[SeanLuke]

> Tesla are a sideshow and we desperately need to stop talking about them, because they're harming efforts to improve energy efficiency.

Completely disagree. Tesla is, I think, unquestionably the most impactful company in the game, including GE and Nissan. For two reasons.

First, before Tesla people thought of electric vehicles as ridiculous DIY golf carts driven by treehuggers. They were utterly uncool and stupid. Post-Tesla, electric cars are among the very coolest cars in the world. GE didn't do that. Nissan didn't do that. Toyota didn't do that. Tesla did. I think fundamentally changing people's perceptions of what an electric car is and what it can do is the single most impactful action in the industry so far.

Second, Tesla's critical product isn't their cars. Their critical product is their battery technology. It is second to none, in a business where the battery is everything. This is the reason that both Daimler and Toyota have invested in the company. I think you are seriously underestimating how important this is.

As to the article proper: it seems to me that running down your car is a pretty simple problem to engineer away. This might be an issue, perhaps a burp that Tesla has to get fixed pronto. But it's hardly, to use the breathless headline, devastating.

[jdietrich]

> First, before Tesla people thought of electric vehicles as ridiculous DIY golf carts driven by treehuggers. They were utterly uncool and stupid. Post-Tesla, electric cars are among the very coolest cars in the world. GE didn't do that. Nissan didn't do that. Toyota didn't do that. Tesla did. I think fundamentally changing people's perceptions of what an electric car is and what it can do is the single most impactful action in the industry so far.

Amongst technology enthusiasts in the US.

Here in The Soviet Republic of Yurop, gas is $8 a gallon and is only going up from there. If people know the name Tesla, it's probably because they've seen the Roadster lampooned on Top Gear. However, people are talking about Renault and Peugeot and Nissan's EVs. Not car enthusiasts, but ordinary people who've seen the cost of fuel more than double in 10 years. They're talking about Volkswagen Bluemotion, they're talking about Fiat Twinair. They're talking about fast charging and battery swaps and series hybrids. They're talking about folding bikes and multimodal commuting. They're talking about these things because they're being priced off the roads.

I have heard a middle-aged woman with no interest in cars or the environment say at a dinner party "I bought a Toyota iQ because it only emits 99g/km of CO2, so I don't have to pay road tax or the Congestion Charge.". For her, like many others, the efficiency of her car wasn't a side issue, but integral to whether she could afford to drive at all. Energy efficiency might not be on the agenda in the US, but it very much is in Europe.

[Dinoguy1000]

Depending where in the US you look, the price of gas has done anything from less than doubling to increasing more than five-fold over the past decade.* It's not $8/gallon, but there are definitely places where you'd have to pay $4-6 per gallon, and it's only becoming more widespread. If there's one thing US citizens have shown, though, it's that they're perfectly willing to continue shelling out more and more money to drive ridiculously inefficient vehicles, even while they grumble about the spiraling price and (depending where you look) speak of mythical, massive reserves of oil the US supposedly has that could last the US anywhere from decades to centuries, depending who you ask.

Simply adding more costs onto gas is going to do nothing more to change what the average US citizen drives then what the past decade of price increases have.

* This is based on anecdote and recollection; I don't have any sources to back it up, but if it's wrong one way or the other, more than likely it's conservative.

[runako]

This doesn't really match with the data collected in the 2007-2008 price spike. While the price of oil was peaking, US drivers demonstrated that they will change their behavior somewhere on the curve. Notably, miles driven started dropping well before the recession hit. I'm not sure what the breakpoint was, but I believe it was around $4/gallon. (Yes, gas cost much more in some places and is still above $4 now, but the relevant number is the national average, currently about $3.60).

So you're right that the rise in prices from ~$0.90 in 1999 to multiples of that do not impact demand significantly. However, there is a threshold above which American drivers will react.

[bostonvaulter2]

I really wish the US would implement similar taxes. I know it'll hurt in the short term but it'll be great in the long term and would benefit the economy overall and help wean our huge car industry off of oil.

[arjunnarayan]

> First, before Tesla people thought of electric vehicles as ridiculous DIY golf carts driven by treehuggers. They were utterly uncool and stupid. Post-Tesla, electric cars are among the very coolest cars in the world. GE didn't do that. Nissan didn't do that. Toyota didn't do that. Tesla did. I think fundamentally changing people's perceptions of what an electric car is and what it can do is the single most impactful action in the industry so far.

Sure, but that's the same as saying that Sun Microsystems changed the world. Before Sun, people thought of C++ as the be all and end all of programming and we were stuck without decent typesystems and helpful compilers. Microsoft didn't change that. Nobody changed that. Sun did.

Look where they are now. Sure Tesla might have changed people's worldviews and I'm grateful for that. But moving forward, that counts for nothing. I just want the best damn electric car there can be. I'm not paying for changing the narrative.

[potatolicious]

And that's the genius of it. You are not paying to change the narrative - but lots of other people are. Even if Tesla ends up a footnote in the history of automotives, their impact will be felt for decades, just like Sun.

Whatever happens to Elon Musk's company, we are all better off, and for that I wouldn't consider the money wasted.

And I don't think Tesla's death is really that certain. Remember that Apple pioneered the unibody laptop chassis on the backs of wealthy early adopters with the (ludicrously priced) MacBook Air, and now this technology is available at commodity prices to everyone. The same model can very well work here.

[chucknelson]

> Remember that Apple pioneered the unibody laptop chassis on > the backs of wealthy early adopters with the (ludicrously > > priced) MacBook Air...

Wow, I don't know if that is a good comparison. It's not like they were $5k-$10k laptops or anything. "Ludicrously priced" seems a bit strong here..

[shinratdr]

You're both right, in a way.

It was priced closer to cost than most imagine (SSDs were still very expensive at the time and it used much more expensive parts that were underclocked to reduce heat buildup before Intel had good ULV processors) so a top of the line 1st generation MacBook Air ordered in the first three months of release would cost you $5500. I know because I bought one for someone.

It was very expensive, but it wasn't ludicrously priced. Pioneering that CNC technology wasn't cheap and if it didn't work out, that loss would have been all because of the Air. You can consider it putting the burden on early adopters, I see it as more people paying the actual product cost plus profit like Apple always prefers. They aren't ones to launch something at cost if they don't have to. They would rather move less units and instead make a profit from day one.

[eropple]

> I wouldn't consider the money wasted.

I wonder if the people shelling out $40,000 for a battery replacement agree with you.

[chc]

Even if all five or so became violent opponents of Tesla (which seems plausible enough, I guess), that would be greater than 99% approval among users. I don't mean to downplay the severity of that issue, but I feel like this comment is more of a cheap shot "zinger" than a legitimate attempt to show that Tesla's efforts are wasted (especially given that the problem seems to be endemic to modern battery technology, not specifically Tesla's line).

[eropple]

It's endemic to modern battery technology, but not modern battery implementations. Tesla's technology is unquestionably excellent. Consideration of use cases--or, you know, consideration of the customer forking over a ton of money for their vehicles--not so much.

If there is a case where you can, by design, cause somebody who just bought a ridiculously expensive car to incur a $40,000 battery replacement bill, you'd better have ways to counteract the problem. They apparently don't (aside from "stalk your car and charge it"); it doesn't sound like they even warn purchasers about the danger of flatlining the battery.

[chc]

Uh, OK? Nobody's disagreeing with you that the battery situation sucks. I still don't understand what that has to do with what SeanLuke or potatolicious said. Are you seriously saying the company's efforts are all for naught because of a severe issue in early models experienced so far by a tiny minority of early (wealthy) purchasers that could be fixed to many people's satisfaction at any time by the company just deciding to cover it? I mean, Ford made cars so defective they killed people, but I don't hear people saying everything Henry Ford did is pointless.

[fab13n]

Remember: the original question was whether Tesla was a sideshow; the comment you responded to argued that it wasn't, quite compellingly IMO. Similarly, Sun and Java certainly weren't sideshows either.

You're wondering about Tesla's commercial success, which is an interesting but very different question.

[forgottenpaswrd]

"But moving forward, that counts for nothing."

Sure it does count when you have patents over a new technology. Real patents of physical objects that work.

"I just want the best damn electric car there can be. I'm not paying for changing the narrative."

So? People want to benefit over things they do not contribute with. People want a pill that gives them everything they want without effort and NOW!!

It does not works this way.

[nandemo]

> First, before Tesla people thought of electric vehicles as ridiculous DIY golf carts driven by treehuggers. They were utterly uncool and stupid. Post-Tesla, electric cars are among the very coolest cars in the world.

Really? I never heard of Tesla outside of HN. I think a large proportion of the 10s of thousands who have bought electric cars in Japan don't know of Tesla either.

No doubt the very existence of Tesla might have accelerated the development and actual production of electric cars by other makers. But I suspect they aren't that well-known by the general public.

[kerryfalk]

Neither is Aston Martin, but they're a profitable and successful UK based auto manufacturer.

There are many successful companies that never achieve the kind of brand awareness that you are identifying. It's generally not a condition for success.

I am an auto enthusiast and Tesla is very well known among enthusiasts. Appealing to enthusiasts (Early Adopters) is an acceptable business strategy. Tesla doesn't need to market to a wider audience yet.

I fail to see the issues that others are claiming here. Assuming they can meet demand (last I heard there is significant demand for the Model S, I don't have data to cite at the moment) and are profitable with at that volume their risks seem to me to be more of the typical manufacturer's risk. Quality and warranty issues, aftermarket support, production costs, etc. Not so much from weak market demand.

EDIT: HN won't let me reply to your comment yet so I'll do it here.

I'm disagreeing with what I feel you're implying with this:

I think a large proportion of the 10s of thousands who have bought electric cars in Japan don't know of Tesla either.

But I suspect they aren't that well-known by the general public.

I read that as "This is Tesla's market, they're not known in this market, this is a risk to their business". I disagree with that. That is not their market and that market (general public, 10s of thousands of electric car buyers in Japan) is unimportant at this time because they're very well known within their target market.

[nandemo]

Sure, I agree with you. What part of my comment are you disagreeing with? Previous comment says that Tesla changed the image of the electric car, I'm skeptical of that.

(except that I don't get your example of Aston Martin as not well-known brand. It's James Bond's car!)

[donteflon]

>First, before Tesla people thought of electric vehicles as ridiculous DIY golf carts driven by treehuggers. They were utterly uncool and stupid.

Absolutely not.

http://www.gizmag.com/go/3889/

Tesla just had the Silicon Valley hype machine on its side since inception, a super-wealthy owner proclaimed the next Henry Ford, and hundreds of millions of dollars from American taxpayers.

[vacri]

Their critical product is their battery technology. It is second to none, in a business where the battery is everything.

vs

As to the article proper: it seems to me that running down your car is a pretty simple problem to engineer away.

So, on the one hand you say that their battery technology is in advance of everyone else... and on the other hand, you say that these fine engineering minds... haven't been able to come up with a 'pretty simple' solution yet.

[talmand]

That doesn't necessarily mean their technology isn't second to none. Say, I built a instantaneous teleportation device but it sucks because I haven't figured out a simple solution of how to jump more than one person at a time.

[sopooneo]

Using up all our fossil fuels and leaving the world a crisp wasteland is one thing, but using the word "impactful" is another. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=impactful

[SeanLuke]

I know, I know. I wasn't proactive enough.

[functionform]

Potentially losing the car after a week of NOT using it qualifies as devastating to me.

[rplnt]

> GM didn't do that.

Interesting documentary - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F

[SeanLuke]

Er....

GE -> GM

It's late at night. :-)