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Comment by semi-extrinsic | Hacker News Reader

> Tesla has plainly kicked the ass of the European and Asian auto giants

Tesla had 1.4% of all cars sold in 2021, by number of units. Going by revenue it's somewhere around 1%. It is kinda hard to see that as kicking the asses of the competition.

Kicking ass would be more like what happened with smartphones, where iOS + Android went from 0 to >90% market share in the space of five years, leaving Nokia, Palm, Blackberry etc. as brands nobody would assoviate themselves with. Nothing like that is happening in automotive.

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Smartphone upgrade cycles are annual/biennial. Car upgrade cycles average 7-10 years.

Not that I expect Tesla to dominate like apple and android have, but I do think we’ll need to wait a few more years before we know the answer.

You're comparing apples to oranges. "iOS" market share is iphone market share, which is still very small but with a huge profit margin, android market share is the market share of dozens of phones brands. Nokia and Palm both sell android phones in 2022.

I don't see how that's comparable to Tesla VS old automakers

Palm and Nokia both used to sell hardware with their own locked in OS, and saw that as critical. Both were big names once.

It would be like if Ford was stuck selling rebranded ‘awesome edition’ Tesla Cybertrucks instead of F150s at 10% of the revenue.

Tesla gets a lot of press. But the flash is always bigger than the reality, except when it comes to stock price.

1.4% is massive for a car manufacturer built from scratch in just over a decade. You can’t really scale car manufacturing the way an existing computer megacorp could scale phone production.

Expensive cars in the emerging EV market. 1.4% is great.

Tesla has 14% of the EV market, VW Group has 12% - and closing fast.

They also have a much larger dealership network.

dealership network eats their margin, plus vw has to discount all of their own legacy sales they cannibalize

It eats their margin, marginally (typically 5% kickback if a dealership meets sales figures, per car) as they're almost entirely franchises.

But that dealer network means when you need your car serviced, or repaired, you're never more than a short(ish) drive away from one.

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