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With hype-devouring fans and copycat features, Tesla has become the Apple of cars

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“It’s a supercar,” say the headlines, tweets, and social media blurbs about Tesla’s new P85D. CEO Elon Musk, quoted by USAToday, compares the fast sedan to the McLaren F1, and said during the extravagant launch it’s, “like having your own private roller coaster.” Images of swooping lines, slash-cut vents, and unfeasibly large tires flashed through my mind, surely it must look really special? It doesn’t. It looks exactly the same as every other Model S.

Tesla has become the Apple of the automotive world.

In late 2013, Apple introduced the iPhone 5S. During the unveiling event, much was made of the new 64-bit A7 processor. “The benefits are huge,” said Apple’s Phil Schiller, “it’s up to twice as fast as the previous generation chip, and 40 times faster than the original iPhone.” Wow, we all thought, what does the phone look like? The same as the iPhone 5, actually.

If it hadn’t already, with the P85D, Tesla has become the Apple of the automotive world. It has a growing army of fans ready to lavish an incremental update to an existing product with unjustified attention and adoration. Musk is a charismatic, cheeky frontman who cleverly draws attention away from the car being a stop gap between the Model S and Model X, by emphasizing its performance, and glossing over its aging platform.

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Tesla and Apple, sitting in a tree

Comparing Tesla to Apple doesn’t stop with how it’s masking the dull reality of the Model S P85D with performance figures. The Model S is also home to Tesla’s new intelligent drive features. These include lane awareness, autopilot-style braking, and auto-parking tech. All of these are interesting, but hardly unique in the industry, an accusation often leveled (and usually rightly so) at Apple.

Despite promoting over-the-air software updates, modular components, and more as reasons Tesla cars are future-proof and a safe buy; Tesla’s also looking at Apple and the wider tech industry for inspiration on how to speed up the upgrade cycle. Regarding the latest clutch of new features, existing Model S owners are out of luck, because although Model S vehicles built in the run up to the D’s reveal will get these new bonuses, slightly older cars won’t. Just like iPhone 3G owners couldn’t get Siri.

Tesla’s cars are tech-driven, which means month-old vehicles becoming effectively obsolete will only get more common. If you don’t think that matters, (and in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t) you probably own an Android phone. But to Apple fans, it does, and that’s the hype-loving crowd Tesla is attracting, and gleefully propagating.

Musk said about the Model S P85D, “We were able to improve almost everything about the car, and that’s a rare thing.” Maybe, but it’s not a rare statement to make. Apple’s Phil Schiller called the iPhone 5S, “The most forward thinking phone anyone has ever made,” which amounts to the same degree of hyperbole, while belittling the competition in a similar way. It goes even deeper. Tesla didn’t invent the electric car, just like Apple didn’t invent the smartphone or tablet, but the way many act you wouldn’t believe it.

Where does this leave the Model X, and does it really matter?

The iPhone 5S came a year after the iPhone 5, and a further year had to pass before the range was treated to a new design, with the introduction of the iPhone 6. If the P85D is Tesla’s iPhone 5S, where does that leave the Model X? Currently, the SUV is expected to go on sale sometime in 2015, but Musk has already downplayed the vehicle’s impending arrival. In an August earnings call, he claimed the company was “anti-selling” it, and pushing any interested customers towards the Model S.

Tesla’s journey to the Dark Side is almost complete.

The arrival of the all-wheel drive D comes two-and-a-half years after the first Model S was sent out for delivery. If it marks the halfway point, and is a smokescreen to obscure the Model X’s notable absence, then even taking into consideration increased familiarity with the manufacturing process; the highly anticipated, and commercially important SUV still may not arrive until late 2015.

However, it’s unlikely to matter, because Tesla’s journey to the Dark Side is almost complete. A delay is merely an opportunity to build more hype, and a precursor to even more gushing when something shiny and new finally arrives. Musk, who may as well have worn a black turtleneck sweater when he said it, confidently stated about the Model X, “We will not have a demand issue,” during that same conference call. Seeing as how closely Apple and Tesla’s trajectories match, he’s probably right. All the Model X will need is an even larger touchscreen on the dashboard, and it’ll be difficult to tell the two firms apart.

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Andy Boxall
Andy Boxall
Senior Mobile Writer
Andy is a Senior Writer at Digital Trends, where he concentrates on mobile technology, a subject he has written about for…
Tesla, Warner Bros. dodge some claims in ‘Blade Runner 2049’ lawsuit, copyright battle continues
Tesla Cybercab at night

Tesla and Warner Bros. scored a partial legal victory as a federal judge dismissed several claims in a lawsuit filed by Alcon Entertainment, a production company behind the 2017 sci-fi movie Blade Runner 2049, Reuters reports.
The lawsuit accused the two companies of using imagery from the film to promote Tesla’s autonomous Cybercab vehicle at an event hosted by Tesla CEO Elon Musk at Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) Studios in Hollywood in October of last year.
U.S. District Judge George Wu indicated he was inclined to dismiss Alcon’s allegations that Tesla and Warner Bros. violated trademark law, according to Reuters. Specifically, the judge said Musk only referenced the original Blade Runner movie at the event, and noted that Tesla and Alcon are not competitors.
"Tesla and Musk are looking to sell cars," Reuters quoted Wu as saying. "Plaintiff is plainly not in that line of business."
Wu also dismissed most of Alcon's claims against Warner Bros., the distributor of the Blade Runner franchise.
However, the judge allowed Alcon to continue its copyright infringement claims against Tesla for its alleged use of AI-generated images mimicking scenes from Blade Runner 2049 without permission.
Alcan says that just hours before the Cybercab event, it had turned down a request from Tesla and WBD to use “an icononic still image” from the movie.
In the lawsuit, Alcon explained its decision by saying that “any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account.”
Alcon further said it did not want Blade Runner 2049 “to be affiliated with Musk, Tesla, or any Musk company, for all of these reasons.”
But according to Alcon, Tesla went ahead with feeding images from Blade Runner 2049 into an AI image generator to yield a still image that appeared on screen for 10 seconds during the Cybercab event. With the image featured in the background, Musk directly referenced Blade Runner.
Alcon also said that Musk’s reference to Blade Runner 2049 was not a coincidence as the movie features a “strikingly designed, artificially intelligent, fully autonomous car.”

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2021 Audi Q5

If you’d been thinking of buying an Audi, now might be the time.  The German brand, owned by the Volkswagen Group, has announced it would halt shipments to the U.S. in the wake of President Donald Trump’s 25% tariffs on all imported vehicles.
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Automakers on average hold enough cars to meet U.S. demand for about three months, according to Cox Automotive.
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And on April 3, Nissan, the biggest Japanese vehicle exporter to the United States, announced it will stop taking new U.S. orders for two Mexican-built Infiniti SUVs, the QX50 and QX55.

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Waymo faces questions about its use of onboard cameras for AI training, ads targeting
Two people exit a Waymo taxi.

In an iconic scene from the 2002 sci-fi film Minority Report, on-the-run Agent John Anderton, played by Tom Cruise, struggles to walk through a mall as he’s targeted by a multitude of personalized ads from the likes of Lexus, Guinness and American Express, everytime hidden detectors identify his eyes.
It was clearly meant as a warning about a not-so-desirable dystopian future.
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On X, Wong unveiled an unreleased version of Waymo’s privacy policy that suggests the California-based company is preparing to use data from its robotaxis, including interior cameras, to train generative AI models and to offer targetted ads.
“Waymo may share data to improve and analyze its functionality and to tailor products, services, ads, and offers to your interests,” the Waymo’s unreleased privacy statement reads. “You can opt out of sharing your information with third parties, unless it’s necessary to the functioning of the service.”
Asked for comments about the unreleased app update, Waymo told The Verge that it contained “placeholder text that doesn’t accurately reflect the feature’s purpose”.
Waymo’s AI-models “are not designed to use this data to identify individual people, and there are no plans to use this data for targeted ads,” spokesperson Julia Ilina said.
Waymo’s robotaxis, which are operating on the streets of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Austin, do contain onboard cameras that monitor riders. But Ilina says these are mainly used to train AI models for safety, finding lost items, check that in-car rules are followed, and to improve the service.
The new feature is still under development and offers riders an opportunity to opt out of data collection, Ilina says.
But as we all get used to ads targeting based on everything that’s somehow connected to the web, it seems a once-distant vision of the future may be just around the corner.

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