this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2024
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Electric cars is an incredibly old Tech (older than ICE, even), since the very first cars invented were electric.
Tesla were just updating an old tech and trying to make it viable (in which they succeeded), by using modern batteries and electric motors instead of what was used in the original EVs.
The innovative Tech stuff was things like automated parking and automated driving. I don't think integrating what's basically a tablet on a car dashboard counts as innovative Tech - it's the same kind of thing makers of "Smart" Fridges were doing - grab old tech, put a touch screen on it and call it high tech.
Without the actual high tech part around automated driving, Tesla is just a company that started in the market for car manufacturing with a strategy of carving out a new market segment by updating to the XXI century a technology from the XIX century that is now cheaper to run and adresses the Ecological concerns of many people - quite a smart and in some ways innovative business strategy but it makes them no more a Tech company than Mercedes-Benz is a Tech company for having invented Electronic Fuel Injection or my local supermarket is a Tech company because they have a smartphone customer loyalty app - merelly using existing Tech, integrating new Tech that somebody else invented with old Tech or even inventing new electronic parts for a specific domain is not what makes a Tech company, IMHO.
That said, the Stock Market will believe any old bollocks and the Startup World has never been this fraudulent (and I say this having been an insider) so you can pass pretty much anything that uses Tech in non-innovative ways as a Tech Company - I mean Glovo is deemed a Tech Company even though their business is basically a booked express delivery business that uses a smartphone app and has some backend integration with sellers - a new combination of existing things, not innovation.
Parking assist is incredibly old: Toyotas had it 1999. You can get it off the shelf from Bosch.
Should even be legal to install on your own, given that it's only steering the car, not operating throttle or brake.
Are you actually trying to says Tesla is no real technology improvement over done 1890s electric salon? I want what you’re smoking
Improving an existing technology using modern components is an "improvement" but is not especially "innovative" and not at all any kind of unique breakthrough - it's Tech use, not Tech making.
Maybe because I've spent most of my life working at or near the bleeding edge of Technology I don't find them especially innovative in Tech except for the self-driving stuff: what they did that was impressive was in the sphere of business strategy and they seem to have run with just that for too long and not pivoted when they should've.
That said I can understand that people holding shares is TSLA would be scared shitless about Tesla not being treated anymore as a Tech company by the stockmarket, and hence desperately try to argue that Tesla is a Tech company that makes cars rather than a car company that uses Tech like all the other carmakers.