Optimal price point, market, vendor availability, the economy determine much of a company's fate. Blaming Tesla for any of these is misguided, as they change qu

Optimal price point, market, vendor availability, the economy determine much of a company's fate. Blaming Tesla for any of these is misguided, as they change quickly and are hard to predict with any accuracy. A small car company has a hard time reacting to any change, as they have necessarily a limited offering, one or two models with some options. Big companies can have an order of magnitude more flexibility. Once a cheap Tesla was possible, the entire market situation changed for them. With slim margins, only clever marketing remain as a differentiator. Thus the banging on about self-driving or range increases or technology or whatever. Trouble is, those things have to matter to the customer. Who has become more savvy as the literature on the subject has educated billions past the point of gee-whiz-it's-electric. Self-driving is moot, we've driven ourselves all our lives and are distrustful of automation. Range increases are still less than an ICE commuter box, that's becoming a hollow promise. And technology is a luxury car selling point, the buyer of economical transportation will prioritize that somewhere between bottom-of-the-list and off-the-list. tl;dr: it's hard to be a small player; self-driving is a non-feature.