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Comment by ianstallings | Hacker News Reader

Performance is all well and good but the cost of an aston martin is for fit and finish in all aspects. Notice the panel gaps on the Tesla versus the Aston Martin. Notice how the interior looks a little clunky on the Tesla S versus the hand crafted interior on the AM. Car companies spend decades accounting for fit and finish and Aston Martin had major issues with it in the past. Tesla owners know that their cars are essentially still in beta and allow such things. But eventually that needs to change. And I'm sure it will. It just takes time and $.

Don't get me wrong, I believe Tesla is an incredible company and doing something awesome. But there's more to a car than just performance specs.

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Unquantifiable qualia are always the last refuge of arguments like this. I guess a "panel gap" can be measured, but I can't even begin to understand how "clunky" and "hand crafted" are defined (or why they should be in opposition for that matter).

All that stuff is fine, I guess. There will always be luxury markets, and that's where the Rapide is aimed, and I'm sure the purchasers like them just fine.

But that's not where Tesla is aimed. I think there was a Matthew Yglesias post a few days back about exactly this: look at Tesla's stock price. They're looking to be another GM or Toyota or Daimler, not just another spit-and-polish luxury vendor (or Ford subsidiary in this case, I believe).

The real point here is that there's an existing market for performance sedans, performance is something that can be measured objectively, and Tesla's offering competes very well.

Clunky = cheap looking plastics and poor fitted interiors. Hand crafted means, shocker, crafted by hand. Go look at how both are manufactured..

One is a manufacturing technique, the other is an assessment of quality...

As I said above, go check out how Aston Martin builds cars by hand and you'll see the difference. They don't allow imperfections and each engine has the builders name on it. They don't charge $150k a car just because of a luxury badge on the front. That's what I mean by hand crafted.

Here's an example of their level of effort: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH_JaKvqdh4

Is that good enough for you? Or do you still need clarification? Because I can cite 90+ years of history.

I am not doubting that there is a difference, nor am I even doubting that the Aston is of higher quality. I am pointing out that while manufacturing method is objective, quality is not. You are talking about two different things.

Better statements would be "Astons are higher quality than Teslas" (subjective), or "Astons are made by hand and Teslas are not" (objective).

Okay noted. I'll use the better statements next time so you can avoid throwing an exception in your rigid mind.

Almost nothing in any car, including low production supercars, is actually handcrafted. Hand assembled, maybe, but the parts were almost certainly injection molded or CNC cut or what have you.

Wait, you mean the builders don't pour plastics out of their limbs? Thanks for the clarification.

There will always be luxury markets, and that's where the Rapide is aimed

That's the point of your parent's comment. Acknowledging that the two vehicles are designed with different things in mind, and thus are sort of like racing apples and oranges.

The Tesla is aimed, like the Aston, squarely at the male status-obsessed fools who will clamor after such things. Tesla, astonishingly, has convinced people for now that being a niche coach builder entitles it to a market cap in the neighborhood of a real car company. Soon the commodity nature of electric vehicles will be made more clear as large carmakers stamp out models that are identical in the chassis and drive train, but are different only cosmetically. Oh wait, that sounds like the existing global car business, just at a lower energy state. This is where cars are headed. That means bad things for Tesla unless someone is dumb enough to buy them out while they are still sexy and very expensive. For customers it will be awesome, once they figure out all the annoyances that make these cars beyond niche right now. I would rather drive a 991 gt3 to work than one of these things, because I am embarrassed of the strenuous fanboyism at play, and why not just drive any awesome car, like a corvette, or an AMG. Just admit that you are the same as every other base, acquisitive male. You are no better than lawyers or investment bankers. Then you can be free, or at least honest.

It sounds like you don't know much about Tesla's goals. They aren't scared of what you are predicting, they are actively attempting to bring it about. The whole goal is to make a cheap, high quality electric vehicle with good range. First they started with the Roadster to prove the technology. Then they moved to the Model S to work out the kinks in mass production and prove they can produce them at scale. Finally, as stated by Musk in multiple interviews, the goal is to mass produce an electric car for $30k-$40k.

By all indications, what they come up with will be better quality and better featured than the equivalent offering from the traditional auto companies. If they can pull that off, I doubt any investors will end up suffering for it...

They mention that in the video. He says "It isn't meant to compete with a car like the aston to be honest, on any level. We just wanted to show how fast it is in a straight line".

It would have been interesting to see how the model S compared to the Aston Martin around a track. Everyone already knows that electric cars accelerate quickly in a straight line.

It's so hard to judge things like this from a low-res video. You need to be in it and actually drive it to judge.

That being said, the reviewer mentions that the interior and exterior is on the same level as the AM, yet the AM feels dated.

Admittedly my source is Top Gear UK, but every time they review an Aston Martin or a TVR or another hand-built car they complain about the subtly misfitting finish.

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