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The thing is, these PR puff pieces aka submarine articles: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

are all everywhere for Tesla, like they are for Apple. I've seen entire sites dissect the Apple Watch or Apple mobile cameras, or Teslas.

Their competitors are very comparable yet you have to hand it to Tesla, their behind the scenes PR game is through the roof.



Might very well turn out that premium OEMs big failure wasn't being late to the EV game, but failing to switch their behind the scenes marketing game from traditional print journalism, and the online versions of it, to online only, blog-like car journalism.

Still digitalisation so, sure. And still linked to EVs, traditional car journalism still caters to a crowd of ICE fanatics, but overall much more a thing of marketing than engineering. For Tesla, the risk still is Musk. But they seem to be doing a good job of distancing themselves enough from his recent antics to not be hurt by them, while staying close enough to benefit from his personal brand.


but failing to switch their behind the scenes marketing game from traditional print journalism, and the online versions of it, to online only, blog-like car journalism.

Yea, I can't help to notice that my 13 year old, who on the whole knows and cares nothing about cars, thinks that Teslas are the coolest cars ever, has already decided that their first car will be a Tesla and wants our next car to be a Tesla. Brands like Merceds, BMW, Porsche etc. mean very little to them.


You say that, meanwhile just yesterday we had someone drive-by to tell us a 2021 Honda uses computing technology from 2012[1].

So pardon me if I lend more credence to the notion that tech companies outstrip car companies when it comes to technology.

[1]: https://qht.co/item?id=36052753


If you have proplem with 2012 computing controlling a car, you should never get even close to a modern airliner... What do you need 2023 computing for, running LLMs or mining bitcoin while driving?


There's a difference between technology for the sake of comfort/entertainment and technology for critical elements of a product able to kill you and others.

If I need to get an eye-surgery and the equipment runs on Android, I'd rather go for the one running on Android 4 for 10 years already, than the one running on Android 13 for 6 months now...


Like that story about a Tesla driver driving off a cliff in California and everyone surviving the crash? A story that even ended up in french and German newspapers


Did people follow the aftermath? Ie it seems the person was trying to kill their entire family?




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