It's about the missed metaphor. Before Tesla EV = not a car. Tesla proved EV can have a Ferrari like acceleration and hence EV = car. It isn't always about UX. Sometimes you have to prove another point which Tesla did. Nobody at the traffic light made & makes fun of a Tesla so consumers feel safe to buy a Tesla. That was a major point in the buying decision of average consumers and probably is why the cybertruck looks as safe as a tank.
Nobody at the traffic light made & makes fun of a Tesla so consumers feel safe to buy a Tesla.
Eight years of Nissan Leaf ownership, and the only comments I’ve ever gotten at lights were positive. Used to be my friend hated to go with me in the Leaf because every time I parked it, someone would chat me up for five minutes. Not so much anymore now that EVs are more common. Now, no one even looks at me. Fellow Leaf drivers don’t even wave anymore.
So I don’t know where that massive insecurity is coming from.
Years ago my dad was shopping around for a used car and was looking at a Cadillac sedan on a lot. The salesman knew him and came out and told dad that he couldn't afford a Cadillac. Dad told him that a $6000 Cadillac costs just as much as a $6000 Ford and then went and bought a Cadillac at another dealership.
It’s not that much of a racket to say that the 2nd most expensive thing a person will likely buy in their lives outside of a home should match the personality of the buyer. I mean, cmon.
This is also why Musk sent a team with a Model S (tri motor Plaid mode) to the Nurburgring track and built a Supercharger there. Appearance, status, and signaling matter to consumers. It’s not good enough to be good enough. Tesla has to show they can be the best choice (and arguably, they have shown that).
Exactly. Its also why Elon comes up with lines like a car driver is an elevator operator and owning a traditional ICE car is like owning a horse. This gives everybody the tools to effectually spread the word via word of mouth. It is an under appreciated part of technology marketing that is extremely important to make a product succeed. Hence that is the part Docker was got right.
Are you in a place where you can buy a hybrid Yaris? What is the difference between that and a Prius C? I used to think it was regrettable that Toyota wouldn't hybridize their cheapest most practical car in the US, but then I learned that the Prius C was the best selling car in Japan for a while, so I'm not sure whether we're missing out or not.
> Nobody at the traffic light made & makes fun of a Tesla so consumers feel safe to buy a Tesla
Certain psychological profile of consumers. I personally couldn't care less about it and would never pay more to impress random strangers on traffic lights... and while I'm sure I'm a minority in this, I like to believe there's still a significant market niche occupied by people who're closer to my view than insecure 16 year olds'... so in my eyes this Mazda's move makes a lot of sense, they just don't target the same people as Elon Musk
Try driving an (electric) Smart in the US. At least in the Bay Area everyone looks at us like we're crazy and inevitably there's at least one person a week commenting something in the parking lot.
I generally, in my daily life, have more things to worry about than a couple of random people expressing their dislike of something myself or the people I live with, own. If you spend most of your time worrying about whether other people like your car you must have an extremely easy life and should absolutely donate a large percentage of your money to charities that help those who are not as well off as you.
I'm not. I'm supplementing my main point to address things that you have brought up. The actual goalpost hasn't moved. See:
- Why would you care about other people not liking it, if you like it.
- If you don't like it (i.e. it's someone else's), surely you have better things to care about with your time than what someone else thinks of a car that you didn't buy?
- Most people don't have the time or money to give a crap about what people think of their car, more than they do about things like fuel-efficiency and repair costs, so if your main concern is that other people don't like your car, you're very likely well-off enough to stand to donate that money to people who are actually worse off.
The first two are just two parts of the same argument, the third point was used to augment the second. You're the one who was moving the goalposts. See:
- The initial discussion was about the person buying the car (Your claim was originally "People buy Teslas because they get harassed less at traffic lights")
- I responded to that and you moved the goalposts to "People drive cars that they didn't buy" (Which is a valid point, hence why I responded, but not the subject of the original argument, because we were talking about the owner of the car).
Please don't move the goalposts and then accuse me of doing that?
> Nobody at the traffic light made & makes fun of a Tesla
> consumers feel safe to buy a Tesla
That's a bit of a stretch. First of all, why would anybody in a supercar make fun of a Tesla, they're not aimed at the same market. Consumers feel perfectly safe to buy a Prius or Leaf and neither of those have Tesla like acceleration, and don't need it either.
People making fun of other people because of the vehicles they drive are just insecure.
If you really think that the acceleration characteristics of a vehicle is what sells your average car then you're mistaken, most people simply need transportation and don't want to do drag races in traffic.
> most people simply need transportation and don't want to do drag races in traffic.
It's true that most people need transportation, don't want to drag race, and a really just need simple A to B stuff.
BUUUUUT that's not how America works. See - most people in America don't buy things based on what they need. They buy based on what they want and what they want their image to represent. Ever heard the term mall crawler? It's the term used for vehicles that have a ton of off-road gear/capability but never see anything but a mall. What percentage do you think of off road capable vehicles (like a Jeep Wrangler) see off road duty? How many trucks do you think regularly tow anywhere near their max? How many use the bed? How often do people fill up their giant SUV with stuff/people? Same with sports cars. Same with a bunch of vehicles.
People almost never utilize their cars to their built potential. They use them as A to B. It's almost completely about image and desire.
The original Tesla roadsters are expensive. People buying at that price point are doing so for features beyond mere transportation.
Maybe you don’t want a drag race but all the luxury spending 80k new can give you. However Tesla isn’t very luxurious, so they better be fast in comparison.
Quick acceleration has safety benefits. Not all, but some consumers look for that.
I don’t know about the “average car”, I think the market is pretty segmented actually and different buyers make their choice based on different things.
But the opposite is true, too: They can't, because their vehicle is not capable of it. You don't need to be doing 60 MPH in 3 seconds, but being able to it in 5-6 is much better (for everyone) when merging onto highways.
Have you ever accurately measured the time it takes you to get to ~60mph "briskly" and "aggressively", and compared it to the theoretical capability of your car according to say Car & Driver? I suspect people of generally having an unrealistic idea of how much of the performance of their car they do and can use.
Also, you know, there are a lot of vehicles that are much slower than 10 seconds 0-60 on the roads, even though 10 seconds has become pretty much the maximum for late model cars in the US. Commercial vehicles aren't going to disappear or do 0-60 in 5 seconds even if they had the power.
