[mparr4]

Musk has unquestionably changed the space transportation industry. It remains to be seen whether he's "revolutionized" the automotive industry.

With self driving cars on the horizon, it certainly feels like a revolution is looming, but Tesla doesn't seem to me to be nearly as singular of a force of change as SpaceX is to it's respective industry.

[mtgx]

Self-driving may be a bigger revolution in the end, but getting everyone off oil is also a huge revolution on its own. Yes, I know they're not the only ones to have an electric car ever, but without Tesla everyone would be dragging their feet with this.

Heck, they are still doing that. Just look at BMW i3. BMW is still treating electric cars as some sort of "concept cars" for the mass market, rather than "real cars" for the mass market.

We could also say touchscreen smartphones would've inevitably arrived, too, since we already had PDA's with crappy resistive touchscreens, and LG Prada even launched before the iPhone in 2007. But how much slower would they have improved to reach they level they are now, if it wasn't for Apple? And how much worse would they be now?

[Shivetya]

The Leaf had been in development over the same period of time as the S, if not before. The difference is that Nissan was trying to hit a harder goal, selling to the everyday driver, selling a car most buyers could afford. Similar to the requirements of the Volt and other electrics.

The i3 is a special vehicle which has too many compromises to meet stupid laws in place by various governments, the worst being a requirement to qualify as an EV its range extender cannot provide more range than its batteries. The real eye opener from BMW is the i8. The i3 is more mass market than the S, its in the range of affordability of most car drivers.

The key difference in the markets between the S and the rest is, the S targeted consumers whose income levels usually results in large amounts of disposable income. Levels where having an extra car or two isn't unusual.

So, until they deliver on their 35k 200 mile range car, I am not going to go as far as you did in claims they are changing the game, they simply went for a more sure market.

[dkrich]

Agreed. I think most of Tesla's appeal comes from branding and the Elon Musk appeal and not merely from the fact that it is an electric vehicle.

As an example: had Ford released the Model S and sold the exact same volume with the same revenue and profit/loss, would they have added $3 billion of market cap with yesterday's earnings report? I for one doubt it.

So as much as people like to compare the Model S to the iPhone, I don't think the analogy fits. The Model S is not really a revolutionary vehicle in the way the iPhone was a revolutionary phone. Six years after its launch, every phone on the market looks like an iPhone. Even though the auto market has much longer sales cycles (several years for most cars) so one shouldn't expect to see an immediate market saturation, I don't think Tesla has a real sustainable advantage over other auto manufacturers the way Apple had over Dell/Samsung/Motorola because plenty of car companies in Tesla's price range already have the cool factor and the product is not different enough today to take over the market.

All that said, I love what Elon Musk is doing and plenty of companies have been built on brand alone so I'm certainly not writing off Tesla. I'm just arguing that people should check their expectations. I think the company is severely overvalued at current stock prices.

[rtpg]

>had Ford released the Model S and sold the exact same volume with the same revenue and profit/loss, would they have added $3 billion of market cap with yesterday's earnings report? I for one doubt it.

With all due respect Ford has been around a lot longer, and could produce a lot more , so could (potentially) sell a lot more. Tesla's selling those numbers because they're starting from scratch, and thus don't have the capacity to sell more.

[mparr4]

I'm not quite sure if the Tesla is to electric cars as Apple is to smartphones analogy works just yet.

Perhaps it will, but I live in the US and have still never even seen a Tesla vehicle. I've seen Nissan Leafs and Chevrolet Volts. My town even has charging stations.

Maybe that's how things will shake out, but I don't think they're there yet.

[marssaxman]

It must be a local thing. Here in Seattle, I see a Model S on the road at least a few times a week. It's not just the same car, either - I've seen them in black, white, grey, and red. Two of my co-workers have them!

[nrb]

FWIW they are all over the place in Chicago, and presumably the other major metros.

[toomuchtodo]

I work for a major broadcast network in Chicago. Our owner owns both a Model S and Roadster.

I too see Model S vehicles everywhere in Chicago.

[mtgx]

Apple only had 1 percent of the smartphone market in the first year (which was much smaller than it is now). It took a few years to become what it is now. And even now Apple only has 13 percent market share globally with the iPhone.

The car market is also much slower to change, since you don't buy a car every 1-2 years, but once every 10 years. Plus, they are much more expensive than phones. That's why we're talking about thousands of cards vs millions of smartphones.

[spdy]

BMW has a huge bet running on electric cars with the massive investment in developing technics to build mass production carbon chassis.

They intend to build lighter cars which will benefit electric mobility.

The BMW i3 is only the first of its kind but if its lightly successful they will iterated on that.

The Quandt Family (Susanne Klatten) is a huge driver in this space.

What we miss the most right now for electric mobility is infrastructure.

[ankitml]

Everyone else in detroit and japan are trying to catch up on the bandwagon of electric cars. That is revolutionary for the industry atleast. In the long run, weather he is able to revolutionize mobility is yet to be seen.

[njharman]

Space Travel (even after we have gone to mars) is relatively small industry / impact to the world and humans compared to replacing fossil fuel burning automobiles.