...I do not understand how uncritical some people are...We should not be thankful to Elon for being so kind and selling us a car....
After 5+ BMW's and a string of Benzes, including an AMG E class - I ditched the Germans for the Model S because nothing they produce comes close to the Tesla experience.
There will be plenty of alternatives out there soon....
Folks have been saying this for 10 years WRT Tesla. Meanwhile Tesla keeps building better cars each year and the competition is perenially "just around the corner."
If I was standing 12 hours in the line without even seeing the car, willing to spend hell a lot for AWD, battery, AP, and all the bells and whistles and paying down the reservation fee, after this week, I would be pretty pissed off...
You funny brah. For every person wanting AWD and $$ options there's another one who did NOT want these options and just got bumped up in line. I'm a California day-one res holder - the car is a bloody good value and I'll be happy with whatever version I get.
Tesla needs to earn my final choice....
Tesla could give 2 cents about you brah - there are hundreds of thousands of people who want the car and understand there is no substitute in the marketplace, and Tesla will sell all they can build. So go ahead and stammer on about how Tesla owes you something - and meanwhile look around for an alternative. Oh yeah - there isn't one.
This self-driving thing is funny... While tesla claims it as USP, Germans have it as well...probably not as many cameras and sensors, but this thing has not even been standardized!
You got it backward brah - Germans have MORE sensors, far more - yet they haven't produced any product which works as well as AP 1.0's single camera, single radar solution. If you haven't spent a lot of time driving with autopilot in a Model S/X you don't understand the appeal and just how incredibly precise AP has become, or how rapidly AP 2 is improving. The Germans keep producing inferior alternatives that lose the lanes, can't function in faded lane conditions, have complicated user interfaces. Oh did I mention they lose the lanes and drift right out of them with no warning - then try to publicly claim their sh*tty autopilot is a feature not a bug - to keep you paying attention? LULZ. See 2017 E Class. 2018 S Class is supposedly much improved - by which time Tesla will have rocketed ahead again with further development of the end-to-end learning NVIDA system. Even Benzo finally threw in the towel on their 20 years of internal development efforts and has partnered with NVIDIA - but won't have a product on market 'til 2019. LOLOLOLOLOLOL.
So who will be right, who will drive the standardization?
Very European thinking of you - consider the possibility that, in America at least, there will not be standardization. There will merely be performance requirements that are met in different ways.
...I personally think that the window of opportunity for Tesla is shrinking. ..Germans can make bloody good cars. They can make them fast, in large volumes, an in quality you expect from a premium car.
Oh sure LULZ. That's the kind of head-in-the-sand German attitude that got them smacked upside the head by Lexus 27 years ago. And your other big error, made by so many people - is you assume Tesla is standing still and nothing is going on behind the scenes - despite the fact that Tesla clearly iterates faster than any other player in the auto industry. You're trying to extrapolate huge conclusions from a couple tweets! LULZ.
I would argue that the only advantage that Tesla has sustainably long-term, is battery know-how and the Gigafactory
If you can declare this with no reasoning I can declare the same applies to the Germans. The only sustainable advantage they have is building large volumes - an advantage that is rapidly shrinking as Tesla increases its production rates 50% or more per year right in front of everyone's eyes.
... Other things are very easily replicable... Charging network in Europe? If VW, BMW and Mercedes decide to build one? ... they will wipe Tesla out of the map.
This reasoning has been used for a decade WRT "Big Auto Is A Dangerous Sleeping Giant Which May Squash Tesla At Any Moment." Meanwhile Tesla's sales just keeps growing and its brand loyalty is 2nd to none in the world.
Can they make the car cheaper than Tesla? Very likely.
Data? Tesla is investing heavily in manufacturing automation and cost reduction while everybody else sits around. Contrary to your opinion, angry MBZ shareholders recently publicly asked MBZ's Dieter why there is no Benzo response to the Model 3. He had no answer for them except to say they are working on it.
Do they have the right focus? Not yet. But in 2 years, this could be a different
In 2 years a lot will be different, including what Tesla is selling. 2 years ago Autopilot 1.0 had not been released - 24 months later Tesla has given us 8 times more cameras, 40X more processing power, 2X more sensitive sonar.
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..If the M3 fails to deliver, I take my 50k EUR, and very likely spend it somewhere else. ...less focus on Solar city and other ventures would be a good thing, get that M3 out as promissed and keeping us as fans
What you don't acknowledge is car culture is dying, fast. There's a fundamental shift between generations. Young people today do not remember nor care about the legendary handling and control harmony of the E39 M5. EV powertrains feel remarkably similar, and so do handling characteristics (low CG, low body roll due to battery on floor). A Nissan leaf has throttle response as good as my 70D S. AP 1 is soooooo good I just want full autonomy so I can nap and read a book. And this coming from a guy who has extensive track time, driving schools, BMWCCA membership. The car is fast becoming a chauffeur driven experience -
people who enjoy driving are becoming irrelevant to the marketplace and they're dying off as their generation fades into history. Once you no longer have to steer handling feel and control harmony becomes irrelevant. Autonomy is soooooo relaxing and such a game changer (again, few realize this outside those who have Model S/X's and enjoy the relaxation benefits of autonomy on a daily basis) that it DWARFS every other consideration in a car in terms of importance.
You will understand this when you get your Model 3 and experience it for yourself.
Autonomy uber alles. Elon knows what he's doing and his sales trajectory reflects this fact.