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Comment by ekr | Hacker News Reader

> Tesla has done an amazing thing by showing that electric cars can match ICE ones and even be better than them in several regards.

What? I've been following the market and Tesla has not brought no new innovation in any aspect of the car (engine, battery technology etc). They've just hired some great designers and invested a lot in marketing. You can't even say that their cars are competitively priced. I've seen way more innovation from Chinese electric car builders.

Also, wrt to software, Teslas are basically hacked together, according to multiple reports and analyses, teardowns.

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> They've ... invested a lot in marketing.

False. Elon Musk frequently states in interviews that Tesla spends nothing on marketing. There are no Tesla television commercials, no online ads, no billboards and no paid placements. Tesla doesn't even participate in automotive trade shows. 100% of what you passively interpret as "marketing" is unpaid, organic news coverage, social media buzz and seeing actual Tesla vehicles on the road.

> unpaid, organic news coverage, social media buzz

if you think that, they're doing a really good job.

If you don't think that, they're doing a really good job.

Goddamn it. Either way, they got us.

I hear they spent a few mil on their Twitter campaign.

We got a comedian here.

Marketing is more than television commercials.

Tesla runs a referral program and will even give you its most expensive car for free if you do enough marketing for Tesla. I don't know how much Tesla spends on that program, but "nothing" is not a good estimate.

Musk is essentially a celebrity at this point.

It may not be traditional advertising, but there's certainly tons of advertising going into it.

They also shot one of their cars into space... i wonder what SpaceX would charge other car makers for such an add. They do marketing and are great at it, just in unconventional ways.

I believe that their cars having a single central ECU vs. the general trend of multiple interconnected modules is fairly novel for a major car maker? Their battery technology is also years ahead of competitors, according to teardowns.

Anyway... as with discussions of the iPhone ad infinitum, it's not about developing innovations de novo, but rather about taking different features and incorporating them into an offering that holistically beats everything else.

We'd seen all of the iPhone's features in earlier phones... but their combination and integration in the first iPhone revolutionised the industry.

Likewise, we've seen electric cars before, but Tesla shook the industry up by creating an electric car which had no major compromises and could --together with the revolutionary Supercharger network-- could completely replace an ICE car for almost all use-cases.

>I believe that their cars having a single central ECU vs. the general trend of multiple interconnected modules is fairly novel for a major car maker?

Ford was doing that in the late 80s when they started making electronically controlled transmissions (and I doubt they were the first). I doubt they were first.

Functionality gets integrated to the ECU. Then engineers decide that the ECU doesn't need to care about the windows and the HVAC so it gets its own module. Then they decide that there's no reason to have all these extra modules when the ECU can just do it. Wash, rinse repeat. Everything old is new again the cycle time is just long enough that most people don't remember.

Edit: Why is this down-voted?

They do decide back and forth, and where I worked the cycle was in large part driven by the dynamics between what features the market wanted (safety classification being an interesting one - this inherently pushes towards dedicated MCUs) and how well a single MCU offering at that moment in time could handle all the features wanted.

Of course, by the time the thing is designed, components are sourced and so on, the pendulum might have well have swung the other way.

> Teslas are basically hacked together, according to multiple reports and analyses, teardowns.

I've got a news flash for you my friend: everything is basically hacked together.

I'd be interested in knowing where you've been getting your information from. Teslas don't have engines but the AC induction motors they use are substantially more advanced than anything that existed before [1]. Tesla is also fairly famous for having a $0 marketing budget.

[1] https://cleantechnica.com/2018/03/11/tesla-model-3-motor-in-...

What budget is the money for their referral marketing program categorized as?

>What? I've been following the market and Tesla has not brought no new innovation in any aspect of the car (engine, battery technology etc). They've just hired some great designers and invested a lot in marketing. You can't even say that their cars are competitively priced. I've seen way more innovation from Chinese electric car builders.

You're talking past my point. I didn't say they were innovative, I said they showed they could build electric cars that match ICE ones and even surpass them in some regards. That doesn't require that much innovation, just putting very well together existing technology. It's the iPod all over again. Not innovative but it actually put the technology in a usable state for the mass market.

I currently drive a BMW 3 series. It has size/features/range that are enough (and often exceed) what I need. No one except Tesla offers anything I can reasonably replace that car with. Not even BMW themselves who offer the quirky i3 but nothing like the Model 3. While all the carmakers were fumbling around making hybrids a little bit better Tesla went and jumped ahead with getting an electric sedan built. There's no point in me getting a hybrid, I already average exactly 50mpg (4.7 l/100km) with the current diesel, a hybrid wouldn't add much if anything. Switching to an electric can be a 2-4x step for cost and CO2 depending on electricity costs and share of renewables in the grid at your location.

They're the apple of cars. They've designed the cars extremely well (much like apple's products are well designed) and provide a lot of support in case anything goes wrong. And by design I don't just mean aesthetics - the safety, the experience, even the over-the-air updates all contribute to the total package.

Or in other words, the quality of the experience is so high that the product pretty much sells itself.

I own a Tesla. It is by far the best car I have ever owned. This is the only car which actually gets better over time. My Tesla now is actually 10x better than the one I bought.

Where can I read about the teardown and analysis of Tesla software?

> Teslas are basically hacked together

Don't look into CAN bus and anything by Ford, then.

Yes, exactly. They invested a lot of money into marketing and convinced people of the truth: even a mediocre electric car is still pretty good.

Wrong. Tesla famously invests nothing in marketing. No TV commercials, no online ads, nothing.

Except they actually spend more as a percentage of revenue than GM. Ignore the puffery and go read the 10-Ks. If you're going to give such curt and dismissive replies, I think you should at least make a token effort to be correct.

"Marketing, promotional and advertising costs are expensed as incurred and are included as an element of selling, general and administrative expense in the consolidated statement of operations. We incurred marketing, promotional and advertising costs of $66.5 million, $48.0 million and $58.3 million in the years ended December 31, 2017, 2016 and 2015, respectively."

Though it contradicts the source you cited, here is a recent quote from Elon Musk (interviewed by Kara Swisher)

> You know, Tesla doesn’t do any advertising, or we don’t do any paid endorsements

Source: https://www.recode.net/2018/11/2/18053428/recode-decode-full...

He talks about advertising there, which is a subset of marketing.

The 10-K states the truth in black and white. If Musk makes a contradicting statement in an interview, the 10-K is correct and he is not. If the 10-K is fraudulent, people are going to jail.

Not Elon, he just pays a small fine.

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