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“The Tesla Model S is our top-scoring car”

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Re: “The Tesla Model S is our top-scoring car”

#171

Post by joezydeco »

mindcrime wrote: post #147
joezydeco wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

Re: “The Tesla Model S is our top-scoring car”

#172

Post by skybrian »

bane wrote: post #8

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 produ…

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.

Re: “The Tesla Model S is our top-scoring car”

#173

Post by mrkurt »

jfb wrote: post #123
freyr wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: “The Tesla Model S is our top-scoring car”

#174

Post by nazgulnarsil »

bane wrote: post #8

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 produ…

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

Re: “The Tesla Model S is our top-scoring car”

#175

Post by jstelly »

jfb wrote: post #154
enraged_camel wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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…

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?

Re: “The Tesla Model S is our top-scoring car”

#177

Post by lostlogin »

thematt wrote: post #159
obviouslygreen wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Cool," perhaps, but not even vaguely innovative. It doesn't change any business models, it doesn't bypass anything or make any real changes , it's just a big iPhone (or, really, an iPod Touch). It hasn't "changed the computing industry." It's introduced a new line of the same products we had before. "Let's make a bigger one" was a really great idea, but it's not really in the same league.

What do you mean "hasn't changed any business models"? It has thrown Microsoft for a complete loop. Microsoft has restructured their product development to combat this erosion. Windows 8, Metro, the App Store, etc. are all direct responses to the iPad shifting people away from Redmond's desktop platform.

These are plenty of business that exist solely be use of the iPad/iPhone market. Accessories and apps. And this is quite apart from those business that have been changed. I have watched a radiologist do a consult with someone using an iPad in a car park to view images. That is a change.

Re: “The Tesla Model S is our top-scoring car”

#178

Post by state »

GFischer wrote: post #131
maratd wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Clayton Christensen at its finest :) http://www.claytonchristensen.com/books/the-innovators-dilem...

My thought exactly.

Re: “The Tesla Model S is our top-scoring car”

#179

Post by lostlogin »

beat wrote: post #113
loceng wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few reasons come to mind. Either they are planning to do something cool, though it's not public yet, or people who have the cool / life changing ideas will go off on their own to do them. The way you keep people like Musk in companies performing is giving them a large portion of ownership of their particular endeavor, so they benefit based on how successful they are - however then they're really just becoming inves…

GM already had this, with the Chevy Volt (a very interesting concept in its own right). But the problem is, despite a highly sensible transition approach from gasoline to electric, it's still a CHEVY. It's built to Chevy construction standards, Chevy aesthetics.

Is the Chevy standard a good or bad thing? I ask this because the cars they sell (or rebadge then sell) in New Zealand aren't really that well built compared to European and Japanese cars.

Re: “The Tesla Model S is our top-scoring car”

#180

Post by lostlogin »

arh68 wrote: post #139
forgottenpaswrd wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

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.
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