Software magic. The same reason Apple is valued more than Nokia in 2008, even though Nokia sold many more phones. Once you have software, you can do magical things like upgrading the car’s capabilities, create an eco system for various apps allowing the car to slowly creep into your life. Imagine someday using your car as a backup battery for your home, now, who wouldn’t want that? Allow refueling at hours of day when electricity is cheaper.
It’s the story we have mostly seen before. Software adds a new dimension to existing solutions and decimates the competitors, because they can’t compete in that dimension.
Yes, this. An example: I remember a few years (?) ago someone complained on Twitter to Elon about people leaving their cars hooked up to super chargers all day (basically just using the super chargers as parking lots). In less then a week (if I remember correctly) a firmware upgrade was out that imposes an idle charge if you leave your car in the Super charger after it's full. I just can't see any other car company being able to deploy these kind of things on that timescale. Perhaps Tesla just happened to have this feature in the pipeline already and just feature flagged it to "on"? Still something other car companies just can't do.
That doesn't sound like something that requires a firmware update to the car. The billing logic should live on the server side for obvious reasons. The supercharger already knows who's plugged in and whether they're drawing charge.
Maybe other companies couldn't even roll out that feature to their chargers in a week. But they could duplicate the effect with, say, one employee and a spreadsheet.
It’s the story we have mostly seen before. Software adds a new dimension to existing solutions and decimates the competitors, because they can’t compete in that dimension.