[jonathankoren]

Tesla needs to execute, and I’m not sure that’s their strong suit. Sure they identified that it was finally time for the electric car, and made an electric car that wasn’t ugly as sin (gdiaf CitiCar and EV-1), but theiyre plagued with manufacturing delays and poor workmanship. The other manufacturers simply are better at putting quality cars out the door.

Sure they were late to the game, and but it’s not a foregone conclusion that Tesla (or any startup) is going to dominate this market.

As for AI and FSD, I’ll put my flag in the sand. We will not have production fully autonomous self driving cars (ie cars without controls) on uncontrolled surface streets in 20 years. From what I understand, the technology has hit a plateau, and there’s just way too many edge cases. If this wasn’t the case, you wouldn’t have people like Andrew Ng going around telling people to redesign cities to make it easier for robot drivers.

If it does happen, it’s not going to be Tesla. I don’t think they’re the technology leader here. Last time I read something, Cruise and Waymo were leading, and Elon’s insistence on not having lidars was holding Tesla back.

[Seanambers]

Well, the fog of 'war' is thick right now. I've chosen to place my capital and belief with Karpathy and Elon. Tesla seems like to best multivariate bet and it's priced like a winner in that respect.

With regards to execution, I don't think anyone has done a better job of scaling physical production faster than Tesla? And you don't have to like Elon but he sure does know a thing or two about this.

I've heard both the quality argument and the Tesla killer argument for so long that I no longer believe it to be true. If they could, they already would - I would suggest that you drive a Tesla for a couple of days, then go back to ICE. All the revving of the engine and performance hooplas seems so last century after that. A comparison kills the ICE alternative (except for long ranges atm).

The consumer will if given a choice (Tesla supply is restriced) choose the best offering at the lowest price and everything is lined up for Tesla to be just that.

The big joker from my perspective is what the EU / US / Japan / Korea will do to ensure strategic production capacity / industrial strength capacity, enormous subsidies are definitely on the table.

China is all in on electric so they have nothing to lose.

[jonathankoren]

> With regards to execution, I don't think anyone has done a better job of scaling physical production faster than Tesla? And you don't have to like Elon but he sure does know a thing or two about this.

Does he though? Elon's hand can be traced directly to production and safety issues. Lest we forget his hubris in trying to do final assembly with robots, a task that was tried and dismissed by multiple "legacy" manufacturers, and directly resulted in defects and manufacturing slow downs. He's not even technically a founder of Tesla. He partially financed the A round, and then started telling everyone he founded the company. Even SpaceX widely seen as Gwynne Shotwell's baby. I will say that he he's enough money and a fan base to make a bunch of meme stocks. That's something.

As far as driving a Tesla, I have. I test drove a Model S several years ago. I thought the regenerative braking was weird, but something I would have to get used to. I liked the exterior of the Model S, but I did not like the interior. I thought it was ugly and empty (a personal preference), and the infotainment system a cruel joke that not only lacked features common on cheaper cars (CarPlay), but was filled with knockoffs (Slacker instead of Spotify or Pandora, and Google Maps without Google turn-by-turn in particular) and pointless gimmicks (Paint). Even with their v10 update that brought Spotify to the US (finally a win), also brought a bunch of video streaming services that only work when the car is in park. (Why bother? Just use your phone.)

I think you should compare a Model S to a Porsche Taycan. They're comparably priced plugin electrics, but the Porsche is well... a Porsche, a finely made automobile with attention to detail. A Model S is slapdashed together; but you're right, Tesla buyers don't seem to care. Also, for some reason Tesla owners purchase their cars instead of leasing them, the only electric car owners to do so. I can't explain either of these facts.