Their whole car is a computer that can receive OTA updates. ( please show me an instance where a major car company sent 5% performance increase over the internet )

Their battery tech is better than everyones. ( Why is the Audi E-tron and Jaguar I-pace Less range than even the cheapest Tesla? )

Their autonomous is better than everyones. ( Don't know why you think they're far behind, the only other player with a comparable product is Supercruise and that is on one version of Cadillac ).

The data they have on their cars/collection pipeline is better than everyones.

Because their car is software there are all sorts of quality of life perks that exist from the dashboard.

So tired of hearing these cars aren't any better when they're some of the highest rated cars of all time and consistently compete with cars much more expensive.

> Their battery tech is better than everyones. ( Why is the Audi E-tron and Jaguar I-pace Less range than even the cheapest Tesla? )

The Audi e-tron deliberately over-provisioned the battery to give it a longer life and to enable faster charging. Only 88% of the battery (about 83 kwh) is available for use, but the upside of that is the e-tron can maintain a 150 kilowatt charge rate up to 80% state of charge which no other current EV can do:

https://support.fastned.nl/hc/en-gb/articles/115015420127-17...

Not even the Tesla Model 3 on the new Tesla V3 chargers:

https://electrek.co/2019/03/07/tesla-v3-supercharger-action-...

The e-tron's main problem is that it's too heavy for the battery it has. It either needs a bigger battery or a lighter construction or both.

But the Hyundai Kona EV, the Kia Niro EV, and the new Kia Soul EV all have good range for a good price. The Kona narrowly beat the Model X in this 1000 km road trip comparison:

https://insideevs.com/hyundai-kona-electric-race-tesla-model...

Tesla doesn't seem very far ahead.

>Their whole car is a computer that can receive OTA updates

No, the car has a computer that controls the systems in the car like all the modern cars. Receiving software updates to a computer is not a huge tech challenge. And no, you don't receive performance over the internet, you receive a driving configuration that may better utilize the hardware. Can be easily done by any manufacturer.

>Their autonomous is better than everyone

Factually wrong, they are a category down from actual self-driving tech developers. But if you decide to skip the self-driving part and call it driving assistant or something, then yes it's a pretty good driving assistant that can follow lines etc. Some people think that calling the driving assistance software an autopilot is borderline false advertisement.

>Factually wrong, they are a category down from actual self-driving tech developers.

Well they're the only people offering anything this quality unless your one of the hundreds of people in Phoenix that can order a Waymo (that still has a person driving).

>some people think that calling the driving assistance software an autopilot is borderline false advertisement.

Well my 'driving assistance' drove me 95% of the way to work this morning hands free feet free, seems pretty appropriate to call it autonomous to me.

Tesla also happens to have a fanbase who would defend them with passion, making claims and arguing for hours that you can indeed download car performance from the internet, that driving assist is an autonomous driving even though Tesla says that it isn't and you should always stay alert and if you get slammed into a wall(like that poor Apple engineer) you should have known better.

It's really not about tech but about the brand. Since Stave Job is no longer with us, Musk happens to own the tech visionary title.

It can be annoying but I'm glad that Tesla exists an it's brand is pushing the big players into electric cars.

->making claims and arguing for hours that you can indeed download car performance from the internet,

I don't understand. People went to sleep, their car updated via internet, and they woke up with more performant cars. This really happened. Obviously the car didn't changed the hardware, it changed the software, and the car drove better.

Obviously you don't "upload performance" from the internet. But Tesla (and many other companies) often figure out how to squeeze more from existing hardware with tweaks to how the device operates. It's the same reason software patches can make a program or device feel faster. The device didn't get any faster, but the developers figured out how to do more with the same hardware.

Exactly.

> Receiving software updates to a computer is not a huge tech challenge.

And yet almost all car companies are—with rare exceptions—entirely averse to the modification of car software updates for anything more substantial than bugfixes, device compatibility and trivial tweaks.

It might not be a tech challenge, but it is a corporate one. It seems like no car companies want their cars to ever change in any way, lest a single word of their owner's manuals might need to be rewritten.

BMW for example will provide software updates to their iDrive head units: either as a trivial patch for device compatibility, or as a more substantial update applied by the dealer. And the latter sounds great... EXCEPT that their system configuration is guided by the car's build date, and if a useful feature was released after your car was built, you probably won't get it.

By way of example, my May 2013 build date BMW F20 shipped with no screen overlay for volume changes. In order to get that overlay, I first had to get the software flashed by the dealer (there was an actual crashing bug which was another story) and then I had to "code" the car myself to make iDrive think its build date was a year later. Once I did that, I got a screen overlay for volume changes.

I agree completely, what's holding back the established manufacturers is their culture. Their understanding of car experience is getting dated quickly.

I think at one point they will have to shake up and change. If they are smart, their executives will drive Tesla's as their personal vehicles until they understand what's all about.

These are not hard tech problems but for example, with the iPhone, it took quite some time for Google and Samsung to grasp the new expectation but Nokia and Microsoft never cracked it.

>( please show me an instance where a major car company sent 5% performance increase over the internet )

That doesn't sound like anything special. Engines have been computer controlled for a long time now. Depending on the temperature, fuel mixture, etc you can have a single engine with completely different characteristics. This is something VW took advantage of in Dieselgate by improving the performance of the car outside of emissions tests. If your car was affected the only thing that was changed by the recall was the software. Of course OTA updates are more convenient than driving to your dealer but software updates themselves are not a competitive advantage of Tesla.

>That doesn't sound like anything special.

Then lets see an example? As I asked the first time?

>but software updates themselves are not a competitive advantage of Tesla.

That is crazy to me. It's an advantage specific to Tesla. Clearly it's not game changing for a lot of people, but it is an advantage.

Another thing, their motors are lighter, cheaper and produces more horse-power than their competitors (in this case, comparing the Chevy Bolt and BMW i3)

>Tesla comes from the brand itself and Elon Musk's persona. The tech itself is nothing special, they are far behind in autonomous driving but the brand is very strong

I swear that this applies to every industry, A "strong" personality in front of the company + avg product = Established brand