[leobg]

This is such a popular talking point here on HN, and I don’t get it:

Tesla does zero ads. They don’t even have a PR team (go ask journalists, they literally find nobody to talk to at Tesla).

They scaled from 3,000 cars to 3 million cars in just ten years. Back in 2011, I saw exactly ONE Tesla roadster in Santa Monica. Now, walk around for two minutes and you’ll see several S, 3, X and Y. Same in Switzerland. In 2016, I’d see one or two a day. Now you see several per hour. These cars are real, and they are changing the world around us.

How can you call that a “marketing-first company”?

Yes, they are getting attention. But they’re getting it for the things they are actually building.

They are also the place that attracts the most engineering talent. I have yet to find a Tesla job post for social media marketing.

Tesla’s main achievement is not marketing. It’s volume production (i.e. manufacturing). And building cars that convert people when they drive them. You can call that marketing. But I would call that engineering and product design.

[gamblor956]

Tesla does marketing all the time in SoCal, so that's clearly false. Also, I'm pretty sure they launched a car into space once? That counts as a marketing activity. Referral bonuses, free Supercharging, etc., are similarly marketing activities, and other automakers refer to such activities as marketing in their financials. (In fact, Tesla just announced a major marketing effort in China today... https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/8/23297417/tesla-ownership-l...). That Tesla does not characterize marketing activities as marketing simply indicates that their financials are not prepared under GAAP and instead represent fantasy unicorn accounting.

They scaled from 3,000 cars to 3 million cars in just ten years.

Most modern Chinese automakers scaled even faster than that. And if you think that's impressive, Ford went from 0 to 3 million cars in less than 10 years. Without electricity, robots, or fancy technology.

These cars are real, and they are changing the world around us.

Agreed, the streets are now significantly more dangerous due to all the Tesla vehicles driving around like drunk drivers while in AP or FSD modes. Tesla may set back the adoption of self-driving technologies by a decade.

They are also the place that attracts the most engineering talent. I have yet to find a Tesla job post for social media marketing.

Tesla only conducts so much R&D because they insist on recreating a worse version of the wheel rather than using outside suppliers. Except for their supposed differentiating factor, the batteries, which are actually made for them by outside suppliers (i.e., Panasonic).

But on that note, every single one of the other major automakers conducts more R&D into actual new areas of technology than Tesla. They just don't constantly brag about it on Twitter.

Tesla’s main achievement is not marketing. It’s volume production (i.e. manufacturing).

I laughed so hard I almost sharted. Tesla has the worst volume production of any major automaker, and for several years straight has the ignomious distinction of being at or near the bottom in terms of initial car quality (as measured by the number of manufacturing defects in new vehicles), so to the extent they make "more" cars it is because they cars they do make are lower quality.

And building cars that convert people when they drive them.

I now know more former Tesla owners than current Tesla owners. Tesla's 0-60 speed convinced a lot of people to buy EVs. But their abysmal build quality guaranteed that most Tesla buyers' first Tesla would also be their last. Only the die-hards buy more than one Tesla in SoCal anymore.

[leobg]

Thanks.

Yeah, I always got the impression that, the closer you get to the "epicenter" of Tesla's initial operations, the stronger the anti-Tesla sentiment. Which initially seems weird. After all, shouldn't people be rooting for their "home team"?

But if you're doing you're commute and you're stuck behind a Tesla testing FSD beta, I can imagine being annoyed. I can see how that almost feels as if the company banking profits that you and other drivers have to pay for. That is a point that is hard to see for someone living outside of any FSD Beta hotspot.

> Ford went from 0 to 3 million cars in less than 10 years. Without electricity, robots, or fancy technology.

Also without, initially, competition or regulation. And with some other benefits as well. From Bill Bryon, One Summer, which I happen to be reading at the moment:

> In 1914, Ford introduced an eight-hour day, forty-hour week and doubled average salaries to $5 a day in what is often presented as an act of revolutionary magnanimity. In fact, it was necessitated by the costly waste of high employee turnover – a breathtaking 370 per cent in 1913. At the same time, Ford established its notorious Sociological Department, employing some two hundred investigators who were empowered to look into every aspect of employees’ private lives – their diet, hygiene, religion, personal finances, recreational habits and morals. Ford’s workforce was full of immigrants – in some periods as many as two thirds of his employees were from abroad – and Ford genuinely wished to help them live healthier, more satisfying lives, so his sociological meddling was by no means entirely a bad thing. However, there was almost nothing Henry Ford did that didn’t have some bad in it somewhere, and the Sociological Department certainly had a totalitarian tinge. Ford employees could be ordered to clean their houses, tidy their yards, sleep in American-style beds, increase their savings, modify their sexual behaviour, and otherwise abandon any practice that a Ford inspector deemed ‘derogatory to good physical manhood or moral character’. [...] Ford also hired black men, though he nearly always gave them the hottest, dirtiest and most exhausting jobs.

Not trying to dismiss Ford's achievements here. It's just that nobody can replicate Ford today. If scaling car production was such an easy thing, and Teslas are of such terrible quality, competition such as Lucid and Rivian should be having an easy time. Yet that's not what we're seeing at all.

[desindol]

Everything communicated by a brand or their ceo is marketing.

[leobg]

Not disputing that Tesla also does marketing. I am disputing that Tesla, hiring mostly engineers and having 1,000xed their production capacity within the last decade, can be called a "marketing-first company".