When I think about it, maybe less irony and more virtuous cycle - except it’s not so virtuous if you’re FCA.
01 Massive EU penalties on diesel and petrol cars
02 FCA has few if any EV offerings
03 Any EVs they DO develop will face competition from Tesla
04 Because too few FCA EVs sold, partner with Tesla to cut down on ruinous penalties
05 Tesla uses FCA payments to accelerate construction of Giga Berlin and cheaper, European-made EVs.
06 Because of 05, FCA faces greater competition from Tesla
07 GO TO 04
I've considered this quandary many times over the years, for most of the other carmakers too. The general problem is, when starting a race from the back, to catch whoever is in first place, you have to innovate past them. This is fine if the entity in 1st place is not innovating at all, just resting on their laurels. But if they're innovating, you have to innovate
faster. This is difficult in a new field you've not gotten much expertise in, but it's do-able under the right circumstances. In this case though, the innovating entity in 1st place isn't any old innovating entity, it's TESLA who have shown an incredible rate of innovation for years, even when no-one else was racing against them. Now that it's a real race - increasing restrictions on sale of ICE vehicles all over the world - they find themselves having to innovate faster than an incredibly-quickly-innovating company. Tesla has hired all the best brains in the business. The new entrants into the race have to poach from Tesla, work with the leftovers, or hire the "new best brains" as they come out of university into the labor market - that is a slow process and not one you can rely on to win. It's as if no-one can beat Tesla, simply because Tesla entered the race first. As Elon has said, the pace of innovation is the moat. The other guys have to get across the moat - and the reason moats work is because no-one can get across them.
Eventually it will become plainly obvious that the other guys can't compete. I expect this will occur when Tesla's global market share is above 5%. At that point the financial writing will be on the wall for all manufacturers, and everyone will see that Tesla is a significant threat to all, and all they have to do to CRUSH is to expand production. Actually Tesla's ubiquity and lack of customisability might start to appear like a problem. (Only black or white seats? Five paint colors? Come on)
The last card that the other manufacturers can play is... politics. Legislation. Begging to governments for bail-outs. Even, restricting Tesla in some sort of way. The bottom line is that manufacturers like Ford aren't going to roll over and allow themselves to fold without
trying their brand play against the U.S. Government. The USA is so filled with ego and self-gratification that they think some of their brands are eternal. Jobs must be saved - even if the managerial classes have been driving the companies off the cliff for the prior 10 years and no-one did anything to stop them. (CNBC never seem to introduce Bob Lutz by saying that he quit 6 months before GM went bankrupt) Ford seems too valuable that no-one will step up to buy the brand. Too many American vehicle buyers out there that just love the blue oval. They will cry out to the U.S. government to employ as many tricks as possible to keep them going. GM as well. FCA will go to wherever the money is, which when you choose between Italy and the USA... it's the USA.
Fighting against the import of foreign cars is a low-hanging fruit. This is why it has been so important for the Shanghai and Berlin factories to get built, because automakers in those territories can't complain - otherwise local workers would lose their jobs.
Sometimes I wonder if Tesla, with its 175B market cap, and Ford with its 24.75B market cap... well, if Ford was on the brink of bankruptcy and Tesla was even larger, Tesla could buy the assets and keep the brand alive. There would be an acknowledgement that an aggressive push into BEV replacements for all the Ford models would follow. All Ford vehicles would use Superchargers from then on. Probably a crazy idea. Dealerships, existing factories, unions, and so on. Seems to contradict Elon's way of working.
Ultimately it will be up to the U.S. Government to decide what to do with all the ailing vehicle companies that aren't switching to BEV fast enough. (Sorry, by the time I had typed all this in I realised it should not be in this thread
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