I just bought my new (to me) 2015 model S a month ago today and if I had to buy another car right now it would definitely be a tesla. I believe that they are making the best electric car with the best options at this point in time. However, that said, I do worry about their future a bit when (and maybe if) the conventional automakers catch up.
Way back in 2012 before the whole smart watch craze a company called pebble started a kickstarter campaign for their new smart watch. I've always been big on technology and I had been watching the smart watch market and there were a few options in 2012, but all of them had big compromises... big ugly watches... lack of options, etc. This was long before apple and samsung started making their watches. In my opinion, the pebble watch was the first really viable smart watch that came to the market and it seemed like a lot of people agreed with me. They shattered records with their kickstarter campaign and raised over $10 million (they had only set a $100,000 goal).
The pebble watch was not perfect by any means, but it was the best thing on the market by far at the time and I used one and loved it for several years. Pebble was doing amazingly well and came out with several new versions of their watch, including another record breaking kickstarter campaign raising over $20 million this time. But then samsung and apple came out with their smart watches that in my opinion were better than the pebble offerings. I bought an Apple Watch on the first day they were available and haven't looked back at pebble since. It seems that a lot of people agreed with me because at the end of 2016 the once promising pebble went bankrupt and suddenly went out of business. Fitbit bought most of their assets, but discontinued the pebble smart watches.
From when I got my first pebble watch in 2013 through April of 2015 when I got my Apple Watch I was a huge pebble fan. I loved what they were doing and like I said, I believe they were the best smart watch available at the time. But when the 'conventional' mobile device makers caught up with them the masses went with the big names and pebble withered and died.
I truely hope that this will not happen with tesla, but I do see some similarities with the pebble story. I believe that the tesla cars are the best cars out there right now, however, they are definitely not perfect and there are some things that conventional automakers just do better. If and when the conventional automakers start offering electric cars with a good range and tech features like autopilot I think tesla might have a bit of a struggle to stay in the market.
