No, not at all. In the case of cars with ICE the biggest challenge is still mechanical -- mostly related to environmental protection standards. To keep a BMW M5 Euro5 compliant you have to go a _long_ way. If you mean that you use software to design these cars then well, yes, I can agree. But the onboard software is still a very-very small part of the challenge.

(Ask somebody who's actually in the car industry, especially if he's in the higher-end market, like someone from AMG, BMW M, etc.; just the cooling of these things is an art.)

In the case of Tesla, things are slightly different, but not that much. The big thing here is the reliable electric motor, which -- also according to Tesla marketing -- is simple compared to an ICE, but in reality it's a big challenge to manufacture because high-powered electric motors need to be manufactured with incredible precision, otherwise they break quickyl and often.

For example, VW will predictably do really well in the next 10-15 years as they've invested tons of money into optimizing their manufacturing; they use the same basic modules for a large VW and a small Seat.

Why not go the Apple approach - provide a small number of models that satisfy a pareto-split percentage (80%+ including the more profitable markets) and leave the remaining percentage either to aftermarket partners or competitors?

That's the approach Tesla has taken, focusing primarily on the highest margin portion, and filtering down.

Tesla isn't planning to be a "big player in the automotive industry". They plan on creating new product market, which just so happens to be compatible with the existing infrastructure. The incompatibilities (i.e., no ICE/gas) is a feature.

Usually that's what thing that differentiates >=premium cars from the rest. If you buy a Skoda, you get packages. If you buy an Audi (same conglomerate), you can customize everything as you like.

For the same reason that car manufacturers offer different models for the same product (personal transportation): like the A, C, E, S class (in the case of Mercedes). These classes allow a producer to differentiate between consumers with different spending power. If you offer just one product at one price you can't capture the whole market (ie. you sell too little / too cheap to rich people and can't sell to poor people).

Apple recently started going this way as well with the introduction of the Apple watch. If you look at all the models and options they can cover a very broad price range. Differentiating between the watch sport, the watch and the watch edition. Add to this the different sizes (38MM and 42MM) and the different bands and you get a very nice price continuum between 349$ and 17000$.

Add in the fact that it's not millions of variations (really only a couple dozen now). Tim Cook famously said in some conference a while back that all of what Apple sells can be fit in on a table in front of him. I don't think that guiding vision has really changed.

Furthermore, it's not clear if the Apple watch will be successful. I wouldn't use it as a guideline for a successful product strategy - yet.

And work on more charging stations and battery life. Here at the office the guy with the Tesla is constantly mocked cause he couldn't even make it to the team building event, less than a 3 hr drive away (mainly by the guy who had to borrow his mom's Clio to buy some loudspeakers that didn't fit in his own sports car, but that's a different story ...)

Why on earth you'd spend a hundred grand on a car that can't drive more than a couple hours is beyond me, even if it has a big-ass iPad inside.

I've had my car in Austin for a year and a half now and never once been concerned about power, never once been to a charging station (and never been to a gas station). I would suggest that most people aren't regularly taking giant road trips.

The touch screen is not even that awesome (no tactile response), it's less than 1/100th of what makes the car great to own / drive.

Also, there are many people who take long road trips far more frequently and for whom range is a genuine issue (between my vehicles, I clock about 30k miles a year--mostly pleasure as I live only a mile from my job.) I don't begrudge those who can make an EV work for them, but it won't for me.

Yes, that is true. People will need different ways of commuting based on what their needs are.

> The problem I have with this argument is that is doesn't eliminate the problem, but merely removes it a step.

Also true, but what is the problem? Again, you need different ways of commuting based on what your needs are.

No one suggests taking cars everywhere. Some people like road trips, but many people fly when the distance is too far and their time too short.

Likewise people in New York take the subway, elsewhere people ride their bikes. No one suggests the fatal flaw with those is that you can't take them to the next state over. You just rent a car or take a bus, or do whatever, or, if you really need it, you pay a decent sum of money (in New York, at least) to keep a car in a parking space for when it is needed.

We're already in a no single size fits all situation, so it's not clear what the problem with that continuing is.

After depreciation and gas, might be cheaper to rent a car for them too.

to all armchair engineers, you can try out how to create low pollution high power engines in this game: automationgame.com

This. Google and other companies at its scale don't need to worry too much about focus. They can just use the excessive amount of revenues made via software to throw resources at solving global problems and turning scifi into reality.

Is it possible to build a new non-ad-supported software business that brings in $60 billion a year in revenue? Maybe. And I'm sure Google's trying.

But it could be that their best bet is to invest in areas where the potential rewards are enormous and few others have the resources and organizational will to invest in.

The strategy you outline, and that Google is taking, smacks of desperation, and sends two signals to investors 1) the ad business is declining and 2) the company is desperately trying to find something else that works. However this is based on a false premise. Advertising is not going away. I don't see other media companies making cars -- instead I see them trying to work out new business models in their core area of competence.

I suspect that much of this is founder driven. It's often the case that founders don't really like what their business has become. In Googles's case they want their legacy to be more than ads, so they are throwing money at vanity projects. These projects generate good press, and satisfy their ego, but in the real world they have little chance of success, and little hope of returning much to the company. For example, Google Glass.

Google's core area of competence is not advertising, advertising is just the means which, so far, has been most efficient to monetize their core competence, but its also a means which has limited range for continued growth.

> In Googles's case they want their legacy to be more than ads, so they are throwing money at vanity projects. These projects generate good press, and satisfy their ego, but in the real world they have little chance of success, and little hope of returning much to the company. For example, Google Glass.

Viewed a different way, there is a limit to how much money Google can pour into its established lines of business with a good return, and one of the things they use the surplus for is high-risk, long-term, high-potential (but low-probability) return projects. Which it can afford to miss on virtually all of, because if it hits even a couple, it'll provide more return than more sedate uses of that money would, and it can afford to throw money at enough projects that it is likely to hit some winners.

2. Not sure how displaying notifications and having a camera with some basic voice recognition is that big of an advantage right now for a smartwatch. Maybe I'm missing something big, but it doesn't seem like Glass did anything that could translate to a smartwatch that smartwatches don't already do better than Glass. Also, they already have Android Wear.

I'm pretty sure they discovered/made things they could leverage with regards to integration with apps/smartphones and voice interaction. They did a lot of work with interactions involving very pared down and minimal visual information. Also, it doesn't have to stop with a smartwatch. What if they had an in-car HUD as well as a background service running on a smartphone that could leverage the HUD, the watch, or any enabled and linked display device? For example, what if he whole system could figure out I was in the living room, then enable a Glass-like interaction through the media PC+remote, with optional voice? (You'd have to activate the voice, of course.)

Re: camera -- I can see lots of potential for far more discrete devices and telepresence devices, especially in corporate and government environments.

Which is why they tend to become incompetent at taking R&D and turning it into product.

Check out this video by Hugh Herr about bionics and watch how artificial limbs give people dignity and freedom and joy: https://www.ted.com/talks/hugh_herr_the_new_bionics_that_let...

Minority report's mistake is to assume we'll use old-fashioned police with new tech. But new technology allows us to change society in unimaginable ways.

That's a trade-off that a lot of people are uncomfortable with, because sometimes the technology gets it wrong. And innocent people end up on the no-fly list, arrested, tracked, etc. Or worse, the system confuses political activism with actual criminality, and ends up protecting the status quo instead of just enforcing the law.

I haven't seen Minority Report for a while, but I remember that being a big theme in that movie as well. Wasn't that the dilemma faced by Cruise's character? Go to jail to protect the system, or stand up and admit it is flawed.

There has never been an attempt at a television series depicting Star Trek outisde Starfleet, correct? I mean, something created by the makers of Star Trek.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the only subdivision that makes any significant money for Google the Adwords business?

Although it isn't hard to come up with other ways for them to extract more money out of android, I can't imagine a lack of willing buyers for all sorts of information they could harvest from the billion or so deployed devices.

search with ads is their core product, ages old. gdocs for enterprise makes some money.

wave, glass, car - pie in the sky, detached from any real product or monetization strategies.

once search tanks, and the trends in mobile are pointing in that direction, how will google finance their DARPA? PARC did not save Xerox, HP Classic is broken up and gone, MS R&D is another sinkhole with no output...

They can't even handle acquisitions. Android is slipping away, Nest is a disaster, etc.

Focus is really hard once you scale.

>>once search tanks, and the trends in mobile are pointing in that direction

That won't happen any time soon, not even in the foreseeable future.. The nearest competitor to Google is Bing, and that is joke.

>>They can't even handle acquisitions

Which ones? Youtube, Maps, Android ...

>>Android is slipping away

Android is going to put Google in the position Microsoft was in the 90's and early 2000's. Android is running away with the market in countries like China and India.

Google has a lot of time at their hands. Unless they start making very big mistakes over years consistently, they will do fine.

yup, China and India totally will save Google, AOSP is no issue at all.

Really? A lot of the value add is software, but there is still a ton of hardware that goes into a car.

People who immerse themselves in the software world too deeply gain a very distorted view of the world.

That may be the interesting bit of cars for you, but hardware is still a pretty important part of cars.

An ICE vehicle has over 10,000 moving parts.

A Tesla has 20, or so.

Source: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=387514

So tell me again how "cars are basically software at this point." Other than Tesla, I mean.

This "20 moving parts in a Tesla" meme seems like a really tilted interpretation of the actual numbers. A Tesla certainly has more than 20 moving parts, and an ICE engine certainly has less than 10,000.

Add to that Seatbelts, Climate control, door/window/lock mechanism, headlight adjustment, etc.

Might not get to 10000, but it's certainly much more than 20.

Yes, the "20 moving parts" seems like quite a bit of an underestimate, now. Would love to know the actual figure. It is certainly FAR less than a typical ICE vehicle, which is a welcome reduction in complexity.