Tesla has one huge advantage over every other car company (tsla)

(oakridger.com)  Tesla punches above its weight, in terms of how well known it is. This is a company that until late last year was building one car in one factory. Now it's building ... two cars in one factory.

But Tesla's every move, from the ups and downs if its stock price to the tweets of its celebrity CEO, Elon Musk, is carefully followed and scrutinized by Tesla fans, Tesla owners, Silicon Valley, and pretty much every media outlet on the planet.

If that sounds like a nightmare, it isn't.

Traditional carmakers would kill to have that level of attention paid to their doings. General Motors and Toyota have to spend billions to advertise and market their cars and trucks.

Tesla currently spends exactly zero dollars on advertising. Have a party and they will come
This is no disadvantage. In fact, Tesla can generate massive interest in its cars simply by holding a party in Los Angeles — which is what it will do this month, when it pulls the cover off its newest vehicle, the mass-market Model 3. A traditional car maker will typically send out teaser images and mount a public-relations campaign and reveal a new car at an auto show amid much stagecraft and hoopla, shoot video, hope that video goes viral, hammer away at social media, endure the slings and arrows of car critics, and so on.

Tesla will roll a Model 3 prototype out on stage and have Musk talk about it for 20 minutes. Journalists of every stripe will be on hand; Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat will light up; every car-oriented blog and website on the globe will zip the photos around the internet. It won't be a typical car reveal — it will be a happening.

So Tesla has what we can call an "exorbitant privilege," to borrow a phrase coined in the 1960s to describe the US dollar's role as the world's reserve currency. What all other car companies must do, it need not. Full Story

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