[charliemil4]

On the surface, 'user experience' is a good starting point to align Tesla with Apple. However, I look at the underlying product / service being offered to see if their trajectories should strongly correlate, and when analyzing this way they have significant differences in addressing their core product - which means the Apple - Tesla narrative should not be the defacto response.

Here's what I mean: Apple has always been about bringing computing to the masses. What happens with one person and one computer is Transformational (was never done before, changes society), Platformable (random people build on top of your core product: raw computation, frameworks, etc.), and Valuable to the end user (I now can communicate high bitrate, FaceTime, and low bit rate, twitter, messages real-time, all the time).

Placing Tesla in that same bin doesn't necessarily check the boxes. Tesla's product is personal transportation, and when you look at the three categories above, Tesla is not in the Apple echelon. Tansformational: the Model T was the first and we now have a 5 day work week because of it. Platformable: you can't build directly on top of the driving experience, only entertainment purposes. Consolation: Robotaxi's could allow such platformable-like characteristics - however, the robotaxi platform is discounted as it is not mass platformable as having a Mac, learning Swift, then publishing to millions. Valuable: Tesla's value is in 'a faster horse'... except we call it a 'self-driving car'. Transportation time will not significantly decrease just because the car drives itself. Sure, a faster horse would have been really loved because it was faster (i.e. I no longer have the stress of driving), but when it comes down to it... the core value of transportation is A-B.

The iPhone level change to me is coming with Flying Taxis. The platform side is still out - but as far as transformational and valuable - I see no greater impact on the 2020's than these flying machines.

[devtul]

Self-driving cars wouldn't be a faster horse, but a carriage for everyone type deal. At least if we manage to overcome the limitation of needing the driver to be paying attention to the road, even when the car is in auto.

[jfengel]

Self-driving cars have the possibility to be transformational rather than evolutionary.

Self-driving cars mean you can get rid of on-street parking, freeing up a lot of travel lanes. They will speed up driving, since they have better reaction times and can communicate with each other to travel more closely. The time you do spend in a car can be more productive, effectively opening up whole new hours of your life. You can use them to move children around without having to drive them, opening up new educational opportunities. Ultimately tens of thousands of lives per year will be saved: humans are terrible drivers.

I don't really know what it will be like: transformational change is always unpredictable. Our entire physical infrastructure is built around driving, both in the cities and elsewhere, and changing the way we relate to our cars can radically alter the way we construct our lives. Maybe nothing will happen, but it's worth considering that this is a real technology that is getting very close and has enormous potential far beyond the "faster horse".