Disclaimer: this is not an official statement from Tesla, it’s just my biased opinion. Biased because I owned a Model 3 for the last two years, and I’ve been working at Autopilot (as a simulation engineer) for 10 months. The end of the year is a good time to reflect on things.

Tesla is an unusual company. It’s a big startup. It’s a pioneer. It’s led by a person with many unique traits. I realized that Tesla didn’t just make EVs popular, it transformed cars in many respects, revolutionizing the car industry.

Pure Electricity

Clearly, there were electric cars before Tesla, but they were not as sexy, or accessible, or reliable, or fast, or convenient, etc. Model 3 made people look seriously at EV cars, it stopped being a gimmick. Tesla effectively created the market for EV. Thanks to the largest charging network and good battery capacity, I can go places without worrying too much about getting stuck. EV became practical.

Autonomy

Tesla has pushed for widespread adoption of semi-autonomous driving. Yes, there have been autonomous vehicles before, operated in small quantities in a restricted environment (Waymo). Yes, there’ve been driver assistant systems in other cars, too. But Tesla’s FSD (Full Self Driving) is both the most advanced and accessible, with more than 100k vehicles on the road. One could argue that this isn’t truly autonomous, but that’s not my point. The important thing is - Tesla created the race for AI in cars, and many other manufacturers are now trying to compete. It’s already changing the way we drive - we just shift attention away from the boring aspects of it, and roads become safer for all.

Onboard Entertainment

Having games in a car? This was unthinkable before, and frankly pretty bizarre. I had concerns about running the game code (which is sometimes hacky and crude - been there, done gamedev for years) on a device that your life depends on. But it turned out to be fine, because the onboard computer is separate from the drive controller, and it can safely be shut down or rebooted while driving. And now we’ll get the Steam library in the car, which is nuts. Practically, it makes total sense, since the car has a good audio-system, isolation, and you are often there waiting for something. I’d love to try this out.

Customer Relation

Unlike all of the popular vehicle manufacturers, Tesla doesn’t involve the dealer as a middle man. I don’t want to shop between different dealerships or discuss the pricing adjustments, being under pressure to buy, and later thinking that I could have gotten a better deal. Tesla makes it completely straightforward - you go to the website and order the car, just like everybody else. Gives me a piece of mind. Why it’s so hard to accept this model in some of the US states (e.g. Texas) is a mystery to me.

One might notice how this is similar to Apple, I can’t escape this analogy. Apple also sells directly to customers, designs their own chips, has deep vertical integration, good margins, etc. Apple also wasn’t the first to come up with touchscreens, but it kicked off the touchscreen revolution in mobile phones.

Here I showed how Tesla took the car industry by storm, and is still leading the revolution. But it’s also much more than just a car company. It’s a robotic company: every autonomous car is a robot, factories are highly automated by robots, and now the company even builds humanoid robots to assist people. Or that it’s a tech company with a highly advanced AI stack. The world is already changing thanks to it, and I’m looking forward to seeing the long-term effects of this change.