[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.