Comment by krschultz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by krschultz | Hacker News Reader

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Don't picture a bunch of oil tycoons with monocles sitting in back rooms smoking cigars with Ford execs laughing about how they are going to crush Tesla.

It's much more subtle than that. I grew up around cars. My dad races them as his hobby. We restored a few, and spent plenty of time wrenching on a car together. It was one of the highlights of my childhood. It's still one of the things we often talk about when we see each other. I'm sure it's the reason I got a mechanical engineering degree.

When I think back to those times, a bunch of fragments of memories pop up. The sound a racing motor makes the first time you fire it up. The smell of gasoline vs diesel vs oil vs brake fluid vs transmission fluid. The grease on your hands. Knowing all the components under the hood, how they go together. How to start a cold engine with a flakey carb. How to fix a flooded engine.

There is real nostalgia around cars, and that means gasoline/diesel engines. I can barely enjoy modern cars with their plastic engine fairings and electronic controls, much less an electric car with just batteries and motors. I love building robots, and I'm a professional programmer now, but electric cars just don't excite me from the perspective of working on them. (Driving a Tesla is a different story).

Layer on top of that nostalgia, which I believe most of the people that work in the auto industry have, is the reality of 100+ years of IC engine expertise. If electric cars are the future, how much advantage does Ford have over a startup? Certainly some, but not nearly as much as they do in gasoline engines. Every bit of the drive train is completely different in an electric car. Not only are you throwing out the expertise in engines, but transmissions and differentials as well.

I can imagine that makes their position less defendable.

I can't imagine growing up with cars.

When I think back... I think back to sitting on top of a horse, as we make a journey together. The feel of his hair in your hands as you lean forward. The fun of sitting back while he eats grass. So relaxing and with a sense of bonding.

I mean... who would replace a living breathing horse, who is part of the family, with a smelly machine that breaks?

There is real nostalgia around horses. And phone booths. and Sony Walkman. and CRTs. And... and... and... .. .

People hate change. Just because "cars = gas/diesel" to YOU doesn't mean that a new generation of kids won't break their teeth, and learn to be engineers, with electric or hydrogen or whatever....

You may have intended this to be a rebuttal, but you actually made the same argument as the person you were replying to. Once the nostalgia/sensation surrounding horses were gone, the companies providing transportation had no more incumbent advantage over auto manufacturers.

Likewise, once incumbent car manufacturers can't promote some of the things that people fondly associate with cars, new alternative car companies are better able to put them out of business.

The best point in your comment is that alternative car companies may be able to generate some of that nostalgia early enough to use it against incumbents - I think this is possible and that for some people, they will be happy to trade petroleum good feelings for electric good feelings while petroleum-based cars are still a sizeable part of the market.

The difference is that mass production of cars is a scale game, unlike dealing with horses. Horse-breeding is best done locally, whilst the drivetrain engineering is really NBD when one is swapped out for the other. Tesla famously droped its first powertrains into 3rd part chasis, and they did quite well with it.

The issue is whether or not the "crown jewels" of EVs will be worth so much (ie, via patented features or trade secrets) that this will allow companies to extract rents. The problem with this approach is that rents only come out from high prices--and this is what tesla is doing--and this won't lead to enough revenues to replicate the infrastrucure of the current (behemoth) chassis makers.

So I don't think its quite cut and dry that upstarts will win out (winner take all) in the long run. It seems most likely whoever wins will M&A their way to global scale by integrating into the existing business structure of the global auto industry.

Look at facebook--they are only making money by becoming the next generation of Madison Avenue. They didn't really change the world in that regards, they simply integrated into the existing circulation system of the media-industrial complex.

Madison avenue doesn't care which blinking screed you stare at for four to eight hours a day, they just want to print money.

Similarly, the auto industry couldn't care less about whether or not you drive a clean or petrol motor. Seriously, all they care about is that you take out a loan from them to buy a box of metal that costs 30 to 50k and make your payments on time.

In other words, the business model will not really change.

The issueas about fly-by wire and the inability to work on your car are already here. It costs $700 dollars to change the battery on a BMW, because its locked down by SW. But that is a superficial level of business model change. Upgrades and spare parts will always be a busienesss line, but the core sale will always revolve around ownership of a block of metal or composites that locks you into the need to maintain it.

The more fururistic car companies of tomorrow are likely going to be something like uber or zip car combined with driverless cars and provided on-demand. But until you get to a system that fundamentally changes the distribution of transportation assets and the service model on that scale, the existing players will not really be obsolete.

>I can imagine that makes their position less defendable.

What you've written I agree with, but it's a long way off from the OP's conspiracy. Cars have been around a long time, so the affinity is natural result all that history.

It will change. I'm also a "car guy". I recently entered into four-year lease on a new vehicle, and on the drive home I told my significant other it's probable that this will be the last ICE we ever buy (and perhaps the last car that we actually drive off the lot ourselves). It's funny to think about.

There is real nostalgia around cars, and that means gasoline/diesel engines.

Sure. And as a petrolhead, I will miss IC engines when they go. But it's a long leap from "implicit affection for IC engines" to "strategically presenting a build-to-fail engine technology to discredit alternative fuel".

Speed Racer a documentary, wow.

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