I work in automotive. One VP of a fairly large company I was having dinner with remarked “Tesla is about to find out just how difficult it is to build a car”
While I share some of those concerns, in all fairness it should be pointed out that this is literally what cell phone manufacturers said about the iPhone.
Remember that initially Apple sold the iPhone for $600 or something. The big revolution was that the initial buyer wasn't the carrier, but the end user, not only for the iOS ecosystem, but for the phone as well.
iPhone devalued the billions of capital investment that Verizon had made when high-end users ran to Cingular to get the iPhone in the face of a slower, less reliable and less available network, and took the best customers.
Tesla is a very different story. They have to balance the elitist cachet with the fact that relatively consumers actually want an electric car, and that they cannot meet demand of those who do.
Except that CLEARLY wasn't the case. Cell phone mfgs were making garbage, Apple came around and without question revolutionized the industry overnight.
Let's be honest that Tesla hasn't revolutionized the car, they have a clone of existing cars but with an electric powertrain.
