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It's uncontroversial that Tesla is in the "figuring it out in ramp-up a factory stage". What I fail to see (that this article really drives home) is that they

It's uncontroversial that Tesla is in the "figuring it out in ramp-up a factory stage". What I fail to see (that this article really drives home) is that they aren't actually building anything resembling a defensive moat...because they're going to run out of time. You could absolutely make the case that if they got to (mass) market significantly faster than existing car companies they could devour market share and suck the air out of the room and really springboard into their existing valuation...it just feels like they're burning the candle at both ends and that scenario seems a lot less likely (to me). By the time they figure it out...the companies producing significantly higher volumes of cars (for a hundred years) may simply surpass their ability to ship a great EV in large numbers. The Bolt / Leaf / i3 are basically the first-gen "hobby" projects to dip their toes in the water and get some EV mindshare. Do we really think a company like BMW can't make a desirable EV halo car + econo EV literally whenever they want as battery capacity tech progresses and mass market demand picks up? Drop an electric motor into an existing M4 and an X1 (I realize its more complicated than that) and you're basically there. I'm guessing here, but I think the BMWs and GMs and Toyotas of the world all must be extremely happy to be last mover here for a tech that feels like, at this point (thanks to Tesla!), will become an inevitable commodity technology. Meanwhile they let the Tesla brand do the hard work of getting the pubic amped up about EV with none of the risk and swoop in when it makes sense to them to move their existing brand onto a new and better electric platform.

dkhenry 9y ago
I think its more then just waiting for it to become commodity tech, the big companies ( aside from Porsche at the very high end ) don't have anything on the table that remotely comes close to the Tesla portfolio, and cars don't just show up over night. These companies have roadmaps out for five years with no plans to enter the EV marketplace in any kind of scale. I think they are slow moving not because they are waiting to test the waters, I think they are slow movers because they don't have the skills in house to design these cars, and they are selling plenty of IC cars. This is the classic Innovators Dilemma and Tesla appears to know it. Musk could have slowed things down and given the big players time to acclimate, but by forcing the production timeline he essentially made them choose between sinking lots of their talent into EV design at the expense of IC design or essentially letting Tesla have the EV market and hoping they can jump in once their current product lines start to suffer. Their only move once the IC market start to lose share to EV's will be to try and poach some of the talent that has been cultivated at Tesla and hope to catch up.

dkhenry 9y ago

I think its more then just waiting for it to become commodity tech, the big companies ( aside from Porsche at the very high end ) don't have anything on the table that remotely comes close to the Tesla portfolio, and cars don't just show up over night. These companies have roadmaps out for five years with no plans to enter the EV marketplace in any kind of scale. I think they are slow moving not because they are waiting to test the waters, I think they are slow movers because they don't have the skills in house to design these cars, and they are selling plenty of IC cars. This is the classic Innovators Dilemma and Tesla appears to know it. Musk could have slowed things down and given the big players time to acclimate, but by forcing the production timeline he essentially made them choose between sinking lots of their talent into EV design at the expense of IC design or essentially letting Tesla have the EV market and hoping they can jump in once their current product lines start to suffer. Their only move once the IC market start to lose share to EV's will be to try and poach some of the talent that has been cultivated at Tesla and hope to catch up.