Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Tesla Approach to Distributing and Servicing Cars

teslamotors.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 139 posts

Re: The Tesla Approach to Distributing and Servicing Cars

#41

Post by tocomment »

enraged_camel wrote: post #30
Gring wrote: post #16

"The Product Specialists (...) goal and the sole metric of their success is to have you enjoy the experience of visiting so much that you look forward to returning again." This is not the experience I had. Walked into a Tesla store, said I want to test drive a Roadster. Salesman went into that profiling mode that all car salesmen do constantly and no customer likes, asking me all kinds of questions to find out how mu…

Makes sense. They probably get a lot of people who pretend to be buyers just to be able to test-drive a Tesla. Since such people don't end up buying one (as they cannot afford it), letting them test-drive serves no purpose other than wasting the dealer's time, and setting a $300 fee helps weed them out. Note that most high-end car dealers do this. Another way to think about it is this: if you were a serious buyer, i.…

Actually if the fee is just a filter, they could refund your money if you buy any car in the next say 6 months. That way it's less of an obstacle for potential buyers but still filters out non-buyers.

Re: The Tesla Approach to Distributing and Servicing Cars

#42

Post by wmf »

salimmadjd wrote: post #37
marshallp wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla are the Apple of cars. Elon Musk is the new Steve Jobs. The other car companies will have non-tech retards as ceo's and will always be playing catch-up. Tesla only has to fear techie's like google or apple itself entering the space.

Althiugh agree with the visionary status of Musk. But, your comment speaks to my point directly regarding the differing customer acquisition models. Apple's growth comes from entering an emerging market. Very different than the car industry. The emerging market of the car industry started with another visionary, Henry Ford.

Ah yes. "If smartphones turn out to be the future, people will probably just buy them from existing phone brands that they trust, like Nokia or Motorola." — a lot of people in 2007

Re: The Tesla Approach to Distributing and Servicing Cars

#43

Post by marshallp »

salimmadjd wrote: post #37
marshallp wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla are the Apple of cars. Elon Musk is the new Steve Jobs. The other car companies will have non-tech retards as ceo's and will always be playing catch-up. Tesla only has to fear techie's like google or apple itself entering the space.

Althiugh agree with the visionary status of Musk. But, your comment speaks to my point directly regarding the differing customer acquisition models. Apple's growth comes from entering an emerging market. Very different than the car industry. The emerging market of the car industry started with another visionary, Henry Ford.

Apple didn't actually create completely new products, just polished versions, same as Tesla. The same with market share, they only want a small segment (the only exception to this rule are ipads).

Re: The Tesla Approach to Distributing and Servicing Cars

#44

Post by nandemo »

salimmadjd wrote: post #26

I admire Musk and tesla. However, I see two paths for them and none are good. A - fully-electric cars are still too early and will get crushed by hybrids or more efficient diesel/fossil fuel cars. Tesla becomes irrelevent. B - fully-electric is all the rage, and every brand will have one. Tesla will become the victims of their own success. I'm going to assume many of you are going to disagree with me. Mainly because…

Given that Tesla is a startup, it's a fair bet to say that "huge success" or "bust" are the most likely outcomes.

But regarding point B: many makers already have an electric model: Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Ford. I think Tesla is a cool company, but they didn't invent the concept of the electric car and they don't have a monopoly over it.

I think it's likely that electric cars will gain a bigger share of the market relatively soon (in auto industry terms), even if Tesla doesn't succeed.

Re: The Tesla Approach to Distributing and Servicing Cars

#45

Post by ChuckMcM »

salimmadjd wrote: post #26

I admire Musk and tesla. However, I see two paths for them and none are good. A - fully-electric cars are still too early and will get crushed by hybrids or more efficient diesel/fossil fuel cars. Tesla becomes irrelevent. B - fully-electric is all the rage, and every brand will have one. Tesla will become the victims of their own success. I'm going to assume many of you are going to disagree with me. Mainly because…

What are your thoughts on:

C - full-electric is the rage, every brand has one and Tesla remains the 'premium' brand ?

My thinking is that the new vehicle market is quite large, and Tesla, as an early mover, has a great advantage relative to the other manufacturers. Their disadvantage is that they aren't as well capitalized. Their lack of working capital will kill them if they have to pivot very far from their current path, but otherwise it won't be an issue as long as they can scale production with demand.

Currently, you can't buy anything like a Model S from any of the other brands. Further if they start today it will be 24 months before they can launch something. So Tesla has a couple of years of runway, nearly all to themselves, in this space. (Note if you don't think they bring anything unique, I suggest you get a test drive of a model S and then go to Nissan and drive a Leaf) Tesla sells a 'no compromises' electric car, no compromise on range, no compromise on performance, no compromise on comfort, no compromise on quality. And significantly cheaper to fuel up. So that will sell them a lot of cars to people who are attracted to that stance, and those people's followers will get cars because they are followers.

Now it is an open question as to how many total cars that first batch is. Is it 100k, 250k? 1M? That depends on a lot of things. But if electric cars do take off as mainstream, I expect Tesla will be the 'best' one for a while yet.

Re: The Tesla Approach to Distributing and Servicing Cars

#46

Post by OldSchool »

3825 wrote: post #6
OldSchool wrote: post #3

He certainly presents a calm and thoughtful reply to dealerships, which they will certainly ignore. I can't see how Tesla can expect to afford free supercharger stations forever though. Maybe there are more failures that I'm not aware of, but generally I've noticed that full-size franchise automotive dealerships tend to last forever and are somehow tremendously profitable for their owners despite what looks like a ti…

Do you have to pay that fee even if you self-list on mls? I thought it was only a flat fee if you went that route. (I've never sold a house so this is from stuff I've heard)

I've only ever sold a few properties myself but as I understand it, yes you can discount-list or even flat-fee list a property but the agent that represents the buyer typically still expects to get 3% from you.

It has amazed me that we have been in a technological age for a long time now where buyers can pre-select what they want to see and don't need more than someone to open the door for them at a property, and sellers don't need anything more than a way to get their property on the MLS yet they continue to give up a total of 6% of the sale to an agent.

That 6% amounting to $10K or so on a "median" house in the US seems not incredibly out of range given how much effort along the way results in no sale, but in a major city it can reach $100K or more for the same amount of work. The competition to be a selling agent must be fierce.

Overall it makes local moving relatively costly and can chew up a disproportionate share of any investment gain if that's your angle.

Re: The Tesla Approach to Distributing and Servicing Cars

#47

Post by run4yourlives »

tocomment wrote: post #41
enraged_camel wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense. They probably get a lot of people who pretend to be buyers just to be able to test-drive a Tesla. Since such people don't end up buying one (as they cannot afford it), letting them test-drive serves no purpose other than wasting the dealer's time, and setting a $300 fee helps weed them out. Note that most high-end car dealers do this. Another way to think about it is this: if you were a serious buyer, i.…

Actually if the fee is just a filter, they could refund your money if you buy any car in the next say 6 months. That way it's less of an obstacle for potential buyers but still filters out non-buyers.

That's silly.

If I'm trying to decide whether to buy a Maserati or a Tesla, and you tell me I need to pay you $300 for the Tesla just to test drive it, I can tell you that I'm buying the Maserati, since they've already figured out that I'm a potential buyer.

Tesla is smart to size up the people that walk into their stores so that they don't offend the ones that actually can buy their cars. If they offend non-customers, so be it.

Re: The Tesla Approach to Distributing and Servicing Cars

#48

Post by run4yourlives »

Gring wrote: post #16

"The Product Specialists (...) goal and the sole metric of their success is to have you enjoy the experience of visiting so much that you look forward to returning again." This is not the experience I had. Walked into a Tesla store, said I want to test drive a Roadster. Salesman went into that profiling mode that all car salesmen do constantly and no customer likes, asking me all kinds of questions to find out how mu…

Can you actually afford a Tesla? Honestly?

And if the answer is no, would you want someone you pay good money to spending time with someone that doesn't have the means to actually buy the product instead of a person who does?

Re: The Tesla Approach to Distributing and Servicing Cars

#49

Post by tadfisher »

tocomment wrote: post #41
enraged_camel wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense. They probably get a lot of people who pretend to be buyers just to be able to test-drive a Tesla. Since such people don't end up buying one (as they cannot afford it), letting them test-drive serves no purpose other than wasting the dealer's time, and setting a $300 fee helps weed them out. Note that most high-end car dealers do this. Another way to think about it is this: if you were a serious buyer, i.…

Actually if the fee is just a filter, they could refund your money if you buy any car in the next say 6 months. That way it's less of an obstacle for potential buyers but still filters out non-buyers.

What if you, by some affliction unimaginable, actually don't like the car? Is it worth $300 to determine that?

Re: The Tesla Approach to Distributing and Servicing Cars

#50

Post by aeturnum »

enraged_camel wrote: post #30
Gring wrote: post #16

"The Product Specialists (...) goal and the sole metric of their success is to have you enjoy the experience of visiting so much that you look forward to returning again." This is not the experience I had. Walked into a Tesla store, said I want to test drive a Roadster. Salesman went into that profiling mode that all car salesmen do constantly and no customer likes, asking me all kinds of questions to find out how mu…

Makes sense. They probably get a lot of people who pretend to be buyers just to be able to test-drive a Tesla. Since such people don't end up buying one (as they cannot afford it), letting them test-drive serves no purpose other than wasting the dealer's time, and setting a $300 fee helps weed them out. Note that most high-end car dealers do this. Another way to think about it is this: if you were a serious buyer, i.…

I think this view is misguided. Apple would be foolish to make you prove that you could buy an iPad before letting you play with one, and the same holds true for Tesla. They need to overcome widespread skepticism about purely electric cars, and a large part of that is exposing everyone they can to their cars.

Sure, give preferencial treatment to people who have the money to buy one, but let everyone try them out.

Post reply on HN