What? I've been following the market and Tesla has not brought no new innovation in any aspect of the car (engine, battery technology etc). They've just hired some great designers and invested a lot in marketing. You can't even say that their cars are competitively priced. I've seen way more innovation from Chinese electric car builders.
Also, wrt to software, Teslas are basically hacked together, according to multiple reports and analyses, teardowns.
False. Elon Musk frequently states in interviews that Tesla spends nothing on marketing. There are no Tesla television commercials, no online ads, no billboards and no paid placements. Tesla doesn't even participate in automotive trade shows. 100% of what you passively interpret as "marketing" is unpaid, organic news coverage, social media buzz and seeing actual Tesla vehicles on the road.
Tesla runs a referral program and will even give you its most expensive car for free if you do enough marketing for Tesla. I don't know how much Tesla spends on that program, but "nothing" is not a good estimate.
if you think that, they're doing a really good job.
It may not be traditional advertising, but there's certainly tons of advertising going into it.
Anyway... as with discussions of the iPhone ad infinitum, it's not about developing innovations de novo, but rather about taking different features and incorporating them into an offering that holistically beats everything else.
We'd seen all of the iPhone's features in earlier phones... but their combination and integration in the first iPhone revolutionised the industry.
Likewise, we've seen electric cars before, but Tesla shook the industry up by creating an electric car which had no major compromises and could --together with the revolutionary Supercharger network-- could completely replace an ICE car for almost all use-cases.
Ford was doing that in the late 80s when they started making electronically controlled transmissions (and I doubt they were the first). I doubt they were first.
Functionality gets integrated to the ECU. Then engineers decide that the ECU doesn't need to care about the windows and the HVAC so it gets its own module. Then they decide that there's no reason to have all these extra modules when the ECU can just do it. Wash, rinse repeat. Everything old is new again the cycle time is just long enough that most people don't remember.
Edit: Why is this down-voted?
Of course, by the time the thing is designed, components are sourced and so on, the pendulum might have well have swung the other way.
I've got a news flash for you my friend: everything is basically hacked together.
[1] https://cleantechnica.com/2018/03/11/tesla-model-3-motor-in-...
You're talking past my point. I didn't say they were innovative, I said they showed they could build electric cars that match ICE ones and even surpass them in some regards. That doesn't require that much innovation, just putting very well together existing technology. It's the iPod all over again. Not innovative but it actually put the technology in a usable state for the mass market.
I currently drive a BMW 3 series. It has size/features/range that are enough (and often exceed) what I need. No one except Tesla offers anything I can reasonably replace that car with. Not even BMW themselves who offer the quirky i3 but nothing like the Model 3. While all the carmakers were fumbling around making hybrids a little bit better Tesla went and jumped ahead with getting an electric sedan built. There's no point in me getting a hybrid, I already average exactly 50mpg (4.7 l/100km) with the current diesel, a hybrid wouldn't add much if anything. Switching to an electric can be a 2-4x step for cost and CO2 depending on electricity costs and share of renewables in the grid at your location.
Or in other words, the quality of the experience is so high that the product pretty much sells itself.
Don't look into CAN bus and anything by Ford, then.
"Marketing, promotional and advertising costs are expensed as incurred and are included as an element of selling, general and administrative expense in the consolidated statement of operations. We incurred marketing, promotional and advertising costs of $66.5 million, $48.0 million and $58.3 million in the years ended December 31, 2017, 2016 and 2015, respectively."
> You know, Tesla doesn’t do any advertising, or we don’t do any paid endorsements
Source: https://www.recode.net/2018/11/2/18053428/recode-decode-full...
The 10-K states the truth in black and white. If Musk makes a contradicting statement in an interview, the 10-K is correct and he is not. If the 10-K is fraudulent, people are going to jail.
> Bolt, Volt, Leaf, i3, ELR - and is pulling away from the pack at an ACCELERATING pace
But this is way too breathless. The Nissan Leaf is the best selling electric car of all time. They've sold 350k of them and by all accounts it's a very decent small car. And that's great for everyone because it pushes the infrastructure to adapt and creates the market. I expect Nissan-Renault to keep moving upmarket and Tesla downmarket to a point where we will be more or less fully served in 4 or 5 years. That wouldn't have happened as fast without Tesla but lets not ignore the existing manufacturers that have already done incredibly well on this and give them credit over the ones that are still sitting on their hands.