Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

What companies are considered the most direct competitors to Tesla?

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
Hey,

I'm doing a project on Tesla and I'm trying to figure out the three top competitors against Tesla Motors.

I would like to talk about companies who are most likely direct competition against Tesla both with model 3 as well as in the future.

So far General Motors seems like a good candidate since they are huge and are aiming to dedicate more resources to electric and hybrid cars.

What other companies come to mind and why?

Thanks a lot!
 
#1 Large Luxury Car In US = Tesla Model S (2015 Sales Comparison)

Notice how every other luxury brand had a drop in sales in the US while Tesla had a significant increase. This is basically a chart of Tesla's competition.

Tesla doesn't really compete in a separate "electric car" market. Nissans Leaf or BMWs i3 don't take many sales Tesla might have gotten.

Tesla competes head to head with makers of high end luxury vehicles like BMW and Mercedes and most of the sales it takes would have gone to ICE cars.

The Tesla Model 3 will most directly compete with BMWs 3 Series and other entry level models from luxury brands.

BMW is the closest thing to a automaker competitor though they don't compete with electric car models.

GM is perhaps the closest in trying to match technology benchmarks, but the Chevy Bolt isn't much of a competitor to BMWs 3 Series so it's not much of a competitor for Model 3. Not many customers cross-shop Chevy and BMW, except perhaps for Corvette.

It's hard to consider Faraday Future as a competitor when it has no products for sale. At best it shows a desire to emulate Tesla's approach.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: RobStark and AndreN
As far as Technology competitors for the future there's more reason to take Google and Apple seriously than Faraday. They have a lot of cash and IT chops. Unlike legacy car companies they have no fear of disruption or cannibalizing existing sales. Unlike Faraday they're real major companies that have proven ability to deliver.

So if I was picking 3 I might try 1 from each type:

BMW - Real current market legacy competitor
GM - Technology benchmark legacy competitor
Google or Apple - Future technology competitor
 
at this point in time in the US there really are no direct competitors to tesla. no manufacturer can offer the range that a tesla has, the size/luxury that the tesla offers and no other manufacturer has a SpC network as large as tesla's
 
I beg to differ on the last point regarding superchargers (well, in the UK anyway). Currently there are significantly more Ecotricity rapid charge points than Tesla SC's. The rapid chargers are at 96% of UK motorway services, as well as Nissan dealers and Ikea stores. As far as I am aware, there are superchargers at South mimms services (just north of London) and a few other locations, but really not many at all. I know that is about to change, but Ecotricity are also putting in more chargers every day. Luckily, these are the Chademo variety, so can be used with the appropriate Tesla adaptor.
 
Hey,

I'm doing a project on Tesla and I'm trying to figure out the three top competitors against Tesla Motors.
You've stumbled into a very interesting question. Effectively, Tesla has no competitors.

There are three *categories* of future competitors in the (electric) car market:
(1) The existing large automakers
(2) Rising Chinese automakers
(3) Apple, Google, and other tech companies considering getting into the car business.

An exercise for you: figure out why none of these are currently direct competition, and analyze when you think they will become direct competition.

The stationary storage business is another matter.
 
is that so, could you specify one? just one, please?
i think you got the best responses above but my money would be on BMW (i3 is great and getting better). I could see a mass market electric 3 series in a few years. Also the Chevy Volt is pretty great from what I hear. Definitely lower end, but a few years of refinement and GM could have a solid model 3 competitor.
 
Don't forget Mercedes. They compete in the luxury area, and have been stung by the fact that a lot of Tesla sales come directly out of E-Class and S-Class sales they might have had. In the last Daimler stockholders meeting, Dieter Zetsche (chairman) was on the hot seat. As well as being a businessman, he is also an engineer and designer (I know him), and he will be pushing Mercedes to get into this space. (I am not confident that Daimler will be very successful competing in this area, but they have large resources to pull from).
 
  • Informative
Reactions: SW2Fiddler
Were I to do this I would choose the three large German auto builders and BYD. Each of them have some BEV today, Daimler has a couple today plus their Chinese JV with BYD. BYD is by far the most prolific current BEV builder, often dismissed because they are Chinese only.
Each German builder has current major projects for BEV although their current offerings are pitiful. However, as others have mentioned the current "competition" is basically Audi A6, A8 BMW 5 and 7, MB E and S, when thinking nearest equivalent.
 
Tesla currently has no direct competitor.
They have a ton of potential direct competitors and a ton of current partial competitors.

Any established company could compete directly with Tesla in a couple of years.
The question is, will any of them choose to? So far, they have not.

As Tesla is striving to replace all ICE vehicles with EVs, you could also consider all other car companies as competition (which is what I meant by partial competitors).
In that arena, Tesla is competing very well against other large luxury Sedans, and soon I suspect, SUVs.

GM's Bolt is probably the nearest thing to a direct competitor Tesla has on the near horizon.
The Tesla has many advantages over the Bolt, but the Bolt has advantages over the Tesla Model 3 as well.
The biggest question is does GM want to sell these in numbers? For the first year, they are planning on about 30,000 of the Bolt. If they are not willing, or able to sell more, it really isn't a competitor.
 
I agree that there are a number of companies that could compete with Tesla - but they would do this only if they feel that doing this would increase shareholder value. They don't see electrification as a primary corporate strategy with the objective to change the world, like Tesla does.

Consider Nissan. Their LEAF (which I had for3 years) is a very nice product. If they wanted to, they could put a big battery pack on the Maxima (or similar car) and compete with Tesla (at least with the Model 3); however, they will look at product development costs and likely sales and will not see a positive ROI - so they won't do it. Tesla doesn't seem to be bothered by a negative ROI - this is reasonable now because they are growing the company - but they will eventually have to make a profit (or merge with Apple or someone like that to subsidize the product). GM got away with running with losses for years (I was there!) - but we see that it eventually caught up to them. In this area (financial) it seems to me that Tesla is its own biggest competitor (or at least Elon's hubris is - he has admitted it!)