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I don't think many of the major car companies are going to be disrupted too badly. They have massive scale compared to Tesla. Electric car technology is already
by twblalock 9y ago
I don't think many of the major car companies are going to be disrupted too badly. They have massive scale compared to Tesla. Electric car technology is already mostly commoditized, and once these companies scale up production, they will manufacture huge numbers of electric cars.
Self-driving technology is going to become commoditized also -- it may be Google/Waymo/Apple who invent the technology, but the large established car companies are going to be the ones cranking out millions of self-driving cars.
The car companies that are going to be in trouble are the smaller ones who are still committed to old-school gasoline cars, such as Mazda and Subaru. They don't have the engineering resources to keep up with the others. Most of the other major companies know what is coming and are preparing to deal with it.
- wbl 9y agoSubaru has a market segment that needs the range of gasoline.
- ams6110 9y agoSubaru and Toyota also share manufacturing, as do Ford and Mazda.
- Tiktaalik 9y agoWith the niche guys like Mazda I figure they could be able to work closely with bigger companies. Already it seems that car companies do this a fair bit. The new Fiat and Miata have basically the same innards for example. I could imagine that in the future the big car companies aren't going to be that interested in making a small electric sportscar, but they could partner with Mazda to make a Miata electric.
- JKCalhoun 9y agoElectric Miata? Would buy!
- PhantomGremlin 9y agoI don't know about that. Would it weigh 500 more pounds because of batteries? If so, it won't be anything like the current gas powered Miata.
- JKCalhoun 9y agoTrue. The weight from the loss of the engine would not be equaled by the motors replacement ... but in general you are correct — the net weight would go up quite a bit.