[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.

[eropple]

All for naught? Certainly not. Significantly wasted, on the part of, y'know, the important people--the consumer? Hell, yes, I would.

If you go out of your way to shaft your customers--and deceiving them, as it really sounds like Tesla is doing, is certainly that--you're dirt. Tesla apparently qualifies.

[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.