The upcoming season of the award-winning podcast series is all about Tesla this time around, so you know you have to tune in. The first episode drops July 26th. Find it wherever you get your podcasts.
That’s what Car Charts’ author Glenn Mercer delves into with this well-reasoned essay that looks at why the auto industry is so obsessed with product diversity, and what Tesla’s success with radical simplicity could mean for the future of trims and variants.
Silicon Valley denizens have always asserted the former: a car is a phone on wheels, you just have to get the styling right once, and then crank out millions of physically-nearly-identical units, only upgrading the electronics and software along the way.
But if a car is more like a house, complexity re-enters the picture. House buyers like to specify square footage, number of rooms, flooring, countertops, appliances, window treatments… and we haven’t even gotten to the furniture yet.
A car is somewhere in between. History says customers like choice, Tesla says they don’t, really … and they haven’t been wrong, so far.
[glennmercer.substack.com]
Unfortunately this Wall Street Journal piece detailing Tesla’s secretive “Project 42” for its headquarters in Austin doesn’t include any of the actual renderings. Just descriptions of “a dramatic glass-walled building,” “a structure in the shape of a twisted hexagon on waterfront land,” and “an expansive glass box, reminiscent of Apple’s store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.” It’s not enough. Send me these drawings! I want to see the dumb box!
After several rounds of layoffs and a number of high-profile lawsuits, Rad Power Bikes’ new CEO is determined to get costs and safety under control
