Hacker News Reader

It’s never a single winner in the market. Sure, Tesla may be superior in some regards(battery tech, better motors) that are critical to an EV, but other car makers bring something else to the table while being reasonably close on range. I for one don’t like the Tesla “All in a single touch screen” interface. Neither do I want my car to constantly update its firmware automatically(chasing a wild auto driving fantasy and SV dreams). I just want my car as an effective tool and be open. I’d love to use CarPlay like on other cars… Tesla?

Not to say that other car makers are perfect. Competition is always good for the consumer.

> I’d love to use CarPlay like on other cars… Tesla?

Wow, I didn't know Tesla didn't support CarPlay. That + Android Auto seems like table stakes in a 2021 luxury (or even mid-range) sedan.

It would be worse than built in nav. No super charger knowledge.

Nothing wrong with having their kid-ass nav system with supercharger routing. Why not _also_ develop CarPlay and Android Auto apps for it and let users use CarPlay and Android Auto like other car manufacturers?

Other car makers don't already have a functional UI.

I have used all three, and much prefer the tesla UI.

Having driven a Polestar 2 (by Volvo) and a tesla I have to agree. The Polestar was miles (heh) ahead in terms of build quality, interior and polish. The only reason I did not buy the Polestar outright is their still low range. I see that gap closing very quick in the next 3-5 years.

You should drive Lucid Air

That's hypothetical though. If I needed to replace my car with an electric today, the only game in town is Tesla and even that would be a painful slowdown for my semi-regular roadtrip (13h according to Google Maps + 2h40m of charging according to Tesla's trip planner).

BTW: That trip planner is showing me some serious money savings on fuel... Ah, that's because they assume that charging costs $0/kWh and fuel costs $4/l ($15 per gallon).

Use ABRP, a better route planner. Free and has both better time and money estimates.

SuperCruise by most accounts is ahead of "FSD" in real-world driving.

Source? SuperCruise is geofenced to highways, so it can't even drive in areas that FSD can so I'm not sure this is the right comparison.

what areas can FSD drive in?

Apples don't have orange skin.

I don't even have the FSD beta but my autopilot can turn on anywhere there's lane lines basically.

Yeah, this is a meme that circulates in the $TSLAQ world, often appearing alongside shrieks of "Panel Gaps!". There really isn't a source, Super Cruise just isn't very available in public yet (just a tiny handful of cars have it, with probably less than 20k users).

The core of the point is generally that Tesla AP is deployed as a hands-on solution, requiring regular steering wheel input (just twisting the wheel a bit), where GM ships this in cars with cameras pointed at the driver (Tesla has them too now, though the wheel nags still exist) that take the entire monitoring load. That makes it "hands free", and therefore better. This is often combined with a conflation of "hands free" with SAE L3 Autonomy (which isn't correct) to try to emphasize the point, skipping the fact that the hands-free areas are limited just just a few hand-vetted highways. All Tesla would need to do to compete with that feature would be to implement the same geofencing, basically. But that's not where they're aiming.

I mean, in the real world, AP is pretty amazing and SC is mostly vaporware. My car took me 429 miles last Thursday and the only input required beyond wheel nags was some editorial differences I had with it about proper lane selection (and even then, I was only right about 60% of the time).

First, you mean Autopilot vs SuperCruise. FSD is only available to a few thousand people in a closed beta and it can do things (drive around a city, or parking lot) that SC cannot attempt (it is geofenced to highways)

Second, legacy OEMs have been releasing their "first EV" for 5 years now. The Bolt beat the Model 3 to market and was hailed (as all these were) as Tesla Killer. Sounds funny today, but people took it seriously in 2017. After that it was supposed to be the eTron, the new Leaf, the EQC, Taycan, ID3 etc etc. Ford is physically incapable of making more than 50k MachE-s this year, meanwhile Tesla makes 220K 3+Y per quarter.

FSD is widely available

“If you have not already purchased FSD capability and your vehicle has FSD computer 3.0 or above, you can subscribe to FSD capability from the Tesla app or your Tesla Account.”

https://www.tesla.com/support/full-self-driving-subscription...

Tesla offers two things called FSD: first, there's the "FSD Beta" which can navigate on city streets (with careful supervision).

Second is FSD, which is the list of features here: https://www.tesla.com/support/autopilot#usingautopilot

Effectively, that second FSD gives you a grab bag of features like "lane change" and "summon", but doesn't give you what people think of with FSD (navigate on city streets).

You can still pay $10k to get FSD, but you only get the second thing by default. The first thing, what people think of as FSD, FSD beta, is limited to a small pool of beta testers.

I would not call that widely available. The FSD that is comparable to super cruise is still in a beta, and it's just awful naming of things which lets that page you link say that anyone can buy FSD.

>First, you mean Autopilot vs SuperCruise. FSD is only available to a few thousand people in a closed beta and it can do things (drive around a city, or parking lot) that SC cannot attempt (it is geofenced to highways)

No, I don't mean autopilot, I mean FSD vs. SuperCruise on the highway.

>Second, legacy OEMs have been releasing their "first EV" for 5 years now. The Bolt beat the Model 3 to market and was hailed (as all these were) as Tesla Killer. Sounds funny today, but people took it seriously in 2017. After that it was supposed to be the eTron, the new Leaf, the EQC, Taycan, ID3 etc etc. Ford is physically incapable of making more than 50k MachE-s this year, meanwhile Tesla makes 220K 3+Y per quarter.

I don't follow your point. Tesla started 18 years ago, the major automakers started 5 years ago and are already producing comparable vehicles. Your argument is: they haven't switched the entirety of their production from ICE to Electric and that's somehow going to mean they won't be able to eventually surpass Tesla?

I have faith that GM or Ford can ramp up production of EVs far, far faster than Tesla can figure out quality control and how to build an interior that's something other than spartan.

When is the last time GM did something like just remove automatic passenger seat adjustment from a car without telling anyone? That's just busch league.

> I have faith that GM or Ford can ramp up production of EVs far, far faster than Tesla can figure out quality control and how to build an interior that's something other than spartan.

Even if GM or Ford hit their own targets (and historically they haven't) they are not close to overtaking Tesla.

And Tesla quality is actually fine. In terms of recalls and major issues Tesla had very few. In terms of fit and finish maybe there is a difference to your BMW, but compared to GM/Ford vehicles at the price the difference is not that big.

In terms of battery and drive train Tesla has performed way better then the others. Ford had massive issues with their PHEV for example. GM just recalled every Bolt and stopped production. The list goes on.

Tesla has managed to scale 50% almost every year for a decade, what exactly could they do to prove this to you other then doing it? They have 2 new factory that are opened shortly, do you believe somehow they managed to get the China factory producing at 500k run rate but other factories they wont be able to do it?

> That's just busch league.

Go look threw the history of GM recalls if you want to see real busch league kind of stuff.

Mach-E is a substantially larger car than a Y, you need to compare to S.

> meanwhile Tesla makes 220K 3+Y per quarter.

Ford sells and delivers about 900,000 F-150s a year.

> Hardly, Tesla has proven that they were right betting on electric being the future. SuperCruise by most accounts is ahead of "FSD" in real-world driving. GM has pivoted in less than 5 years to what it took Tesla 18 years to build.

I let AP with Auto lane change run with confirmationless on during a busy time at night going around I-495 and it handled it flawlessly.

Supercruise literally doesn't even have the features required to do that. This wasn't some beta, this is the thing that's been shipping for a few years now.

Supercruise has one little trick of letting you be handsfree, but that is its only advantage.

Not sure if it will play out the same way but I remember the arrival of the iPhone. Lots of people defended Nokia and RIM (Blackberry) and a few years later they were completely decimated.

I’d be curious why or why not it would play out the same way.

Apple took a commodity item and built network effects (iMessage) and lock in (the app store is both a moat and a ball and chain keeping people inside the Apple ecosystem). Tesla don't have the equivalent.

The Tesla Superchargers network is the network effect.

Government just passed $7.5 billion for charging network. There's probably more to come. SUperchargers are definitely an advantage, but how long until electric charging stations are everywhere?

How so? It becomes less valuable the more people who use it. And it doesn't work like a platform. That would be like Apple trying to build every possible app themselves.

You have the option to choose any of the other EV makers, but this one EV maker has very fast charging stations worldwide in strategic locations, with lounges and predictable charging rates.

Of the 3 EVs that I drive, only the Tesla I would take outside the city. Even if the others had a much bigger range (they don't) I would not be comfortable outside of the Tesla supercharging network because I've encountered many difficulties with ChargePoint, evGO, etc: stations not working, backed up, slow charging, high cost, etc.

The ecosystem is its charging network because it's very reliable and eliminates range anxiety.

What if instead of looking at company performance or stock value - we actually look at the VALUE That top execs in a company actually provide?

What dept is that DIRECTOR of a company in charge of and how did they actually perform.... etc...

Bookmarking for Nov 2026 — my prediction: GM and Ford go the same way as Volvo (sold to another manufacture) or have gone bankrupt and sold just for the name.

Have you driven an electric made my GM?

Why do you ask? Because your comment sounds like it's setting up for an episode of Mr. Gotcha.

>>>Tesla has proven that they were right betting on electric being the future.

This should be the premise to literally take every single oil executive to task.

---

I have a close family friend who is effectively an oil tycoon for shell oil. one of the worst companies on the planet.

They shared over dinner at a really nice restauarant in Silicon Valley, pics of them hunting 'big game' in africa and the typical pics of 'here is the kill i had while on 'safari' in africa'

yeah if you work in big oil, go fuck yourself.

chill out dude

Thank god you and most people on HN and everywhere else are doing god’s work for their jobs while also helping make sure no one is homeless and given opportunities to work.