> What is the marketing and hype that tesla is doing? they don't have paid ads.
That is exactly my point, yet their announcements always make it to the tech press, because they are the darling of the tech world.
> Meanwhile, every other legacy car company pays millions a year in paid ads
When was the last time you saw an ad for a Mercedes S-class, Audi A8 or BMW 7-series?
I'm betting never, because those companies don't really advertise their most advanced cars to a mass market. And when they advertise them, they highlight the luxury and sophistication, and shut up about all the tech. So people generally don't know about all the stuff they have, and those cars are loaded.
> Sure, there are some cars with a few things.
I don't think you know what the state of the art is among the other car companies. Mercedes launched automatic lane changes before Tesla did, for example. Audi had stop&go cruise control before Tesla even launched Model S. BMW has had night vision pedestrian detection for years, Teslas don't have that. You can't even get a HUD on any Tesla, yet pretty much every other car brand offers that as an option on some of their models.
> No electric car until this year
That's a bit unfair considering the other car makers haven't really put out any electric cars with the same looks and features as their existing gas cars before now.
> 6 years ahead, some specifics:
1) Yeah, I already read the article that this post was about, not just the HN comments.
2) There are zero specifics in that article, it talks about a single thing, and that is that the core processing unit of Teslas are way ahead of the competition. Cool, but not exactly informative or specific.