In the areas that Apple competes there are a handful of serious competitors and they deliberately place themselves in markets where they know they can offer a superior experience. In the automative industry there are dozens of competitors. And most of them over at least some cars that are higher in quality than Tesla. And of course none of them have the problem of electric cars namely range and worrying about recharge locations. Which is a concern for the mainstream masses.
For me Tesla is more like the Windows Phone. A great product but with quite a lot of uncertainty around it's longterm future.
In Europe a weekend, or even a daily trip if you happen to live close enough, to the mountain in winter for skiing is considered common and acceptable.
The distance is well inside the range of Tesla's battery if it wasn't for the altitude and the cold weather. If you don't have a charging station at your destination, better start walking...
Lucky. "America", ie the US, is pretty huge and empty. When I was in college, my friends would often drive about 350 miles one way to go home for the weekend/holidays. Public transportation is so much shittier here than many other "developed" countries I've lived in. Sucks because I've never owned a car lol.
I wonder if subsidised petrol also adds to it. It'd be a rare Australian (in my experience) who attempted to regularly drive between major cities (excluding Canberra) - they'd just fly.
I also get the impression that air transport in most of the rest of the world is much much more reasonable. AirAsia has made most of Asia pretty accessible, there are a gazillion competing low-cost airlines in Europe, and Australian air travel seems to be cheap enough that I have friends who city hop at weekends without much effort.
Of the four continents I've lived for more than a year on, North America and Africa see people taking heroic car journeys, Europe and (South East) Asia much less so.
Finally there seems to be a real class divide on public transport. Middle-class Europeans and Asians will jump on a coach, where I don't think any of the Americans I know have every been on a Greyhound bus...
I have ridden my share of Greyhound's man. They are always very long and if you have a bad driver they are quite scary.
Where I went to college, flights were often canceled and cost around 300$ one way. Between cities in the US we do have pretty competitive prices for flights. Cars were definitely the preferred means of transportation and if you car pooled the cheapest.
Oddly enough we had an ok bus system, it was pricy but the fare was included in your tuition.
Which is such a strange phenomenon to me. I don't balk at driving ten hours from LA to Redding a couple times a year just to visit family, but that's longer than it takes to drive from Berlin to Paris. If I lived in Europe, I'd be visiting a different country every other weekend.
To be fair, there was a point in my life when I was driving 900 miles round trip every other week or so, but that was about a girl, and before I had enough money to take a plane...and looking back I was viewed as crazy by most people for doing so.
> In the areas that Apple competes there are a handful of serious competitors and they deliberately place themselves in markets where they know they can offer a superior experience.
Yes, but how did they get there? Twenty years ago, Apple made "a great product but with quite a lot of uncertainty around it's longterm future." Though I personally think that any comparisons are facile, the point is that Tesla is poised to follow a similar path.
I agree, although I think Musk is thinking much more fundamentally than cars with Tesla... we as a civilization need an efficient way to produce, store, and consume energy from the sun. The car is a logical near-term path/product to advance the 'store' and 'consume' technologies while having a near-term positive environmental impact and a sustainable business model.
I also suspect that Tesla is a battery company that happens to sell cars.
But there's a problem. There is just so much R&D being done in energy storage devices and battery technology that Tesla will need to do quite a bit of M&A in order to stay relevant. That's a weird thing to do whilst you are still selling cars.
Yes. I would associate Tesla with Samsung as much as with Apple. Samsung LCD/OLED technology is in many high-end mobile device for example, even though they have flagship products that directly compete.. they are selling the more fundamental technologies. In the same way, Tesla (Elon) would much rather be selling batteries to many other car manufacturers and home battery storage manufacturers (the patent release makes a lot of sense within this line of thinking).
The challenge with energy storage is not only in the R&D, but also in the manufacturing at scale, cars are a great avenue to approach this challenge.
No, he clearly makes the point that it's the intersection between a luxury & high volume business model. This is an absurd takeaway from a pretty well thought-out post.
This article is full of a lot of crap. There is a good parallel to be made between Apple and Tesla, but this article spends a lot of time babbling about nonsense (whining about overpriced bottled tap water when that's found at every single grocery store on earth in 2015?)
As far as Tesla trying to make a cool brand; every brand tries to do that. That's not what makes Tesla like Apple.
What makes Tesla like Apple is that it is willing to compromise in ways that most of their competitors aren't; they are willing to have higher price tags, deliver products late and risk a lot of money by investing in something that could fail. Apple exmpales; the iPhone, the Apple Watch. Tesla examples; the Supercharger network and the Gigafactoy. They are not willing to compromise on quality. They may fuck up and make a quality mistake (inevitably they do), but they will not deliberately compromise on quality the way competitors will in order to meet a target price point.
This seems grossly oversimplified, and Im not really even sure its correct. Tesla is trying to (mostly) bootstrap themselves, so the obvious path here is to build expensive, higher margin products vs commodity products. I also think you are giving Apple way too much credit for calling it their business model. Apple follows a similar business model to the fashion industry, or the jewelry industry. There is no new secret sauce here. Market goods to "discerning" users for more money than commodity purchasers. Is the only point of this blog to get "Apple" and "Tesla" in the same heading?
I think the OP's point is that Apple is not like the fashion industry. Fashion items like Ferrari cars (pointed out by the OP), look nice but actually don't work that well. Whereas Apple products look nice and work well.
This is a really good way of looking at the two companies though I would argue "copying" is a bit strong. I think the author just found a common approach among the two namely that Tesla & Apple both are attempting to operate as a luxury brand pushing high volumes of "cheap" products.
It briefly touches upon objective vs subjective quality and does so in a way that it brings back memories of _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_. What is quality anyway? The author makes the case that Apple is an inherently quality brand through and through, and to do so, must invest into its own supply chain in order to get quality parts at a cheap cost. He then naturally draws the comparison to the Gigafactory Tesla is building. His conclusion is that the Tesla Model S (which he owns) will be how Tesla is ultimately perceived as a "quality" product. When it cheapens all the parts and sells a 35k car, presumably this will be like Apple selling iPhones. I think it's a worthwhile comparison.
It's also something to just generally keep in mind about branding. Many engineers might have snarky things to say about a marketing or executive moves, but customer perception is a huge deal. Android has generally stayed ahead of Apple in terms of releasing mobile features, but the higher-income earners still prefer Apple to Android. Why is that? These are the really interesting discussions, but no of course Tesla is not copying per se.. it's just trying to make a lot of money and well, selling cheap products at high costs because of perceived quality is a hell of a way to do that.
This article is interesting but very naïve in is approach. First of all what he describes it is not a business model but part of the value proposition, and more specifically the value discipline. Yes, I'm using the Treacy Wiersema model[1].
So for instance saying that the low cost competitor couldn't afford to spend a little more on quality is dead wrong. If the customer you select values cost over quality (I'm not even looking into customer intimacy, the third discipline he misses) the are willing to pay a premium upfront for a product that is affordable over the lifetime (Total Cost of Ownership). That's why even in the volume market it is not always the one with the lower price to win. And different company could compete carving out a little different market.
Apple is for sure in the quality area. Tesla? My guess is that Tesla is in the Total Cost of Ownership, so totally different business model. Look how much they stress on the lower maintenance cost. Look at the direct distribution model that cut the costs down. Look at the free recharge at their supercharger network. Look at the calculator on how much you save buying a Tesla.
Want more details? Their new battery factory will produce battery also for competitors to get to a scale big enough to reduce price. They open sourced their patents so other company will use their technology de facto increasing the consumption of component they need (lowering the price) and doing R&D with them.
Another aspect, Tesla is pretty much a vertically integrated company, even in a market where sourcing component and sharing platform is common, they produce a lot in house (e.g: the batteries). This is common when you look for the lower Total Cost of Ownership (it's in contrast with management mantra, all people that read just the first chapter of Traecy Wiersema book and not the next 19). On the opposite Apple outsource a lot even in a market where outsourcing is common. They do this to get the best component from the producer that happens to be able to provide it.
I know my analysis seems to be counter-intuitive, but if understanding and replicating Apple's business model (or Amazon, Tesla, Southwest, Nordstrom) was easy and intuitive I guess there will be no more Apple. I'm not even saying that I'm 100% right, to be fair...
Apple was founded on bringing usable computers to the middle class.
Tesla targets a high end niche market.
My middle class parents, would never dream of buying a Tesla but they have purchased Mac computers for as long as I have known them.
Honestly I don't see a huge amount of parallels other than they share a common fanbase, tech nerds and these fans want to lump them together, and they are... both businesses competing in the modern economy.
I did read the article. Tesla sells sport/luxury cars. They plan on expanding in the future to 30k+ cars, when it happens then they will be a company that sells mid~high end/sport/luxury cars.
I am bias because I label Tesla as a company that sells the products that it sells? I don't get it.
A mac("Apple") was significantly less expensive than a 'high-end' computer at the time. At least thats was the feeling, having talked to my parents about it before.
That's a strawman. The Mac was significantly more expensive than the Apple ][, and the PC etc. Not to mention the various Commodore's etc. Don't even get me started on the Lisa. Just because the Mac was cheaper than a minicomputer or a workstation doesn't mean it wasn't expensive. For the demographic it targeted, it was a very expensive machine. The Mac had an MSRP of $2495 compared to the PC at around $1600.
Also I'm sorry I meant the Apple. To me they are the same computer. I understand historically they are not. I never said it wasn't expensive, even the Apple which MSRP ranged from 1,000$ to 2,000$ was still expensive but seems fairly competitive for the time. Cars are also pretty expensive tho lol. But luxury and sports cars are far outside the price-to-use range of a middle class family. A 'Apple' Computer, at least for my family, was worth it for them at that price range. A 20k car functions just as well as a 100k car, the Apple at 1k was pretty phenomenal for my mother from what she has told me.
-edit- I don't think I really get what your point is?
Computers were very expensive back then. I don't think Apple was an expensive computer at the time of its launch and part of what was so compelling about it was a personal computer not a work station.
Tesla is an extremely expensive car. Especially if you consider its value-to-price.
Ok Apple also sold expensive computers. The point remains, Apple was founded on selling computer and bringing the power of computers to middle class 'normal' people.
Tesla was founded on selling cars to a wealthy niche market.
Sorry, are you interested in Tesla's founding story, or your opinion about it? Because, just like your recollection of the price-points of Apple products in the past, your opinion diverges from what Tesla says their goals are and were:
"Tesla's primary goal was to commercialize electric vehicles, starting with a premium sports car aimed at early adopters and then moving as rapidly as possible into more mainstream vehicles, including sedans and affordable compacts"
Lol you are quoting marketing material at me now... When Tesla becomes a affordable car seller then ok they will no longer be a company that specializes in selling very expensive cars to a wealthy niche.
I looked up the price points, they are accurate... so fuck you and your condescending tone.
> When Tesla becomes a affordable car seller then ok they will no longer be a company that specializes in selling very expensive cars to a wealthy niche.
Another take is that Tesla is a company that's doing what it needs to, to get into a position where they can sell affordable cars to low-to-middle class people.
But damn Elon Musk, that nasty capitalist oppressor pig that abuses poor people by pricing his cars higher than they can afford, just like Motorola when selling their first mobile phone http://mashable.com/2014/03/13/first-cellphone-on-sale/ .. those filthy bastards!
Lol... Yea... So besides your superb use of ironic hyperbole, I would say if you think that is Tesla's business model then you don't think it is copy Apple's.
> Tesla is an extremely expensive car. Especially if you consider its value-to-price
I'm not sure what you mean with "value-to-price", but aren't pretty much all Tesla owners in love with their cars? They seem to be valued very highly, and considered worth the price.
Aren't most sports car owners in love with their cars?? I'm sure Tesla's cars are nice luxury vehicles, maybe even "objectively"(lol...) nicer than other sports/luxury cars. I have no clue, never driven, touched, or even seen one. By "worth the price", if you are someone that considers a 60k to 120k car "worth the price" then yes. But personally I would rather not fool myself and admit I have the money and I want something luxurious.
Particularly if you look at it from a price-to-value standpoint of someone balancing a budget for a car. Luxury, ascetic, and cool-factor do not play a huge roll in that. Maybe they do in your life and then you are most likely either single, upperclass, or bad with money. The first two are ok, expensive luxury vehicles are ok. Am I touching a nerve here?
> By "worth the price", if you are someone that considers a 60k to 120k car "worth the price" then yes. But personally I would rather not fool myself and admit I have the money and I want something luxurious.
Value is subjective, by the way.
That means that if a Tesla costs $70k and someone buys one, then he demonstrably values the Tesla higher than his $70k, which means it's safe to say he considers a Tesla worth the price.
> maybe even "objectively"(lol...) nicer than other sports/luxury cars
Nope, not "lol". For example, Teslas are objectively safer than other cars. That's because they can be constructed to be like that because they're electric vehicles, but that doesn't make it any less objectively true.
Also, there's no problem with someone having the money and wanting something luxurious. The fact that some people do is the reason why lots of jobs involved in serving their wants exist, which surely you'd agree is a good thing.
(So basically: Teslas getting bought for their current prices is a Good Thing for us little folks, so I'm not sure what your problem is)
> My point is. [..] They. Are. Not. Within. The. Price. Range. Of. The. Middle. Class... [..] Apple. Computers. Were.
If both of those claims are true, then you've established that "Tesla is not like Apple that way". But is that what you mean?
It seems you're more concerned with some other people being able to afford Teslas than whether Tesla is like Apple that way.
> if you look at it from a price-to-value standpoint
Again, what the hell does "price-to-value" mean?
> Maybe they do in your life and then you are most likely either single, upperclass, or bad with money.
Huh? If someone buys a Tesla, it most definitely doesn't follow that he's bad with money.
> The first two are ok, expensive luxury vehicles are ok. Am I touching a nerve here?
Did you accidentally a word there? But no, you're not touching a nerve. I'd like to have a Tesla for myself, in the right circumstances (which don't even currently apply), but I couldn't afford one anyway.
That's perfectly fine with me though. It's alright that I don't have one, and it's fine I wouldn't even have the money. It's also perfectly fine that some others do, and buy them. If that touches a nerve with you, then there's something wrong with your nerves.
No I am not concerned with who can actually purchase a Tesla. I was reiterating that because people kept bring up that in the "future" Tesla plans to expand into the lower end markets. My concern is not with what they say/will do, but with what they are doing. But my main point was:
The Article says Tesla is following a similar business model as Apple. I disagree, Tesla's business model, at least currently, is to sell expensive cars to a wealthy niche while Apple's business model was to sell computers to the middle class.
-
> Maybe they do in your life and then you are most likely either single, upperclass, or bad with money.
There is an Or in that statement. However if someone who earns 60 to 100k buys a Tesla, then yes they are bad with money.
There is some value in this article, but the author is super careless with his terms and comparisons, and his point suffers for it.
He wants Costco (low cost, low price, high volume, slim overall profit) and Apple (low cost, high price, medium-to-small volume, large overall profit) and Tesla (currently I believe high cost, high price, low volume, negative overall profit) to be the same, and so he constantly elides the differences. I think that overall his point is that Costco and Apple are fundamentally about having low costs that allow them to make a different volume/price tradeoff than their competitors, but he constantly confuses price and cost, and contradicts himself about Apple's volume.
Yea I have been noticing people really trying to make the Apple and Tesla comparison lately. It just feels so forced.
-edit random thought- Seems like a whole lot of wealthy tech writers/bloggers want to sell themselves on getting a Tesla because somehow its similar to buying an early mac. There should be a specific term for the tech version of Keeping Up With The Joneses. I wonder how many of them drink soylent and order their quarters off of quarterly. I realize I am on a 'startup centric' site but god damn man some introspection is good people.
I would say being an early adopter is apart of it, but I don't think early adopters are always concerned about being 'techno hip'. Definitely saying you were one of the first fuels it. lol.
I mean just like the saying its a extremely reductionist view of a person, but it touches on something in all of us and something too much in in a lot of us.
> Seems like a whole lot of wealthy tech writers/bloggers want to sell themselves on getting a Tesla because somehow its similar to buying an early mac.
Surely if you think Apple/Tesla is going to be great, the smart move is to buy early shares, not early products? The products will still be good/relatively cheap in future - the shares won't.
,,Car innovation is continuing beyond the electric model and self-driving features -- Tesla needs to be up near the front on all of them.''
The author hasn't even read the Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan.
So according to his analysis, the things that keep Apple/Tesla in their market dominant position is (1) their brand communicates "quality" and (2) they have enough capital that they can make cheap quality products with a one-time investment.
If those are the key advantages, Tesla might be in trouble when Apple releases their own electric car. Apple already has the "quality" brand, and has much more capital.
Why did he have to use an Apple power supply as an example. Why? Everything was going so well. FYI Apples power supplies are the first i've ever seen to break by single loop tangle and they cost so much. Like WTF, it makes me rage a bit. I've never had another power supply wire break on me but I've had about 5 apple wires break so far and that's with me being super careful.
64 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 125 ms ] threadIn the areas that Apple competes there are a handful of serious competitors and they deliberately place themselves in markets where they know they can offer a superior experience. In the automative industry there are dozens of competitors. And most of them over at least some cars that are higher in quality than Tesla. And of course none of them have the problem of electric cars namely range and worrying about recharge locations. Which is a concern for the mainstream masses.
For me Tesla is more like the Windows Phone. A great product but with quite a lot of uncertainty around it's longterm future.
I don't think the masses drive 200 miles a day on the regular. That's $500+ a month in gas.
The distance is well inside the range of Tesla's battery if it wasn't for the altitude and the cold weather. If you don't have a charging station at your destination, better start walking...
It would also be worth adding that the part of Europe with good train coverage is "much of it".
I also get the impression that air transport in most of the rest of the world is much much more reasonable. AirAsia has made most of Asia pretty accessible, there are a gazillion competing low-cost airlines in Europe, and Australian air travel seems to be cheap enough that I have friends who city hop at weekends without much effort.
Of the four continents I've lived for more than a year on, North America and Africa see people taking heroic car journeys, Europe and (South East) Asia much less so.
Finally there seems to be a real class divide on public transport. Middle-class Europeans and Asians will jump on a coach, where I don't think any of the Americans I know have every been on a Greyhound bus...
Where I went to college, flights were often canceled and cost around 300$ one way. Between cities in the US we do have pretty competitive prices for flights. Cars were definitely the preferred means of transportation and if you car pooled the cheapest.
Oddly enough we had an ok bus system, it was pricy but the fare was included in your tuition.
To be fair, there was a point in my life when I was driving 900 miles round trip every other week or so, but that was about a girl, and before I had enough money to take a plane...and looking back I was viewed as crazy by most people for doing so.
Yes, but how did they get there? Twenty years ago, Apple made "a great product but with quite a lot of uncertainty around it's longterm future." Though I personally think that any comparisons are facile, the point is that Tesla is poised to follow a similar path.
But there's a problem. There is just so much R&D being done in energy storage devices and battery technology that Tesla will need to do quite a bit of M&A in order to stay relevant. That's a weird thing to do whilst you are still selling cars.
The challenge with energy storage is not only in the R&D, but also in the manufacturing at scale, cars are a great avenue to approach this challenge.
Ah, irony.
As far as Tesla trying to make a cool brand; every brand tries to do that. That's not what makes Tesla like Apple.
What makes Tesla like Apple is that it is willing to compromise in ways that most of their competitors aren't; they are willing to have higher price tags, deliver products late and risk a lot of money by investing in something that could fail. Apple exmpales; the iPhone, the Apple Watch. Tesla examples; the Supercharger network and the Gigafactoy. They are not willing to compromise on quality. They may fuck up and make a quality mistake (inevitably they do), but they will not deliberately compromise on quality the way competitors will in order to meet a target price point.
It briefly touches upon objective vs subjective quality and does so in a way that it brings back memories of _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_. What is quality anyway? The author makes the case that Apple is an inherently quality brand through and through, and to do so, must invest into its own supply chain in order to get quality parts at a cheap cost. He then naturally draws the comparison to the Gigafactory Tesla is building. His conclusion is that the Tesla Model S (which he owns) will be how Tesla is ultimately perceived as a "quality" product. When it cheapens all the parts and sells a 35k car, presumably this will be like Apple selling iPhones. I think it's a worthwhile comparison.
It's also something to just generally keep in mind about branding. Many engineers might have snarky things to say about a marketing or executive moves, but customer perception is a huge deal. Android has generally stayed ahead of Apple in terms of releasing mobile features, but the higher-income earners still prefer Apple to Android. Why is that? These are the really interesting discussions, but no of course Tesla is not copying per se.. it's just trying to make a lot of money and well, selling cheap products at high costs because of perceived quality is a hell of a way to do that.
So for instance saying that the low cost competitor couldn't afford to spend a little more on quality is dead wrong. If the customer you select values cost over quality (I'm not even looking into customer intimacy, the third discipline he misses) the are willing to pay a premium upfront for a product that is affordable over the lifetime (Total Cost of Ownership). That's why even in the volume market it is not always the one with the lower price to win. And different company could compete carving out a little different market.
Apple is for sure in the quality area. Tesla? My guess is that Tesla is in the Total Cost of Ownership, so totally different business model. Look how much they stress on the lower maintenance cost. Look at the direct distribution model that cut the costs down. Look at the free recharge at their supercharger network. Look at the calculator on how much you save buying a Tesla. Want more details? Their new battery factory will produce battery also for competitors to get to a scale big enough to reduce price. They open sourced their patents so other company will use their technology de facto increasing the consumption of component they need (lowering the price) and doing R&D with them.
Another aspect, Tesla is pretty much a vertically integrated company, even in a market where sourcing component and sharing platform is common, they produce a lot in house (e.g: the batteries). This is common when you look for the lower Total Cost of Ownership (it's in contrast with management mantra, all people that read just the first chapter of Traecy Wiersema book and not the next 19). On the opposite Apple outsource a lot even in a market where outsourcing is common. They do this to get the best component from the producer that happens to be able to provide it.
I know my analysis seems to be counter-intuitive, but if understanding and replicating Apple's business model (or Amazon, Tesla, Southwest, Nordstrom) was easy and intuitive I guess there will be no more Apple. I'm not even saying that I'm 100% right, to be fair...
[1]https://hbr.org/1993/01/customer-intimacy-and-other-value-di...
Tesla targets a high end niche market.
My middle class parents, would never dream of buying a Tesla but they have purchased Mac computers for as long as I have known them.
Honestly I don't see a huge amount of parallels other than they share a common fanbase, tech nerds and these fans want to lump them together, and they are... both businesses competing in the modern economy.
Seriously, it seems like commenters either aren't reading this article and/or have a bias against Tesla.
I am bias because I label Tesla as a company that sells the products that it sells? I don't get it.
Weren't the first Macs really expensive too?
Also I'm sorry I meant the Apple. To me they are the same computer. I understand historically they are not. I never said it wasn't expensive, even the Apple which MSRP ranged from 1,000$ to 2,000$ was still expensive but seems fairly competitive for the time. Cars are also pretty expensive tho lol. But luxury and sports cars are far outside the price-to-use range of a middle class family. A 'Apple' Computer, at least for my family, was worth it for them at that price range. A 20k car functions just as well as a 100k car, the Apple at 1k was pretty phenomenal for my mother from what she has told me.
-edit- I don't think I really get what your point is?
Nowadays Apple is an affordable car. Tesla may one day be an affordable car.
Tesla is an extremely expensive car. Especially if you consider its value-to-price.
And, obviously, different people assign different value to the car. The 97% of owners who'd buy again probably don't agree with you.
Tesla was founded on selling cars to a wealthy niche market.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Motors
"Tesla's primary goal was to commercialize electric vehicles, starting with a premium sports car aimed at early adopters and then moving as rapidly as possible into more mainstream vehicles, including sedans and affordable compacts"
https://www.teslamotors.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-... (August 2, 2006)
Let's keep Hacker News grounded in reality, please.
I looked up the price points, they are accurate... so fuck you and your condescending tone.
Another take is that Tesla is a company that's doing what it needs to, to get into a position where they can sell affordable cars to low-to-middle class people.
But damn Elon Musk, that nasty capitalist oppressor pig that abuses poor people by pricing his cars higher than they can afford, just like Motorola when selling their first mobile phone http://mashable.com/2014/03/13/first-cellphone-on-sale/ .. those filthy bastards!
Workers Unite!
I'm not sure what you mean with "value-to-price", but aren't pretty much all Tesla owners in love with their cars? They seem to be valued very highly, and considered worth the price.
My point is.
They. Are. Not. Within. The. Price. Range. Of. The. Middle. Class...
Apple. Computers. Were.
Particularly if you look at it from a price-to-value standpoint of someone balancing a budget for a car. Luxury, ascetic, and cool-factor do not play a huge roll in that. Maybe they do in your life and then you are most likely either single, upperclass, or bad with money. The first two are ok, expensive luxury vehicles are ok. Am I touching a nerve here?
Value is subjective, by the way.
That means that if a Tesla costs $70k and someone buys one, then he demonstrably values the Tesla higher than his $70k, which means it's safe to say he considers a Tesla worth the price.
> maybe even "objectively"(lol...) nicer than other sports/luxury cars
Nope, not "lol". For example, Teslas are objectively safer than other cars. That's because they can be constructed to be like that because they're electric vehicles, but that doesn't make it any less objectively true.
Also, there's no problem with someone having the money and wanting something luxurious. The fact that some people do is the reason why lots of jobs involved in serving their wants exist, which surely you'd agree is a good thing.
(So basically: Teslas getting bought for their current prices is a Good Thing for us little folks, so I'm not sure what your problem is)
> My point is. [..] They. Are. Not. Within. The. Price. Range. Of. The. Middle. Class... [..] Apple. Computers. Were.
If both of those claims are true, then you've established that "Tesla is not like Apple that way". But is that what you mean?
It seems you're more concerned with some other people being able to afford Teslas than whether Tesla is like Apple that way.
> if you look at it from a price-to-value standpoint
Again, what the hell does "price-to-value" mean?
> Maybe they do in your life and then you are most likely either single, upperclass, or bad with money.
Huh? If someone buys a Tesla, it most definitely doesn't follow that he's bad with money.
> The first two are ok, expensive luxury vehicles are ok. Am I touching a nerve here?
Did you accidentally a word there? But no, you're not touching a nerve. I'd like to have a Tesla for myself, in the right circumstances (which don't even currently apply), but I couldn't afford one anyway.
That's perfectly fine with me though. It's alright that I don't have one, and it's fine I wouldn't even have the money. It's also perfectly fine that some others do, and buy them. If that touches a nerve with you, then there's something wrong with your nerves.
The Article says Tesla is following a similar business model as Apple. I disagree, Tesla's business model, at least currently, is to sell expensive cars to a wealthy niche while Apple's business model was to sell computers to the middle class.
-
> Maybe they do in your life and then you are most likely either single, upperclass, or bad with money.
There is an Or in that statement. However if someone who earns 60 to 100k buys a Tesla, then yes they are bad with money.
He wants Costco (low cost, low price, high volume, slim overall profit) and Apple (low cost, high price, medium-to-small volume, large overall profit) and Tesla (currently I believe high cost, high price, low volume, negative overall profit) to be the same, and so he constantly elides the differences. I think that overall his point is that Costco and Apple are fundamentally about having low costs that allow them to make a different volume/price tradeoff than their competitors, but he constantly confuses price and cost, and contradicts himself about Apple's volume.
-edit random thought- Seems like a whole lot of wealthy tech writers/bloggers want to sell themselves on getting a Tesla because somehow its similar to buying an early mac. There should be a specific term for the tech version of Keeping Up With The Joneses. I wonder how many of them drink soylent and order their quarters off of quarterly. I realize I am on a 'startup centric' site but god damn man some introspection is good people.
I mean just like the saying its a extremely reductionist view of a person, but it touches on something in all of us and something too much in in a lot of us.
Surely if you think Apple/Tesla is going to be great, the smart move is to buy early shares, not early products? The products will still be good/relatively cheap in future - the shares won't.
https://www.teslamotors.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-...
If those are the key advantages, Tesla might be in trouble when Apple releases their own electric car. Apple already has the "quality" brand, and has much more capital.