/mercedes-tesla-b-class...

Mercedes-Benz has unveiled a new electric car developed in partnership with California-based Tesla Motors (TSLA). The car is a version of Mercedes' B-class hatchback which has not, until now, been available in the United States.

This car, the 2014 Mercedes B-class Electric Drive, will be available first in the states before reaching other markets, according to Mercedes-Benz. It will go on sale early next year, first in just a few states, but will become more widely available later on.

They're just ramping up mass manufacturing. They have an enormous factory, and they're currently occupying a small corner of it.

They're not hand-building the cars, so I wouldn't compare them to the small run hand-build manufacturers. They're building the company for scale. Hand-building is much easier to ramp up and change, but then you get no economies of scale.

My theory: it all comes down to the maturation of the underlying technology. Tesla has been around for ten years. Why is their mainstream car only coming to market now, after all that time? Part of it is that creating a new car company takes a lot of time, but most of it is that the battery and other technologies have only recently matured enough to make EVs practical. Tesla has been waiting and waiting until this occurred and has a small jump on the other manufacturers. If this is true, I expect other manufacturers to ramp up pretty quickly. Both GM and Nissan both have electric cars that outsell the Model S (at least for now).

Another aspect of the Model S worth mentioning is that EVs are heavily subsidized with a $7.5K federal tax credit a huge pile of cash from California--so Tesla has extra money to apply to the fit and finish of the car vis a vis non-electric luxury cars. In fact, as of last quarter all of Tesla's profits came from selling ZEV credits to other auto manufacturers, not from the actual car itself. Take out the $70M from selling ZEV credits and Tesla's gross margin is only 6%--much less than other luxury manufacturers. In fact they'd be running at a $50M quarterly loss without them. So it's easier to make a great car if you don't have to make as much money at it. If Tesla manages to get their gross margin to 25% without these incentives, however, it will be a different story, and a remarkable feat.

BMW has a full range of electric cars that will start coming to market this year, in particular the small carbon fibre i3 looks particularly interesting:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/car-manufacturers/bmw/10...

You're only focusing on the "electric car" part. By all accounts, the rest of the car is an amazing package, even without the electric motor. I think the question is why was Tesla able to push the Model S so far ahead of the current industry in those other respects?

It's because Tesla makes an extra $7.5K from each car via the federal tax credit and an extra $70M each quarter selling ZEV credits. Without these they would not be profitable. So they have more money to apply to the fit and finish of the car than luxury manufacturers which don't make an electric. It's because Tesla makes an extra $7.5K from each car via the federal tax credit and an extra $70M each quarter selling ZEV credits. Without these they would not be profitable. So they have more money to apply to the fit and finish of the car than luxury manufacturers which don't make an electric. They also benefit from an enormous, low interest DOE loan.

To date Tesla has lost more than billion dollars which has not been recouped; that's roughly -$50K per car sold in 2013 ($1B / 20K). In contrast, BMW only makes a profit of +$5K on each of their 1.5M cars sold yearly.

But a luxury manufacturer like e.g. Audi gets to reuse engineering work from parent VW and sibling Lamborghini to improve their $100k car. Much of the comparative advantage of the Model S is due directly to the engineering differences of building an electric powertrain; they get to make different tradeoffs than BMW does in, say, an M5.

The real nutcutting time will come when an established brand decides to build a high-end electric (the BMW i8, for instance), where they get to combine their much more significant economies of scale with the advantages of an electric drivetrain.

EDIT: The i8 is a plug-in hybrid, actually, so it's really a worst of both worlds sort of deal. The point still stands as made, however.

I wonder how the marginal cost of an ICE compares with the marginal cost of one or two electric motors + regen + batteries + charger, and how those change over time. I suspect the electric drive train isn't cheaper now, but will be cheaper in a few years.

I suspect aside from the batteries, electric drive train is already cheaper. Modern ICE are ridiculously sophisticated and require advanced manufacturing capabilities.

east coaster?

If the other manufacturers opened a plant in california, or bought an existing one like Tesla, wouldn't they also get the same ZEV credits which they could sell or use for themselves?

    > To date Tesla has lost more than billion dollars

Are you including liquid assets, like the California plant, as losses? (not accusing you, I haven't looked at their numbers)

$1B is roughly the GAAP losses for TSLA since they went public.

I think that in order to resell ZEV credits more than 13% of a manufacturer's cars must be electric, which is not true of any other luxury manufacturer.

That doesn't add up with this:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=tsla+earnings

But, that may not be GAAP. Where did you find that total?

You can go to google finance: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ATSLA&fstype=ii...

And then select 'Annual', 'Balance Sheet', and then look at the line item for "Retained Earnings (Accumulated Deficit)"

Or alternatively, from TSLA's 2012 10-K:

"We incurred a net loss of $396.2 million for the year ended December 31, 2012. In addition, we have accumulated net losses of $1,065.6 million from our inception through December 31, 2012. We have had net losses in each quarter since our inception."

Source: Page 31 Here: http://ir.teslamotors.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1193125-13-...

Well then, that's because I was looking at "since going public", since that is what the guy I replied to said. But you and the original poster are right since you are talking about 'since inception'.

Wolfram Alpha is only showing you last year's losses, not the integral over all years.

I went by the average it gives weighted to the time range of the IPO (because the parent said since the IPO). But one-billion is correct if you count before the IPO (which the guy who first brought up the one-billion number was talking about).

"Are you including liquid assets, like the California plant"

Since when is a plant a liquid asset?

I meant to say illiquid =P

Not to mention, I bet the electric drivetrain is much simpler than existing internal combustion engines. Modern gasoline engines are nothing less than engineering marvels; Tesla, on the other hand, probably gets to devote proportionally more money and effort to other aspects of the car.

"You're only focusing on the "electric car" part. By all accounts, the rest of the car is an amazing package, even without the electric motor. I think the question is why was Tesla able to push the Model S so far ahead of the current industry in those other respects?"

This cannot be overstated.

I don't like a lot of the Tesla S design - both interior and exterior. Further, my use case(s) don't necessarily lend themselves perfectly to an electric car.

But the Tesla has a third row with five-point child harness seats built fucking in[1]. This feature alone changes my life. The existing auto industry answer to carseats and children in general ranges from "makes me want to kill myself to insert/remove carseat" to "merely makes me want to kill others".

How much of the rest of a Model S is like this ? Apparently the shocks/suspension are[2].

[1] Optional. [2] http://www.edmunds.com/car-reviews/track-tests/2012-tesla-mo...

It's worth nothing that the only reason they're able to add that feature is because they don't need space for a gas engine and the associated tanks and parts.

I joke about this to myself, but my 1972 VW Type 3 (eg: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1966_Volkswagen_1600_Squar...) actually has a lot of similarities with the Tesla;

  1) [X] no radiator
  2) [X] grill-less front end (see also (1))
  3) [X] smooth underbody
  4) [X] "frunk" (front trunk)
  5) [X] storage in rear, in addition to frunk.

I guess the point is, in some ways, we've been "living in the future" for a long time; it's just that we haven't been marketed-to enough to realize it. Tesla is interesting to me, and I'm not trying to diminish what they've accomplished, but at least some of the little things that "fell out" of the design that people seem to impressed by are 50 years old.

It's just interesting, that's all.

======

Interesting fact: 1968 VW Type 3 is the first volume produced auto to ship electronic fuel injection. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_air-cooled_engine#Ty...)

Give it a few years and a few lawsuits and Tesla will have a solution that makes you want to "kill yourself" as well.

This is a bit like PayPal versus other payment vendors (what an appropriate example!) -- it's easy for other payment vendors to talk big when they're at a small scale or dealing only in a niche, but once they're generalists those ideals tend to fall apart.

Rear-facing seats are illegal in many areas, for one, leading to export issues. The second is that anything dealing with children is a legal nightmare in general, and faces by far the most regulatory scrutiny: Having four young children, I've gone through probably half-a-dozen child-seat recall issues for various relatively minor things. Integrate that in the vehicle and you suddenly have a major corporate liability.

Tesla is an amazing company, but as they grow they will get the layers of protection that every other company eventually gains (e.g. "the most we'll do are some frame-anchored LATCH anchors that we are forced to install by the government...").

It's generous to call the Model S a mainstream car. Low volume, high price, and so on. More accessible than the previous Tesla though.

> Take out the $70M from selling ZEV credits and Tesla's gross margin is only 6%--much less than other luxury manufacturers.

Meh. If they avoid the volatility of other luxury manufacturers that's an accomplishment in and of itself and something that makes them an interesting investment, even if their margins aren't phenomenal.

Who owns Jaguar or Lotus right now? Or Aston Martin, or whoever? These aren't stable companies we're talking about.

1. Complexity

2. Stupidity

3. Money

4. Because the US is too fiercely independent and hardheaded to adopt the principles of this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming

Overall, I think Musk is just a really fucking smart guy. He happened to get a lot of money, and that doesn't usually happen to the smart people; it usually happens to the people who know how to grab at money, which as it turns out is not a remarkable skill and doesn't correlate too highly with future success. Whether you like the guy or not, Elon Musk is a dreamer, and has big ideas, and the capital to realize them. That's a damn rare thing, and we're lucky for it.

If you're one of those people, for pete's sake go do something big. Everyone else is pretty stupid, and nearly everything can be done better.

"Why all the mediocre product that's the tail end of pumping billions of dollars into R&D staffed by largely the same folks Tesla has been hiring?"

Because they have hundreds of billions already invested in factories. That's why.

You want to drive an electric car? Great, this means that the kilometer assembly line making gears, piston and other stuff is now completely useless. The investment goes down the drain.

In R&D department you have 50 something years old specialized in fluids, internal combustion engines and moving parts wear.

How they are going to feel when you remove ALL the internal fluids but refrigeration, remove the combustion engine and minimize moving parts and wear?.

Now you need experts on electric motors, and power electronics. What are you going to do with the old staff?

That is the reason.

So how does the Prius fit into this? How could Toyota have spent any money at all on electric technology when they had billions invested in gasoline combustion? How did GM spend any money on their EV-1 when they were similarly rooted? There is a difference here with Tesla, but what you're saying amounts to a sunk cost fallacy.

Just to play devils advocate, isn't the Prius shares a fair few parts with other Toyota vehicles, so that likely saved a bit of cost/time/complexity.

The classic "Innovator's Dilemma" attempts to address this - the idea here would be that electric cars are disruptive technology, one which otherwise good management practices more or less prevent market encumbents successfully exploiting.

Read the book, I highly recommend it if you're interested by these kinds of questions!

But electric cars aren't a disruptive technology. The only thing that might qualify as disruptive about Tesla is their direct to customer sales model, and I have a hard time seeing how they'll get around the entrenched interests there.

The Model S is by all accounts an excellent car, and I want one, but I am bearish on Tesla the company.

>>But electric cars aren't a disruptive technology.

Of course they are. They work completely differently from ICE cars and even hybrids to solve the same problem (transportation). That's the definition of a disruptive technology.

Not at $100k.

$70k. Plus 3-4 years down the road Tesla aims at the $30k price point with BlueStar. That's definitely becoming, very soon, a disruptive technology.

That's how many disruptive technologies start. Then their price falls until it reaches parity with the old technology, and the choice becomes a no-brainer.

I think you are confused. Disruptive technologies can either start at the bottom of the market, or the top of the market. What makes them disruptive is that they serve the needs of a market segment that is currently not served very well by the incumbents.

Oh, no doubt I'm confused. But what market isn't being served that the Model S can waltz in on? It's an M5 with a linear torque curve that you can't take on long trips.

>>But what market isn't being served that the Model S can waltz in on? It's an M5 with a linear torque curve that you can't take on long trips.

Yeah, except unlike an M5, it is a high-tech and environmentally friendly vehicle.

I think you might be underestimating the technological sophistication of a twin-turbo V8 that develops 550bhp at 7000rpm, in a cabin so quiet that they have to pipe artificial engine noise in -- but set that aside. The Model S doesn't do anything that an M5 can't, save charge from the mains. That's not insignificant, by any stretch, but it also seems to me less like a different class of thing than a serious, big-time but incremental improvement.

I think this is pretty much correct, but Tesla only has to carve out a niche in each market it enters to be successful. They will enter a high volume market soon. Also, the EV feature comes with side benefits of decreased weight and size. For smaller cars this will be a bigger win as comparable gas powered cars have less space to use on passenger satisfaction. So you're missing that in your comparison. How much interior+trunk space does the model S have over the M5?

Tesla being successful and Tesla disrupting the car industry are two different things.

I'm not underestimating the technology used in the M5. If anything, though, the M5's technology is the one that I would describe as "incremental." They took an internal combustion engine, the mechanics of which have been well-understood for over a century now, and improved it incrementally until it became a twin-turbo V8 that has a ton of horsepower.

Contrast that to the Tesla, which has been engineered from the ground up to use batteries to power it. The car is a technological marvel, even compared to cars like the M5. And this translates to a driving experience that is different enough from ICE cars* that it makes it a disruptive tech.

*instant acceleration, no engine noise, real-time graphical feedback about the car's systems, etc.

Batteries and electric motors predate ICE. How is the Tesla not incremental?

Wrong. By that logic, you wouldn't have considered cell phones as disruptive because they initially cost around $9,000 (inflation adjusted). The same for PCs, and pretty much any disruptive technology.

That's one of the central points in the aforementioned book Innovator's Dilemma. Disruptive technologies often start out as expensive products that only attract a small segment of early adopters. This leads established players to ignore them. But new technology often holds greater potential for improvement (easy gains in existing technology have already been tapped). With time, cost is reduced while performance is increased, and it wins over the market.

Tesla may or may not end up being disruptive. But price certainly doesn't rule it out.

Yeah, the $100k is a red herring. The issue is not how much it costs, but what it does, and I don't see the Model S as doing anything that incumbents already don't.

The more interesting part of the Tesla is how it changes maintenance habits for owners. I don't know the full scope of what normal maintenance is like, but it seems like there's a lot less to think about.

If you consider the change in routine fueling habits, too, that's pretty amazing. Plugging in at night vs weekly trips to a gas station is a big deal.

Yeah, the $100k is a red herring. The issue is not how much it costs, but what it does, and I don't see the Model S as doing anything that incumbents already don't.

You don't skate toward the puck, you skate where the puck is going. This kind of thinking is why, for example, Toyota was able to build the Prius and GM wasn't.

Japanese manufacturers started earlier, building up the necessary experience, technology, and culture at a time when nobody could sell hybrids without heavy subsidies. They took losses for years, learned the hard lessons early, and kept the disasters small. Then, when the market was finally ready, they were, too.

That's what Tesla is doing... but despite countless historical examples of market disruption, the incumbents will react with great surprise when they get their asses kicked. Today the car costs $100K. Tomorrow they will know how to build one that costs $10K.

Disruptive technologies serve customers that are unprofitable ornindesirable for incumbents to serve. Tesla is a direct competitor to luxury sedans, and is beating them at their own game.

A disruptive electric car would be if a golf cart maker made a $7500 car with a top speed of 60mph and a range of 50 miles. No current car customer would want that, but people that couldn't afford a new reliable car, or teenagers whose parents only sort-of trusted them, etc would love to buy it.

Of course they are disruptive. They achieve the same capability as an internal combustion engine, but they do it in a different way.

ICE automakers can't retool their supply chains overnight (or even over several years) to make an equivelent product.

How are they disruptive? They achieve identical (performance wise, superior) capability with reduced maintenance and reduced fuel cost due to electricity being cheaper than gasoline.

In the short term, the increased cost makes them disruptive only in the high-end sedan market. As the production scales up, this will move into the lower-tier markets. I think you are intelligent enough to get this.

They're not competing against non-consumption. Tesla may well end up successful, and an electric car company could be disruptive, but I don't see their product strategy as disruptive. Sales, however, is a different kettle of fish, and I expect it to be what brings Tesla down. Car dealers are way, way, way too powerful for a boutique to take on. Look at how much was clawed back from GM by their dealer network when they were trying to kill their terrible brands.

Then, all Tesla would have to do would be to sell in Europe. Car dealerships are a lot less powerful, and the market is not regulated like it is in the States.

I believe they are/will soon be selling in the UK.

Considering that electric cars were held up in Christensen's books as an example of a disruptive technology that would disrupt a major market in coming decades, they qualify.

The definition of a disruptive technology is one that starts off objectively inferior but which, on projected technology trends, will meet the market need at some future date. The existing market can recognize these facts well in advance, but when the time comes to switch technologies finds upstart incumbents using the new technology with a cost structure the established companies cannot match.

Electric cars qualify because they do not at the same price have the same range, acceleration, or refuel time as gasoline cars. But all three aspects are improving exponentially over time. On current trends, electric cars will be comparable to or better than gasoline cars on all three metrics within 20 years.

What Elon has done is realized that the cost difference between building a top end car and a bottom end car is not that great, and at the price of a top end car he can deliver equivalent to better acceleration and range, with recharge time that is acceptable to many. This is very unusual - normally the upstarts in a disruptive market start at the bottom of the market and move up. (Indeed that was the pattern that Christensen predicted for electric cars.) But the mechanics work the same way. By the time Tesla can deliver a mass market car at a mass market price, the incumbents won't have the technology or business structure to deliver a competitive car at a competitive price.

For all of the reasons why existing companies will not be able to modify their technology and business structure to what is needed to compete with Tesla, I highly recommend Clayton's followup book, The Innovator's Solution.

Nice post. I can see the argument.

This is well put. People have rightly complained about imprecise use of the term "disruptive" -- this term does not mean "any company that has novel products compared to incumbents". You've used the more precise meaning of the term.

Maybe I'm just hung up on a definitional thing here. I was using "disruptive" in the sense of a market entrant picking up non-consumption and solving a problem that the incumbents are rationally unwilling to address. I don't see Tesla doing this. I see them as making a superior version of what is already for sale.

My other mistake was in saying "electric car" and not "Tesla's electric cars". Thanks to all for the interesting discussion.

PS: I still want one.

PPS: I'm still pretty sure that trying to get to scale without a dealer network is what's going to break Tesla's back. Never underestimate the power of the local car dealer.

What about gas stations and oil infrastructure? Why fill up at a store when you do it over night at home? Also, Service stations will be disrupted. Electric cars require much less maintenance, no oil changes, timing belts, or transmissions.

Those things alone have a hell of a broad impact on American life.

There's something to be said about a driven leader pursuing a vision. The other good example would be Apple + Steve Jobs.

For example, I know that with Ford Motor Company, as an example, the Ford family has a heavy hand in the top-level management (i.e. previous CEOs have been kicked out 'unofficially' because they didn't follow what the Ford family wanted or didn't live up to their expectations). That kind of stuff puts a drag on innovation.

Agree re: Apple + Jobs

It's interesting that you bring up Ford. Of the big American auto companies, the only ones who have been putting out product I'm not just remotely interested in, but actually interested in, is Ford.

IMHO, decent looking product, good value, mileage ratings look good, interior design is decent, etc.

I agree. The new Fords are nice products. Not to mention, they're the 1 out of the big 3 that didn't take bailout money.

I agree, and there's another interesting parallel: Ford has their own version of Jony Ive in J Mays. I've often wondered why GM doesn't back a tractor-trailer full of money in Mays's driveway to switch sides; in my opinion, GM never found the magic again after Harley Earl died.

Henry Ford almost destroyed the Ford Motor Company because he believed the Model T to not need improvement. So the Ford family doing things that don't benefit the company has some history :).

They have the official power to back that up, since the Ford family holds stock with a 10x voting preference. It looks like they had about half of the votes at the shareholder meeting this year. There was a shareholder resolution to abolish that this year that failed with something like 66% of the voting shares against it.

You ought to watch "Revenge of the Electric Car" (it was available on Netflix streaming last I checked). Even for a documentary that's as ra-ra about EVs as it is, it shows how much blood, sweat and tears Musk has gone through just to get this far. It's been no cakewalk.

A small part of it is right place at the right time. (California, 21st century, oligopoly in auto industry, government loans)

Part of it is being a well-known billionaire and engineer who partners with the right people to get the job done.

Part of it was determination and long-nights in the office.

Part of it was being able to avoid the red-tape (and stakeholder interests) that the market leaders have in their companies.

Tesla, SpaceX and SolarCity would make good case studies about how to take a finite (but large) amount of capital and develop it into companies that can change the world.

> Why can't the existing industry do this

They are, but at a snail's pace. The Mercedes SLS Electric Drive came out a few months ago, I believe, and it's a work of engineering and art.

But Ford isn't Mercedes, and they can't afford to switch up their assembly processes because then it would drive up the prices of the cars they sell, which defeats the point of Ford -- affordable, reliable transportation. Remove the affordable, because the cost of manufacture goes up immensely, and the reliability goes down. Electric automobiles are still experimental technology, albeit very mature experimental technology. Imagine them as Debian testing installs that are very stable, but still aren't as stable as Debian stable installs (the gasoline-powered vehicles).

It will take time, but it will also take game-changers like Tesla for electric cars to go mainstream.

They are stable. They are just not practical.

In the post above:

> Imagine them as Debian testing installs that are very stable

First of all, Tesla was not created by Musk alone. He owns a large portion of the company, but he had co-founders with more experience in the automobile industry.

Second of all, there's a reason that Tesla started with a high-end sports car and that's because bringing a sports car to market is easier than bringing an economy or mid-priced sedan. Most mass-market cars have small (or even negative) profit margins. In order to make financial sense, the development costs need to be spread over a large production run, preferably world-wide. The size of the big auto companies is so that they can take advantage of economies of scale to make a cost-competitive car. Building decent cars at a competitive price is a different market than the one Tesla is engaged in.

> Why can't the existing industry do this? Why all the mediocre product that's the tail end of pumping billions of dollars into R&D staffed by largely the same folks Tesla has been hiring?

Innovator's dilemma: at which point it's OK for a new product to cannibalize market of your established products? Think iPhone vs. iPod.

In a large enterprise, it also is matter of inter-departamental power struggles.

Don't they cannibalize themselves every year then by coming out with the same model, year after year? I think the latter point may hold some sway, but I disagree with your first.

Every car company has been chasing Lexus the past 10 years in this price range and they could have done something similar.

The same model year after year doesn't involve retooling billions in their current factories.

The issue here is that if they put all of these features into a luxury car, the $100K price-tag would prevent it from cannibalizing a lot of their other product lines.

You haven't worked for an enterprise software firm, have you? ;-)

First, he has a degree in physics. He didn't just read a few books, he's a very smart guy.

Second, Tesla suffered quarterly losses for their first 10 years of its existence. It wasn't "that easy". It was a long struggle.

It is that easy, and also that difficult.

Two bicycle mechanics in a small town game us the airplane, but there were a lot of smart people that tried to do just that before them and failed.

It's easy because we only talk about the ones that had everything go right for them.

Right. Tesla going bankrupt would have been the least surprising thing to ever happen. This is news exactly because it is unexpected.

I would also suggest that, like the Wright brothers, Tesla had no choice but to make a number of long term focused decisions because doing anything else would obviously fail.

There are a lot of reasons, as other commenters have pointed out, including all the existing capital that would have to be retooled or scraped.

However, I don't think you can overlook the damage the bailouts did. The Chrystler bailout in 1980 and the more recent GM bailout preserved the existing Detroit power structure. All of that talented labor pool and capital that would have been set free via liquidation instead was allowed to stay together. These companies didn't innovate because they didn't have to.

I'm not saying that I agree with bailing out car companies, nor the 1980 bailout particularly, but the notion of "setting free" talented labor pool is a little absurd in the case of the 2008 financial meltdown. It wasn't GMs fault that the entire financial sector that customers require to purchase their products was detonated by AAA rated products that were not at all safe. It was the government's fault for not regulating the banks, as well as the rating firms for not evaluating them.

The engineers would have been let go into a horrifically bad labor market where demand for mechanical engineers is zero due to expensive and unavailable credit.

>Why can't the existing industry do this?

It's like any other business that's been extremely successful for so long. It's very difficult to change course unless you are built that way.

We may be talking about electric cars but one of the best things that Tesla has done compared to everyone else is making the interior joyful.

I don't think we've even seen everything of what Tesla can do yet. If they are really interested in giving away refueling for free then that can that speed up the transition away from oil.

Why do all disruptive companies end up making much better products than the incumbents, changing the game, and revolutionizing the market?

Because big incumbents have little interest in changing anything. They're happy selling the same thing, slightly improved year after year, decade after decade, and only myopically competing against their "direct competitors" (i.e. all the other companies cloning each other's products).

You need new thinking, new ways of doing things and new business models to change the game and the market - something the incumbents have very little interest in pursuing.

Also, who said it was easy? You should watch some Elon Musk documentaries, to see how many times he was close to bankruptcy, not just of the business, but personal, too - all while running a rocket company, too. He might make it look easy, but it certainly wasn't, and I'm sure most still believe he'll never beat established car companies like GM and Ford (I'm quite certain he will, and make Tesla the "Apple" of the car industry).

Don't forget the ability to Dock a module with the freaking ISS.

It's pretty dumb that upstarts have such large advantages against incumbents merely because incumbents choose not to disrupt their legacies.

You see the same thing in airlines. You'd think there'd be little harder than starting an airline and yet southwest, JetBlue and virgin come in and have great success.

Virgin America is certainly not having great success.

Here's but one data point, albeit, a big one: Airline Quality Rating, the premier statistical study of major airline performance in the United States, ranked it #1 in 2012.

And yet Virgin America still can't turn a profit.

Southwest was incredibly successful and disruptive to the airline industry (to the point where today's legacy carriers look much more like Southwest than like the flagship carriers of the 70s and 80s). Virgin America has yet to do anything that significant, and there's a good chance it never will.

Well, it turned a profit it's most recently reported quarter and has indicated expectations for a profitable 2013. It arguably is defining the customer experience for low/mid-cost airline travel.

Saturn was an attempt to do something similar--though less ambitious. It worked for awhile, but ended up subsumed by GM.

The Saturn started really strong IIR, but by the end the product just wasn't there.

Saturn died because of GM/UAW internal politics.

History is littered with failed auto companies, so no, it's not that easy. Tesla very nearly didn't make it too (IIRC Musk had to sink a lot of personal money into it to keep it afloat).

For the very same reasons why a start up can do things so quickly, and a big company can't.

Most of the big companies you see out there car makers or otherwise are only at their best good maintaining status quo and doing the incremental revenue push. Reasons, everyone knows already: Layers and Layers of hopelessly useless middle management, Politics, Bureaucracy- Your usual large company BS.

There is total lack of urgency, there is no sense of higher purpose. No clear vision, goal or even a path many big companies want to take. Its all about fixing the most immediate short term things which prevent them dieing, and maintain the stock prices to a acceptable value. The management at all levels is simply designing most ingenious ways to take back big checks while sleeping on their jobs. And then blame the actual workers for all their company problems.

No wonder small unknown start ups with a few folks severely underfunded and under clocked for resources screw these companies left, right and center. And not just that, also in ways these large companies can't even defend themselves.

Tesla had 10 years of losses. I wouldn't qualify the current Model S's minor financial success as 'easy'.

I think Musk makes a lot of things look easy but I'm not so sure they are. Here's an example where it was not easy and ended in failure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Tucker_Sedan

A more modern example of failure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptera_Motors

But examples like Tesla and Microsoft and Google and Facebook and so on are all testaments to the power of startups. It's quite possible to disrupt large businesses (and become one) with a small foundation, I just wouldn't call it easy. I think Musk himself has said on occasion that Tesla has been very close to failure at least a few times.

Don't forget he had his own money to put into it and the confidence / belief he could do it. Try finding someone to give you enough capital to start a big holistic undertaking as this ... I don't think it'll happen.

He also built a space ship.

True. Building cars isn't rocket science : D

That's not fair to Musk. Besides all the comments people have already made about Innovator's Dilemma, by this logic, you could also say about SpaceX:

Is it that easy to start a space company?

Because being excellent doesn't come easy? Elon Musk is not just 'some guy' - At Tesla he's "Head of Product Design", not just some businessman who hired a few engineers.

I think that's fair. Do you think it's largely because the guy who runs the company is, Steve Jobs like, making the product development decisions?

Tesla hit the market with very fortuitous timing. "Green" is very trendy right now, and electric cars are seen as being "green" (though if you consider complete manufacturing impact from sourcing the raw materials, I'm not sure I'm convinced). And in most parts of the USA, a Tesla is a coal-powered car.

Is it really that good or does it just have a huge benefit because its electric ? As a car, i dont believe its better than a similar specced 5 Series BMW or E class Merc. Yes its electric and has amazing performance, but it will also not take you very far which imo is a big issue for a GT class car.

As with most projects, there are a large number of people involved, but only one in the news. I believe Musk started out just funding the startup and got more involved later. Much of the impact comes from attracting some of the best people in the industry by heavily promoting an exciting goal.

I can't really agree with you that every other car in this price range (a huge $90k for the performance edition) is mediocre. There are a lot of simply amazing cars available if you are willing to spend that kind of money on one. Hell, there are amazing cars available for way less than that.

"Why can't the existing industry do this?"

Because they can make massive profits with the way things are now. The existing industry is the last place you should be looking for change. Their job is to get a position and embed themselves in that position, not innovate.

It's probably a bit like Apple under Steve Jobs. They have one guy at the top who gets to say "no" a lot and is a real good "customer" yardstick.

Other car companies design most cars by committee and focus group.

A multi-billion dollar bet is easy to justify in hindsight.

Step 1: Have a fortune

Step 2: Take fortune, hire people to build your vision

Step 3: Possibly profit.

There is a lot of money in prolonging the status quo.

Why can't the existing industry do this? Why all the mediocre product that's the tail end of pumping billions of dollars into R&D staffed by largely the same folks Tesla has been hiring?

The car being reviewed is $90,000. Are competitively priced vehicles really "mediocre"?

The Tesla was not built independently. Most of its components come from the auto industry. Most of its innovations are auto-industry innovations. When you make a $90K car, you have the capacity of really optimizing the entirety of it.

"Most of its components come from the auto industry" is incorrect. Tesla makes most of its components from scratch.

Aside from the many vendors that Tesla engages, do you really thing the in-house components were invented "from scratch"? Of course they weren't. Like every other automaker, they look at what everyone else is doing and individualize. Outside of being electric, there is nothing about the Tesla that is truly revolutionary -- most of its components are minor variations on what everyone else is doing.

Probably. from the video:

"This car performs better than anything we've ever tested before. Let me repeat that: not just the best electric car, but the best car. It does just about everything really really well."

They specifically state that their love of the vehicle is because it's an electric car -- that side effects of being an electric car yield a result that they enjoy (e.g. low battery packs helping weight distribution, etc). Does that really make every other car "mediocre"?

If electric cars allow producing things that are so much better, why haven't we seen them from other car companies? What's that R&D going to?

In general, I got the feeling that "mediocre" was referring to all the shitty interfaces on cars, and general lack of polish that Tesla seems to be doing correctly. This is something that car companies could / should be doing for minimal effort since they employ so many and spend so much money, but they're not.

Again, this car is $90,000, which is a market that the major automakers aren't traditionally interested in (aside from very small-run flagship vehicles). I would expect the Tesla to be very polished at that price point.

You hear similar things for their other cars (still high-end though, yes) - basically everything they've demoed has had reviews saying "wow" to the electric, and "even more wow" to the execution of everything else. Why is Tesla doing so well, with the same people, unless the existing industry has been lazy?

That statement is a far cry from saying that every other car in this price range is mediocre. Generally, $90k cars are pretty great. The Model S might just be slightly better due to, say, the battery pack helping weight distribution.

This is also just one review. It's not like this is suddenly the world's universal judgment of the Model S.

I tried to avoid going there, but there's there is the issue that Consumer Reports have generally terrible subjective reviews.

They're great at objectively layout basic facts. Poor at subjective measures.

Worse, over the past few years they've become rather attention crazed, so it's an endless sea of "iPhone not recommended"-type attention eliciting narratives.

Execution is hard. Remember Fisker?

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