Remember the Radio Shack TRS-80 computer? My grade school had that. We upgraded to Commodore VIC 20, then Commodore 64, then the 128.
And, back in the day, I only knew a handful of people with cellphones. And they had those big Zack-Morris-Saved-By-The-Bell deals, the size of a quart of milk.
On the surface it may appear that you have a point. But if we bother to even scratch at the surface a
tiny little bit, your point flakes off like a day-old ketchup stain.
First of all, the TRS-80 was actually quite expensive at approximately $3,000 2013 dollars - hardly an everyday purchase for an average American. Computers at the time were affordable, in the sense that a household could afford to buy one, but by no means were they widely so not were they an impulse purchase. Additionally, with the exception of a small run-in with the FCC in connection with interference from the TRS-80 Model I few if any regulatory roadblocks stood in the way of Tandy, which is a big difference between them and Tesla.
The situation isn't different with cell phones: they were also ridiculously expensive for a long time and, indeed, prices of cell phone ownership remained some might say
remains extremely high even after the price of handsets began dropping once you factor in the cost of the wireless service (without which the phone was useless).
Tesla must spend massive amounts of money to not only develop not only the car but the
technology, which it must then spend more money certify (by passing a series of tests mandated by the government) before it can actually put a single vehicle on the road. It may seem simple in principle - some potatoes for the battery, electric motors, a pound of copper for the wire and... TADA! an electric car is born. But it really isn't that simple.
So what is your gripe? That the Tesla costs a lot? Do not forget that the Tesla is targeting a segment of the luxury car market - a segment which their vehicle appears poised to do well in when compared with rivals like Audi, Mercedes Benz and BMW which charge similar amounts for their vehicles and which affluent consumers are, apparently, willing to spend.
