Apple and Tesla are two of the most loved companies in the world by their customers. Tesla actually just won the "Most Loved Brand" rating from Auto Trader [1].
Neither company is perfect, or makes perfect products. Turns out in this world perfect isn't a requirement. Companies can "get away" with failing to deliver 100% of what they promised, when they promised it, if the end result is still delightful.
In short, both Apple and Tesla make delightful products.
>Tesla actually just won the "Most Loved Brand" rating from Auto Trader
I suspect this rating will probably do a 180 soon. Tesla cars (all of them) aren't that old. Just wait until a lot of owners are thoroughly in the used bracket and problems like [1] and [2] start rearing their head.
One thing to keep in mind is that every Model S and X car is built to order. Whereas the Model 3 is mass produced up front. Parts availability for a mass produced car at a run rate of nearly 500k units/year (by the end of 2019) is going to be very different than parts availability for a made-to-order car selling 50k units / year.
Tesla has to scale their service capacity tremendously. But they know this, and talk about it a lot with investors. At the end of 2016 they had made a cumulative 170k cars, by 2017 it was 272k, 2018 it was 526k, and by the end of 2019 it will be nearly 1 million.
They have a technically sophisticated product which would ordinarily result in a tremendous number of service calls for things which aren't even technically repairs. I think the huge base of YouTube videos and forum posts helps saved them a lot in this regard, as I will turn to Google searches for answers before calling Tech Support.
Tesla does have a very unique service model. They have entire states which legally bar them from operating service centers. They do mobile service in your driveway. They will text back and forth with you to help resolve an issue, and remote access your vehicle logs to diagnose a problem. The car will pre-order parts at your local service center if it detects certain anomalies.
I am sure that a minority of owners will experience Tesla "service hell". But I doubt very much that the Model 3 will turn out to be a lemon. So I think the rating will stand the test of time, particularly with OTA updates continuously making the car better in many measurable ways on a practically monthly basis.
So Tesla competes in the premium market segment and outsources support, partially, to Google search, YouTube and do it yourself-tutorials? Doesn't sound very premium to me. Cars the age of the average Tesla are supposed to run. And for that price tag customers can and do expect prompt service.
But I have to admit, marketing vise Tesla and Musk are even better than VW. Which is an achievement.
Tesla incentivized the massive library of tutorials on YouTube, Tesla blogs, and such with their referral code program.
It's a huge asset, and strictly better than not having that fan base out there explaining and demo'ing every little new feature that Tesla releases. I'm not sure how you consider that a negative.
Car companies have always strived for a loyal following of ardent fans to talk ceaselessly about how much they love their vehicle. Tesla does it better than most.
>Parts availability for a mass produced car at a run rate of nearly 500k units/year (by the end of 2019)
The astroturfing for this company on this forum is insane. They will not reach 500k run rate by the end of the year, demand is flatlining.
Why not talk about the actual numbers of today, rather than some hypothetical that you'll soon dismiss as "a goal" when it isn't reached? Can you see how ridiculous it is to argue "Tesla is having problem now because of some theoretical production rate they'll probably never reach".
> Why not talk about the actual numbers of today,...
Maybe you stopped reading my comment before the second paragraph?
Today they are at a 250k run rate. By the time Giga3 comes online that will be double. They are targeting the end of 2019, but certainly it could be mid-2020.
My point was actually that their service challenge is just going to get bigger, not debating the specifics of when they will hit production of 500k vehicles per year.
The parent has a point: the fans/consumers of those brands are very willing to overlook the drawbacks, and to accept their marketing claims that are usually overblown, to a greater degree I think that people who are not fans of those brands.
Counterpoint: Wouldn't actual owners of these products know more about their advantages and drawbacks than forum trolls?
Don't get me wrong, I can't STAND Tesla forums. But a (non-Tesla) car forum I'm on has a number of very vocal complainers who post EVERY negative blogpost they can find about Tesla in every thread about Tesla, because... reasons. I mean, everyone needs a hobby, but as someone who actually owns one Tesla and many Apple products, I see no need to spend all day digging up positive OR negative news about the companies.
I can't fathom what would drive someone to be so angry about a company as to spend more time researching it than even the most rabid fanboy, but they're out there.
Some people have nothing better to do with their time than tear something else down.
Not that this is always a bad thing: back at the height of their abusive monopoly, Microsoft definitely deserved all the bashing it got. But Tesla isn't anything like that, simply because they're a small player (by volume) and nowhere near a monopoly. If you don't like Teslas, it's simple, don't buy one. There's no shortage of other cars out there, including electric ones.
> I can't fathom what would drive someone to be so angry about a company as to spend more time researching it than even the most rabid fanboy
I can. And it's not random. It doesn't have a lot to do with Tesla, it has to do with worlds changing.
A lot of people grew up in a culture where men were respected, beef was the best food except maybe bacon, oil was a respectable professional and cars were a respectable hobby. Hitching up to someone you can have kids with would at least put you in position to have status in your community. And all the best people are mostly white, except in ethnic activities like cooking and basketball.
Then the world said:
- Men are the #1 threat to women's safety, even the men who are close to them
- Men are taking advantage of women financially, and interfering with their work
- Cars and gas are destroying the earth
- Beef and bacon are toxic and toxic for the environment
- Straight people are boring if not oppressive, fluid sexuality and queerness is the new symbol of vibrancy and virility
- White people cheated their way to the top
- Black people make the best art, Japanese people are the best engineers, women are the best CEOs, and gay people have the best parties
It's a lot to deal with if you grew up in the first world and find yourself in the second. Especially if you're a meat eating straight man with a nice car.
And yet, pretty much all of those bullet points are scientifically accurate. And the population overwhelmingly is accepting those ideas.
So you have a group of people with status and power who is feeling it slipping from their fingers. So they look for any and all opportunities to chip away at the bullet points. Electric cars are a sham. Queer people are snowflakes who don't understand that gender is a thing. Etc.
Frankly, I think the blame lies in the progressive world, which has left behind anyone considered regressive, trying to lionize marginalized identities rather than developing a true radically inclusive politics.
Not that I am criticizing... I think it is somewhat intentional, the centering of marginal identities. It has powerful benefits for the people who are centered, which maybe outweigh the cost of marginalizing men, white people, straight people, etc.
I guess I'm not saying those decisions were bad, so much as I'm saying someone does need to start a platform of radical inclusivity if they want to bring the incels and Tesla haters and Trump voters and all them back into the fold of liberal society.
This maybe describes a phenomenon in general, but it does not at all describe what's happening with Tesla.
People genuinely believe they've stumbled over the next Theranos or Enron. Maybe it was seeded by the shorts, but it's taken on a life of its own. Tesla has done more than enough shady shit that it's not entirely undeserved.
I would recommend digging in to something before attempting to diagnose it, or else resisting the temptation. The world is a complicated place.
While I am partial to Japanese cars, I think some people might argue that the Germans are at least as good at engineering.
Of course, it was us Americans who really excelled at rocketry and sent men to the Moon... oh wait, we had to import Nazi German scientists to do that.
You say the companies "lie". Perhaps a good example would be Elon's "funding secured" tweet? You asked why customers accept it?
Customers accept that Elon lied on Twitter because they love the products the company makes more than they don't love Elon lying on Twitter.
I would further posit that customers love Tesla because, by and large, Tesla does not lie about its products' capabilities, even if they ultimately fail to deliver the product they want to, or are overly ambitious on delivery dates, or overly optimistic of what's theoretically possible. You don't set off to build a mass market EV in 2006 without a great deal of starry-eyed optimism.
I don't want to go down the rabbit hole with "throwayEngineer" but IMO Elon tweets a huge amount about his products, and the vast majority of those tweets are factual, exciting, and/or funny.
OP says these companies "lie" as if it's the only thing they do, or that if a company "lies" how can that be a good thing? That's an obtuse question used as a rhetorical trick, and I think it's an uninteresting discussion.
The reality is that all companies do a vast array of things, and yes, sometimes, they tell lies. Whether Apple and Tesla are more egregious examples of "companies that lie" than say Exxon or Boeing, I doubt it.
I personally believe Apple and Tesla do not intentionally devise schemes on how to best lie to their customers, while I have much less of a problem imagining Exxon or Boeing doing exactly that.
The reason for that disparity, is a more interesting topic. I think it's because I love Apple and Tesla products more than I love Exxon or Boeing products, and we treat the things we love differently than things we are ambivalent about, including painting over the flaws, and believing they have good intentions.
Personally, I'd say Elon is a lot more honest than Apple ever was. Remember, Apple is the one telling everyone they really don't want a headphone jack, even if they do. (Wireless headphones have significant downsides.)
As for Exxon, that's apples and oranges. Exxon doesn't make any products. It produces oil, which is a fungible commodity, not a branded product that's different from competitors' products in real and significant ways.
Boeing, too, is a pretty bad comparison. No one actually buys Boeing planes (except airline companies). As a consumer, you can try to choose non-Boeing planes to fly on when you book tickets, but that's about it. You're not their customer.
But that's exactly my point. Since they aren't brands that consumers can really love and connect to, they are more likely to be viewed as an evil empire.
E.g. I was trying to avoid the pissing contest of whether Apple or Google or whoever is more loved.
That's the problem with your point: you were making an apples-to-oranges comparison. You're comparing brands that do connect directly to consumers and sell to them with brands that really don't. Even Google isn't a great comparison, because consumers only use Google's services like GMail and search; they don't buy products from it very much. Android phones are (mostly) made by other companies: Huawei, LG, Samsung, etc.
Maybe you should try comparing Apple and Samsung instead, or Tesla and Honda. Those are direct comparisons.
Consumers mostly don't care about the brand of gasoline, only the convenience and price of the gas station. Gasoline is all the same; Exxon gas isn't significantly different from Sunoco or BP gas.
Boeing doesn't sell to consumers. As I said above, this just isn't a valid comparison at all.
Lying is different from overly optimistic and promising ideas that did not pan out.
It depends on where you come from, if you are skeptic, its lying. If you are a bit charitable towards Musk or Jobs, its just some idea that did not pan out.
If we live long enough, you would find, success is an exception. So, the older I get I do not buy the hype, but I do not call people with a decent results track record as liars. They might have failed at delivering and thats about it.
As an Apple product user and a Tesla-owner hopeful, I see (saw in the case of Jobs) truly innovative people leading these two companies. I would rather take leaders of companies that go against the status quo than those who follow it.
I like that musk doesn’t give a shit about the SEC when he tweets something. It’s the same thing that makes him want to send people to Mars. He’s crazy in a good way.
The SEC isn't there to protect the government. It is to protect investors from false statements that can mislead them. Ex: lying about the fact that he was bringing the company private.
How can you be in favor of him doing that? Is that good governance having a CEO telling lies and mislead the public to increase in his own wealth?
People forgot about Enron it seems. Governance is good, simply because rules have to apply to everyone to be fair. If you allow the presidence there is no way prevent everybody else from braking the rules as well.
Even a weakly convincing lie can give a person an easy out of cognitive dissonance. Question is, what about the truth is causing the discomfort that they want or even need the lies?
There is a time limit for lies. I'd prefer they be discovered immediately, as deception and propaganda are a kind of fraud when money or any limited resource is on the line. But it can take a while for these lies to be discovered, quite a lot of the retrospectives use phrasing like "it was always a lie" and "the data was there, we just didn't want to see it" and so on.
I notice many peers and people younger than me have a strong belief in "what comes around, goes around" which I think is provable nonsense, and it makes this problem worse by proposing some force (market or spiritual) will make things right if the offense is bad enough.
Both companies are extremely selective in what they say, and lie about their features, quality and accomplishments.
Not every company does this and gets away with it. But Tesla and Apple manage.
I wonder what demographic of people are okay with lies.
Edit, would someone explain why lying to consumers is a good thing?