Tesla

 

Elon Musk may be the richest man in the world, but Tesla is not producing millions and millions of cars. They're making money by selling higher-end cars at higher prices. The masses need a car today, but with Tesla you generally have to wait months. Other car manufacturers are producing millions of cars, but the entire industry is having knee-jerk reactions to Tesla. Tesla is doing a good job of electric cars, and electric cars appear to be the future of cars. So we all need to do what Tesla's doing. Except for one small thing, Tesla currently isn't selling millions and millions of cars. Now maybe the whole car industry is coming to a new era where you simply don't sell millions and millions of cars. You sell fewer cars and they go a million miles. This is going to dramatically change the car brand landscape. Either they will change in some way or go out of business. Right now it isn't clear what changes need to be made. The theory is if you could make a car that recharged in 2 minutes, went 500 miles on a charge, and the battery lasted for 20 years, and you can sell it for $30,000, then millions of people would buy one tomorrow. I probably would and I can't really even afford a car. This car just described above is certainly better than any current electric car and probably better than any gas car. It's just as convenient, last longer, and isn't overpriced. 

Currently the other manufacturers are coming out with electric cars that are fairly pitiful. It's almost like they're making the electric car market too easy for Tesla. Some of them barely go a hundred miles on a charge. Maybe in Europe that works but there's some places in America where you almost go 100 miles to the grocery store. Maybe I'm exaggerating but you get the point. Some of the other electric cars are expensive, don't go very far, take longer to recharge and really aren't viable as a family car.

Then Elon is obsessed with self-driving cars. Well if he ever gets one that actually does self drive it will be interesting. But the problem with self-driving is it has to be very very good. It's going to have to drive in all the different conditions that humans can drive in like snow ice sleet fog hail torrential rains high winds. And it needs to be able to avoid obstacles like running deer and teenagers on bicycles. Humans don't always do these jobs great, but we will expect a self-driving car to do it perfect. I haven't heard of this kind of feature, but it may need a feature that pulls over to the side of the road and puts on bright enough flashing lights to really let people know that it's sitting stopped. These flashing lights would be brighter than just flashing brake lights. Any kind of new feature requires people understanding what to expect. If you're in fog and you suddenly see something bright and fuzzy flashing off to the side what is it? And if the Tesla pulls off to the side on a curve, then a car coming from behind may think that the Tesla is sitting right in the middle of the road. Anyway that's kind of a side issue.

People that buy Tesla's seem reasonably happy with anything they do. For instance, for several years it may say self-driving but you will be expected to remain alert with your hands near the wheel. If you don't do that prepare to die. After all if you took your hands off of any other steering wheel it would simply become uncontrolled. You as the driver will always ultimately be in control, until they remove the steering wheel.

 Elon has provided an environment where if somebody came along and mass produced an electric car with very few features that reliably went 300 miles on a charge and recharged in a half hour and cost about $20,000, they could start selling millions of them today. Manufacturers like Ford and general motors have the capability to do this, but my guess it's too much of a paradigm change. An electric car like this will last about twice as long and people will buy half as many cars. That kind of a car messes up the whole car industry. They're making cars cheaper that go further, so they're selling fewer of them. There would be less money being spent in the car industry, which means a bunch of the car industry will disappear. Since this is against common sense for car manufacturers, they simply don't want to compete that way. Build a cheap long-lasting electric car that eventually shrinks their business. Doesn't sound very smart. It's great for everybody but them.

 I'm thinking of starting a car company called Cheapo Electric. It will build millions of cheap electric cars. Guaranteed to go 300 miles on a charge and last a million miles. It's very short on features. It doesn't have Lane assist, it doesn't have 500 airbags, but by golly it goes where you steer it. Elon can be the Cadillac of electric cars, and I'll be the Chevy. Everybody else move over.