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Comment by bashtoni | Hacker News Reader

Here in Australia, it's interesting how well the Tesla cars are still selling.

The model Y is still the best selling EV despite the wide choice of other brands. BYD out sell them in aggregate, but Tesla are holding their own pretty well. Of course, all the Tesla cars here are made in the Shanghai Gigafactory, but still, I don't think Chinese brand dominance is a forgone conclusion. I think the real danger is if American protectionism makes Tesla feel like they don't need to innovate any more.

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Software is everything when it comes to EV's. As an American, I've had many years of experience with software from around the world. No one makes software more suited for Americans, than other Americans.

Can you explain a little more? What expectations do Americans have of software that are unique to their country?

just compare the landing pages for taobao or baidu to the western equivalent. UX for the asian market has wildly different expectations and best practices

> No one makes software more suited for Americans, than other Americans.

yeah that's why there's no immigrants in US tech am I rite.

that's also why tiktok is not used by americans at all /s

The UX of the car software is only a small portion. The actual car has a lot of software which isn't cultural.

The dashboard and UX of the car can be tailored to a culture, while the onboard processing remains the same - it's just one software update away. This is sort of a silver lining of removing physical dials and buttons and going all in with touch-screen.

These are exactly the kind of takes I still come to this site for!

Right. Like TikTok??

There's only one brand thats still getting software updates 10 years later - Tesla. No way I’m buying a Chinese vehicle that’s going to get drive-by root-kitted.

How well does the self driving work over there? That's the real innovation and personally it seems to work well enough in America so I'm curious what your experience is with that.

My colleague at work paid extra for it a few years ago - still waiting for it to activated… not sure it widely available here yet

That doesn’t sound right, why are some people same to get it and not others. As far as I’m aware you can go buy a Tesla in Australia and enable it via subscription.

Only on later HW3 cars. Older cars can still buy the subscription but get limited features (summon, etc, not full self driving). Apparently there’s work underway to support older cars

I used it in a Tesla Y to commute to work in Sydney (from Terry Hills to Alexandria).

Absolutely sublime. I turned it off _once_ yesterday as I didnt trust the gap it was leaving with a woman who was driving over the lines.

Honestly blew me away.

China is bringing their more expensive cars first to make money once the market gets saturated then we might see more domination as they try to compete for more market share

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