[bane]

I think you and Tesla are not having the same conversation. They are doing it The Wrong Way if the conversation is efficient commuter/city cars. But tanks are doing it The Wrong Way if you're talking about space launch vehicles too.

Tesla doesn't market or really care about efficiency -- and Tesla buyers don't really care about efficiency (or at least not as their #1 priority, if they did there are plenty of high efficiency 3 wheel'd electric solar powered bio-diesel gold carts sitting in junk yards that they could have been buying).

Tesla cars are about instant torque and speed, offered only by electric motors, without all the baggage and compromise that comes from an efficiency econobox (read: nerdmobile).

Nobody else is doing that. People who buy Teslas, and who are interested in Teslas, don't want 0-60 in 14 seconds but great gas mileage, they want it in 2 seconds and great gas mileage.

Now if you want to talk about a family sedan that can smoke a Ferrari, has room for golf clubs, and is practical enough to take to the beach, grocery shopping and carry 3 or 4 of my friends to a movie, regardless of the how it spins the tires? Then you are in the right conversation.

[atourgates]

Precisely.

The Leaf and other small commuter cars are fantastic for people who don't give a shit about cars, and really care about the environment / gas prices. That's a great market, but it's a completely different market than the one Tesla is going after.

The Roadster is basically an electric Lotus. And there's no-one that's going to say to themselves, "You know what would make good financial sense? Replacing my Civic with a goddamn electric race car." It's not about price or energy or the planet, it's about something unique and fun, a luxury good. I expect that there is close to zero overlap between potential Tesla Roadster and potential Leaf buyers.

The Model S changes the dynamic a bit, but it's still not competing with the Leaf and other city cars. And most importantly, it will appeal to people (like me) who love cars. It's unsual, but extends beyond sports-car novelty into something that could easily be the primary vehicle for a family of 4 - or even more with the rear-facing 3rd row seat. Hell, if I was in the market for a high-end sedan, the Model S would be far and away my first choice. For about the price of a 7-series, you get something entirely new and unique in the automotive world.

Both Nissan and Tesla's attempts at popularizing electric vehicles have sensible business models behind them, they're just very different vehicles aimed at very different demographics.

[sek]

These arrogant posts like OP really annoy me, they don't even try to understand why Tesla does things like it does. No, Elon Musk is stupid, he makes the wrong cars and we should stop talking about it.

They have to create a totally new production chain and make high quality cars. This is impossible with low margins, there is no way they can compete on price against this gigantic industry.

[krschultz]

I feel like you can answer nearly every post like the OP's with "Go read The Innovator's Dilemma and then come back and talk about what metrics this disruptive company is competiting on rather than talking about the old metrics of the industry". Every one of them is making the argument that hard drive makers made each time a newer size came out, except with miles of range instead of Gigabytes.

[cube13]

The model S is somewhat disruptive. It's closer to almost affordable(around $50,000 base price after US tax breaks) than the Roadster(which was $109,000 base). Very few people could afford roadsters. More people can afford Model S', but it's still out of reach for the vast majority. I would argue that the Nisan Leaf is MUCH more of a disruptive force, because it's relatively affordable(starts at $27,700), and is available everywhere.

The problem is that Tesla isn't trying to make a green box for the masses. They're making luxury cars, and charging luxury prices for it. That puts them in direct competition with companies like Porche, Mercedes, BMW, etc. It's not an easy market to get into, considering the competition, and the fact that the customers who can afford their products, by and large, aren't concerned about efficiency as much as they're concerned with luxury or power.

[sek]

This is so funny, did you even read the post you responded to?

You make the same mistake, you think in a feature spreadsheet category. Efficiency, Luxury, Price and Power.

In these categories was the first iPhone a joke and every competitor made fun of it.

Get the book and then you understand why many people here are talking about Tesla and not Nissan.

[cube13]

The iPhone, when it was released, was something completely new, though. There was literally nothing like it on the market at all. Almost nobody had multitouch functionality. Nobody integrated a content market in the same way Apple did. And nobody made a smartphone as easy to use as Apple.

Tesla is targeting existing markets, making a product that looks pretty damned similar to other available products. They're not targeting the general public(like Apple). To compete on this level, their features are exactly what people talk about.

Also, the Roadster IS disruptive in one of those. Efficiency.

[salem]

Exactly right. To get that performance from a gas powered car would not only cost a lot more than a tesla, but you'd easily drop $40k of value on the car by driving it out of the lot, let alone by killing the battery.