[mattbrewsbytes]

Say you worked in a software development organization that was dysfunctional, shipped updates 3-4 times a year and had lots of infighting/political battles between teams. A vendor came by talking about a new development process with a cool tool touting amazing features - do you think buying into this process plus tool is going to solve your organizational problems?

Is tech the right tool to attempt solving societal problems?

If Tesla's goal was to have an impact on climate change they should allow other car companies to purchase their batteries and motors to build from. Or actually build an economical car, sub $25k, no self-driving or fancy features, no performance mode, etc. Just a working, fully electric car that any working-class person could buy, globally. That would have much more impact than building luxury electric vehicles.

[GeertB]

Their goal is absolutely to drive down cost. Right now they're battery-constrained, so it would not make sense to sell them to third parties. If Tesla can only sell a given number of cars, it makes financial sense to sell them at a higher price. The extra revenue serves to build more factories and grow faster. As production keeps scaling, average selling prices will keep going down. If they'd attempted to start with a $25K car, they'd producing no cars today.

[cvhashim]

I view them as the iPhone of cars right now. And thats by design. Maybe if they take away all the bells and whistles and just ship out a barebones electric car for regular people, it might get mass adoption.

[beisner]

Tech alone CAN be a solution to large social problems, but typically not directly. Instead, it has to make some socially-“good” effect the inevitable consequence of making something else cheaper/more efficient.

Renewable tech (ie solar, wind) is an excellent example of this phenomenon, where we are finally getting to the point where you don’t need to appeal to people’s morals/values to get their energy companies to use renewables - they’re now simply cheaper in a lot of regions! Because tech improved in the right direction, greed and economic efficiency have become much more aligned with reduced environmental impact.

So the way I like to think about problems is this: what technology, if it existed, would solve this problem even when people/societies act entirely in their own self-interest (given how many world economies typically function)?

Morality is a luxury few feel they can afford, so make the moral choice cheaper.

[WhompingWindows]

Well, Tesla has done a bit of work with other automakers, but it's probably not in their shareholders' best interest to give away their huge lead in BEV tech.

So, why doesn't Tesla build that cheaper, smaller, lower-range car? It's probably because the profits in it are much smaller, and they need profits to justify their insane valuation. Every quarterly report on TSLA is sliced apart by thousands of analysts, is it in their best interest to make less profit and do slightly more good by electrifying slightly more miles? What if they went bankrupt or lost on a bunch of funding due to this strategy, and then BEVs would be set back a decade?

I'd buy the modest car myself, yes, but I don't think that it's the most financially sound way to proceed...their strategy of starting at the high-end, low-volume side seems to have worked well, so that's what they're sticking with. FWIW, I think the Model 3 is already even on costs with the plurality of new vehicle purchases in America, which with options often range from 30-50k depending on the make.

[afarrell]

> do you think buying into this process plus tool is going to solve your organizational problems?

No, but broad agreement about what people value and visible signs that people are willing to spend resources on that would.

Electric cars are sexy now and people will spend money on them.

If this conversation is about organisational/behavioral change, then Tesla did create inexpensive electric vehicles. The fact that those vehicles are being designed, manufactured, and sold by totally separate companies is an implementation detail -- An inescapable result of the fact that lower cost requires larger scale and greater expertise with larger scale.

https://www.edmunds.com/electric-car/articles/cheapest-elect...

> To fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme excellence. Supreme excellence consists in achieving the continuation of our policy with other means -- Sun von Clauzwitz.

[tikhonj]

I think the answer is that technology absolutely can address social issues, it's just less direct than people might think.

One simple example: new technology can drastically lower the barrier to do things which inevitably democratizes them. Then teams don't have to rely on specialists to accomplish that task and the overhead of internal politics/poor communication/etc goes down. I bet spreadsheets saved a number of otherwise dysfunctional companies when they were introduced by letting small teams do their own analysis and operate independently. Sure, in some sense you're just letting individual teams work around the broader dysfunction of an organization, but sometimes that's exactly what you need to get out of a company-wide stalemate.

For all that people don't like fancy cloud tools and microservices, they play the same role at tech organizations. Having a lot of trouble with teams not integrating their code well and not playing well with your deployment/ops/etc team? Give each team the tools to deploy and manage their own services and they'll figure something out.

Not an expert on this phenomenon, but I think mobile payments and banking in developing countries is playing a similar role. I'm sure there are other examples along the same lines being developed and tested as we speak—not necessarily by startups though.

[whammywon]

If I recall correctly, Tesla open sourced their patents in 2014. Couldn't other car companies implement their own version of Tesla's equipment and skip a significant portion of the R&D needed for EV development?

Obviously that would take more work than just buying directly from Tesla, but if they built their manufacturing line to supply their own Tesla-invented tech then they should be able to sell it to other manufacturers, right?

[asdfman123]

> Is tech the right tool to attempt solving societal problems?

That's not the right question you should be asking. The questions you should be asking are "Where can I contribute the most value?" and "How can I use that to improve society?"

Maybe tech isn't the be all end all, but it's often better to do things that you're good at.

[Denzel]

> If Tesla's goal was to have an impact on climate change they should allow other car companies to purchase their batteries and motors to build from.

They have and they did. [1] You have it backwards. The other car companies have chosen not to purchase batteries and motors from Tesla anymore.

Tesla wanted to be a spark. They thought, worst-case scenario: other car companies will come and dominate, and we'll be positioned as a supplier with the best technology. Well, that didn't happen.

So now we have a simple dilemma. Tesla needs $$$. $$$ represents choices, research, development, improvement, etc. (Did I mention that Tesla's constant investment in battery technology has been driving down the cost across the industry?) Let's say they want to shutter their car business and just supply batteries and drivetrains.

We'll put the cost of a battery pack at $10k. Like any supplier, when selling to other car companies, they have to add X% markup to cover their future goals, research, development, etc. Now, other car companies pay $15k for the battery pack, which leaves $10k left over for all the other parts of the car to reach break-even on that $25k economical car. Margins are already thin, that ain't gonna work.

Well, Tesla could just sell the battery packs at cost since they care so much, right? Just so happens Tesla raised $5B. $5B / $10k = 500k battery packs. Great! But there were 17 million vehicles sold in the U.S. alone last year... that's a drop in the bucket. Tesla would need $150B / yr just to sell enough batteries to other car companies at cost. That ain't gonna work.

So where do we end up? Well, Tesla can "supply" the battery pack to their self at $10k because, well, it's their battery pack. Thus bestowing a competitive advantage upon their company.

> Or actually build an economical car, sub $25k

That's the plan. Do you not see their steps towards accomplishing that goal? Tesla literally laid out their plan from the beginning: start at the upper end of the market to capture enough money to throw into R&D such that they can work their way down the curve into the more economical price range. Not sure how this isn't obvious from Tesla Roadster ($150k+), Model S ($75k+), Model X ($80k+), Model 3 ($35k+) ...

By the way, you don't get down to a $25k car unless the parts that go into that car cost less than $25k. Tesla has been working to drive those costs down since the inception of their company. Evidence being the many factories they're building and the working partnership they've maintained for R&D on batteries with Panasonic.

> no self-driving

Self-driving is an add-on. It's not included in the base price of a vehicle.

> no performance mode

Once again, another lineup. Not the base model.

> Just a working, fully electric car that any working-class person could buy, globally

Working-class person with a Model 3 checking in. Similarly the Model 3 price point put it firmly within the grasp of my parents who have subsisted on Toyota Camry's and Honda Accord's their whole lives. Their next car will be a Model 3.

> That would have much more impact than building luxury electric vehicles.

Yeah. Tesla agrees. They're getting there. I'm not sure what they've done in the past two decades hasn't proven that.

[1]: https://evannex.com/blogs/news/when-tesla-partnered-with-the...

[mattbrewsbytes]

The OP asked if there are startups "tackling major societal problems". Tackling to me means that is the number one goal - tackling the actual problem, not a by-product.

Tesla makes luxury cars which is 5% of all car sales (Model 3 included, it starts at $38k). Tesla is 5th in market share for luxury cars in 2019 at 9.78% [0]. That means of all car sales in 2019, Tesla accounted for 0.5%. I'm not bashing Tesla, they make cool products (except that truck concept, that looks like ass), these are just the stats.

I understand their eventual goal is to have previous products help reduce cost for future ones but the impact on reducing CO2 levels by Tesla cars alone is probably not much at this point.

It would be like a new airplane manufacturer starts up and says they want to address the world's transition to sustainable energy and they are going to start with the Learjet/executive flyer market first. I wouldn't say that company is "tackling a major societal problem" I would say they're building a boutique business that as a by-product reduces CO2.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/287620/luxury-vehicles-u...

[mkalimani]

Brief of Tesla's Master Plan [0]

Part Un: 1) Create a low volume car, which would necessarily be expensive 2) Use that money to develop a medium volume car at a lower price 3) Use that money to create an affordable, high volume car

Part Deux: 1) Create stunning solar roofs with seamlessly integrated battery storage 2) Expand the electric vehicle product line to address all major segments 3) Develop a self-driving capability that is 10X safer than manual via massive fleet learning 4) Enable your car to make money for you when you aren't using it

https://www.tesla.com/blog/master-plan-part-deux

[giantg2]

I would love a stripped down electric work truck without all the fancy/expensive tech.

[adamzerner]

Check out https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/how-tesla-will-change-your-li....