The whole "they're giant auto manufacturers, they could take over the EV market with their eyes closed" attitude has demonstrably not played out. The reality is that there is no magic to being a "giant automaker". Any startup can hire away people with decades of experience; if anything, big automakers are saddled with outdated infrastructure and production models. The only thing that they usually have going for them against upstarts is capital. But given that Tesla has a market value on par with a major automaker, they don't even have that.
The biggest problem is that they don't even seem to understand what they're doing wrong. They think that you can make any old EV, put it on the market, and so long as you have some "current industry standard range and performance" and subsidize the price down to some "current industry standard price", you'll have a winner. Which of course it doesn't work that way at all. EV customers want charging infrastructure and rapid charging. EV customers want innovation in multiple aspects of the vehicle. EV customers don't want something that looks like an ordinary ICE budget sedan or a boxfish-on-wheels. They don't want to buy from a company that they don't think is actually dedicated to EVs but is instead doing it for a combination of PR purposes and CAFE standards/EV credits.
Just the way that they design these things shows that they don't understand anything at all. Both the Leaf and the Bolt have a drag coefficient of 0.32, which isn't even good for a regular ICE sedan; for an EV that's an abomination - all because they wanted some particular, ridiculous style and they always let their terrible stylists have first dibs at design, with their aero people only doing tweaks. "No problem," they think, "We'll just put in bigger battery packs and subsidize the vehicle so people buy it." And that right there shows that they don't actually have a belief that the time for EVs is now. They see them as some "maybe some day but now they're just a little PR project that we could kill off if the winds change" side project to their main ICE business. And that's really how they look at everything, not just EVs - it's always "business as usual, even if you have a glaring problem staring you in the face". One of my pet peeves is how massive and expensive they've let wiring harnesses get because for decades they never saw fit to change their design philosophy from "Need a new piece of functionality? Wire in yet another box from yet another OEM and grow your alternator to handle the drain!" to "Centralize, multifuctional hardware, eliminate redundancy and simplify."
Everything about Tesla shows that they actually believe in EVs, believe in radical change to the industry, and are rapidly turning this belief into reality.
Until I see any signs that any of the traditional major automakers "get it", I see no hope for them in the long term. The notion that they're just going to jump in when the water gets warm, without having built up charging infrastructure, without having invested vast sums in their own battery technology (thinking they'll just off-the-shelf it), without having streamlined their manufacturing processes, without having collected reams of consumer data, without having to innovate, without having ever done anything to earn their potential customers' loyalty... their attempts to jump in will go as badly as GM's did with the Bolt.
My view, at least.
I have been saying for a long time that traditional auto makers are done. Kinda like this: "
GM and Toyota are DONE". All the fanboys come around and say: How could they possibly be done, they sell millions of cars more every year than Tesla does!!! One of the reasons why the traditional automakers have been hesitating to "jump into the pool" is that they are very conservative, and doing it right will take a lot of money, a lot, a LOT. Think what it would take to build several Gigafactories and a world wide fast charging network. Anyone presenting that $ number to the GM and Toyota leaders would be laughed out of the room, and likely have been, hence the non-movement.
The thing is, at some point in time, Tesla is going to force all these dinosaurs to make the "big bet". They will either have to get in the game, or watch Tesla eat their lunch one category at a time. Watch what happens to GM, F and Toyota stock prices when the Tesla Pickup is unveiled, and then when the Model Y is revealed. When Tesla starts selling those in the quantity of the Model 3, the game is over unless the dinosaurs decided to make the "big bet".
And then concerning the "big bet", and this is the most beautiful aspect of the whole scenario... Once they realize they have to make the big bet, they will be following in Tesla's footsteps, and trying to play catch up. Instead of it simply being a long costly marathon like it would have been if they started a few years ago when Tesla did, playing catch up to Tesla is never going to work due to the lead Tesla has, and the continuing innovation.
And when they finally realize that they have to make the big bet, if it doesn't work out, then they will really be "done". I think they are going to lose the big bet because they F****D it up so many times already. GM with the EV-1 and now the Bolt, and Toyota with the Mirai. These companies have proven that they lack the ability to "think things through", as the prior quoted post also shows, even when someone else is showing them exactly what they need to do.
Tesla is going to be cherry picking a whole lot more factories for pennies on the $, just like they did Nummi. And the next time the grinding stone of capitalism crushes the dinosaurs, the Congress Critters will not be picking up the pieces like the last time.
Fire up the popcorn popper and just enjoy the carnage. It's going to make Game of Thrones look like a children's playground at recess. The first showing starts this Friday at 9:00pm.
RT
