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Comment by murat124 | Hacker News Reader

How would one go from making no cars at all, not even parts, to making them?

The criticism Tesla had initially was that they didn’t outsource their production to companies like Magna, but instead do it in-house.

I think Apple will outsource it, although the article did say talks with Magna fell through.

Dyson seems like it has the know how to do production in-house, but their car project failed.

Tesla's contracted a lot of work to Lotus

Only for the first-gen Roadster, all the way back in 2008. Total sales: 2450.

People said the same thing about that one guy from PayPal. I think the answer could be summed up as: hire people who know how to do it.

Tesla started with a Lotus design and went from there. Lotus produced "gliders" for them for many years. I think apple could do the same.

They could, but they won't be very competitive.

Competitive in what sense?

Mostly price and battery range. Sure, they might make a better design and interior, but price and battery range are the biggest competitive factors with EVs

> Mostly price

apple tends to not make the cheapest version of anything it makes (quite the opposite). I'm sure the people buying the iCar are going to be the same ones dropping $1200 every year for the latest iphone

> battery range

they seem to have a lot of experience with batteries

> price and battery range are the biggest competitive factors with EVs

and the smartphone ecosystem was full of tiny physical keyboards before apple released the iphone. Apple has a unique way of redefining "must have" features when they enter the market.

If anything, I think tesla will be the android of EVs and the iCar will be the iphone of EVs

The same way you go to making phones. Or own CPUs: huge upfront investment, buying the best people, companies and partnerships.

Buy a car manufacturer.

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