Musk and Tesla are given far more benefit of the doubt than any one else. Criticism is jumped on and scorned very quickly, and is a karma massacre. As such, I normally do not comment on Tesla threads at all. There seems to be little reason applied, its like saying some one's baby is ugly.
If it were a Microsoft car catching fire, or over stating benefits and what not, I suspect the reaction would be very, very different. Im beginning to see Tesla as the automotive Linux. Wont be long until we have people claiming Tesla cars cure cancer.
This fawning attitude, and unwillingness to allow debate and criticism seriously puts me off Tesla. I mean, even you have tried to suggest that any criticism is not reasoned debate, but oil and automotive negative PR. The criticism cant possibly be reasonable, it simply must be a conspiracy of the oil industry. You even say that the opinion should not be written at all. So much for open society.
All this, IMHO, is a big problem for Tesla. When people are being unrealistically positive and rejecting criticism like its some sort of heresy, Tesla becomes an easy target to shoot at. Especially for its enemies.
Too much "one of us" vibe here as far a Musk is concerned. He is a great bloke, and Im am very much in the positive camp, I've been advocating and keenly following electric cars for years before Musk ever got involved and I am 100% glad that a man like Musk has invested loads of his own money and time in to it, but fans need to be realistic and not so silly about criticism.
Tesla and Musk are not the problem, the fans however are.
I take the opposite viewpoint. 99.9% of startups, tech companies, and subjects on Hacker News can go hang themselves. People comparing Steve Jobs to Elon Musk are, frankly, completely missing the point.
Seriously, this is what baffles me most about Tesla hate. Did everyone forget that our world has had a massive, unsustainable energy crisis for 50 years? Forget climate change for a second, our entire foreign policy since 1973 has been based around securing cheap oil. Every person in our country should be unified in heaping as much praise as humanly possible on Musk because Tesla is literally saving the goddamn world.
Tesla cars do not sure solve the energy problem at all. They don't use significantly less energy than a modern diesel BMW, they just use batteries not oil. The energy crisis we have is more related to how can we produce the energy for the batteries.
70% of oil use is directed for use in transportation. If we can cut down oil use by 70% by switching to fully electric cars, we have no "oil" crisis. I agree that the "energy crisis" is broader in that it also involves climate change, but specifically I find our numerous wars in the middle east more of an immediate concern for US welfare and much more easily addressable (all you have to do is buy a Tesla).
They're around 20%. Increasing that to 50-60% (as you need t consider the inefficiencies of batteries, transportation of electricity, not just the efficiency of the motor itself) won't save the planet. It helps, but what we need is fusion or something like that.
Reducing automotive energy use by a half or two thirds would have an extremely large impact, especially if you consider all of the new autos that will be coming online in India+China. Sure, we still need to switch power generation to cleaner tech as well, but this simplifies the solutions greatly, as power generation will then be concentrated. If we can stop focusing our national attention on trying to secure our oil supplies, we have a better chance at solving the problem as well.
It's only saving the world in that it's a step in the right direction. However, it's not the destination; it's not even the thing that'll get us halfway to the destination.
I think nfm was referring to the media, the established car industry and the financial news industry, rather than a few contributors on Hacker News. I have been asking the same question. Hopefully it won't matter.
Tesla : Model S : Elon Musk :: Apple : iPhone : Steve Jobs
It's arguable that Apple doesn't deserve some of the loyalty that it has obtained, but that rabid fanbase is good for the bottom line. I'm high on Tesla until there is a real quality control crisis or the competitors catch up.
Personally, I just find delicious irony in Musk scrambling to spin fires in his battery-powered vehicles after all the condescending snark he heaped on Boeing...
Correct. They simply caught fire, and there were two potential design flaws in the system. The first was no fire suppression in the compartment with the batteries, only smoke detectors. The second was fire containment, concerns that it would be insufficient (especially paired with the lack of fire suppression systems) to contain a fire.
Compare to the Tesla fires: still no fire suppression baked in; deliberate effort in containing and directing the fire away from passengers; ample notice (so far) to drivers that something is wrong! and that they should pull over.
Also, I'd take a fire in a car over a fire on a plane any day. The car is: cheaper to repair/replace; already on the ground. If a plane has a fire, sure it'll end up on the ground, but depending on where on the aircraft and the effectiveness of detection and suppression systems it may not be a state where people can simply walk away from it.
I think electric cars are great technology as well, but some of us are tired of reading about how a what is essentially a heavily-subsidized, California rich-person's "toy" is the greatest thing to happen to the automotive industry ever.
To me it isn't so much about wanting to see them fail, it's bringing expectations in line. I don't see many articles around here about the work the other car companies are doing in the space.
I think your complaints are pretty well addressed in first few paragraphs of Elon's blog post. The goal of the company from the outset has always been to create an affordable mass-market car, but until they have economies of scale and such, the vehicles are going to be expensive. People aren't excited because Tesla is making ~20k luxury cars a year, they're excited because the Model S is just the beginning.
And if you're upset because the cars are government subsidized, I'd like to point out that the conventional auto industries and oil industries have received more than their fair share of subsidies as well over the years.
>I think your complaints are pretty well addressed in first few paragraphs of Elon's blog post.
Not really. I take everything that Musk says with a grain of salt.
Tesla's goal of making a mass-market car is all well and good, but they are a long way from that. They can't seem to make money on high-margin luxury vehicles, so obtaining the scale to build a lower-margin vehicle isn't exactly a cake-walk. I'd like to see them do it, but how does it happen, financially? I'm not sure.
Again, my point is that this is always framed as Tesla v. the Auto Industry, when in fact the auto industry is also trying to accomplish the same things that Tesla is. And, at least in my opinion, they have a better chance of actually doing it; they have the scale and profits. Yet places like HN (see some other comments) can't imagine these large companies pulling it off. It's absurd.
>I'd like to point out that the conventional auto industries and oil industries have received more than their fair share of subsidies as well over the years.
I don't necessarily agree with those subsidies either. But if you think those subsidies and bailouts are equivalent to giving extremely wealthy people a discount on a luxury vehicle, then I guess we have different ideas about what's "fair".
They can't seem to make money on high-margin luxury vehicles
This is incorrect. They've been profitable since Q1 of this year and their profit margins are continuing to rise, even discounting the ZEV regulatory credits (which have been steadily decreasing for a number of quarters now).
in fact the auto industry is also trying to accomplish the same things that Tesla is
This is debatable. Mainstream auto manufacturers have released plenty of electric cars, but they're all "compromise cars" that seem to shy away from cannibalizing their mainstream car sales. None of them come close to having the range, comfort, or storage space of the Model S.
This is a huge deal. Some people might be happy buying a Nissan Leaf as a secondary commuter car, and they might be willing to put up with the ugly styling, small size, low range, and poor performance. But, unless someone is making a compelling electric car that's actually better than a gasoline car, EVs aren't really going to take off. Right now, Tesla is the only manufacturer that seems to be even trying to pursue this goal, and that's what makes them so unique, interesting, and important.
But if you think those subsidies and bailouts are equivalent to giving extremely wealthy people a discount on a luxury vehicle...
The existing tax credits apply equally to all electric cars, not just luxury vehicles. You get $7,500 back from the federal government regardless of whether you buy a Tesla Model S for 70k or a GM Spark EV for 27k. As a percentage of purchase price, cheaper cars are actually being subsidized more than expensive luxury cars.
Any electric car is a compromise. It's a compromise on range, on refuling time, on flexibility. That's not to say they don't have certain advantages too.
I don't understand your "cannibalizing their mainstream car" argument. Either way they are selling a car.. what's being cannibalized?
There's a lot of good information on this particular phenomenon in the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car". It's a bit dated by now, but still relevant in my opinion.
Car companies make a lot of their profits off of spare part sales for maintenance and repairs. Electric cars have far fewer moving parts, and are generally more reliable, so the traditional profit model breaks down somewhat.
Some have also speculated that the auto companies have historically resisted electric cars because they're in bed with the oil industry, but it's hard to really verify how true that is.
Finally, any corporation with a long established history will generally be resistant to big changes. See, for example, Kodak: it was obvious that the world was going digital, but we had this big established business that was good at making conventional film, and they didn't want to shift away from their strength. They dabbled in digital technologies, but never truly accepted the shift in technology. Of course, years later they went bankrupt, but it took a long time to reach that point, and meanwhile all the executives left with golden parachutes.
A compromise car is one that is worse, on the whole. The Model S is clearly not one of those for people who drive the normal amount in normal sized bursts.
Would you call a BMW 335i hardtop convertible a compromise car because it's not suited to snowy conditions? Cars that are aren't as much fun to drive, are they compromises?
Musk personally rubs some people the wrong way, and he puts himself out there as the only public face of Tesla. Part of it is a perception of arrogance, part of it is how he comes out guns blazing for any perceived slight of his company.
This is the first of his posts that I would describe as clearly aggressive. I found his tone very off-putting and defensive, as if the next paragraph could be "You IDIOTS! You're far more likely to be eaten to death by feral hogs than injured in a Tesla car!"
People aren't desperate to see Tesla fail. It's just that stories about something new are much more interesting than stories about something that everyone's familiar with, and stories about danger tend to be more interesting than stories about safety. These add up to a story about the three Teslas catching on fire, as opposed to stories about all of the gasoline cars catching on fire or stories on Tesla's safety record.
For decades Americans have been told to fear change and the unknown. They've been told things that are different are bad, and the status quo is the way forward. Many decisions are now made out of fear.
