If you’re a car company that isn’t Tesla, it’s probably time to get frightened. Because now, when people buy a Tesla, every car comes with a free chauffeur.
Since its earliest days, Tesla has advertised itself as having self-driving cars, but speaking as a long-time Tesla driver, I can attest that this wasn’t fully true. For awhile, they only self-drove on the highway, and when you activated the car’s Autopilot, you still had to keep your hands firmly on the wheel. It was more like driving a car with an assistant than owning a car that drove itself.
That has changed. Over the past year, Tesla cars have gained the ability to drive themselves fully without any input from a driver. Now, I don’t need to put my hands on the wheel; I don’t need to do anything. I get in my car, put my hands in my lap, and say, “Tesla, drive me to a Mexican restaurant.” It just does it. It’ll even park itself when it gets there.
Currently, other car manufacturers have a brief window of remaining relevancy because legal restrictions have forced Tesla to institute attention monitoring. This means that while I don’t have to touch the wheel, I do have to keep my eyes on the road, or the car will pull over. So I can’t watch old Star Trek episodes while the car goes down the road or scroll through Instagram. But the car doesn’t need me anymore, and at this point, I’m watching what’s in front of me as a formality.
So Tesla is selling chauffeur-driven limos while Mercedes is selling cars without an invisible Jeeves in them. Both are the same price. It’s like asking people to keep sweeping floors with a broom when they could buy a vacuum.
It doesn’t matter what other features your car offers. Their car comes with a free driver. No amount of comfort, stereo speakers, or fancy oak paneling trumps a car’s ability to go places without you needing to touch the wheel.
My wife drives an older Cadillac Escalade to haul around our four kids, and everything about her car is better than my Tesla Model X. It’s more comfortable, has more room, and is more pleasant to drive. But it doesn’t drive itself. I can’t own a car that doesn’t drive itself; I’d feel like a sucker and a fool.
Pretty soon, everyone else on the road will feel that too. The moment Tesla turns off attention monitoring (and it’s coming), you’ll start seeing Tesla drivers laughing their way through an episode of Seinfeld on their dash TV screens, while you’re stuck in traffic next to them, sweating through stop-and-go.
When that day comes, other car companies are over. Done. Finished. No one else is close to having their own version of self-driving. Most have given up on trying. Meanwhile, the industry is trying to pretend that this huge thing isn’t happening, that Tesla is just another car company, and that, oh, look, things are totally normal.
Sorry, Toyota. You’re selling washboards while Tesla is selling washing machines. You’re never going to get people to be content with beating their clothes on a rock in a stream.
Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I underestimate the willingness of people to waste their time swerving around idiots when they could be working on a proposal or reading an X-Men comic. Elon Musk recently revealed that 50% of Tesla owners have never tried the self-driving function on their Teslas. Maybe they’re too afraid. Maybe they’re too stupid. But if you’re another car company, focusing on selling to self-flagellating, anxious Luddites probably isn’t a solid future business model.
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