I'm very curious who will win the race to the middle, that is mass EV production: either (1) Tesla becoming a mainstream car manufacturer, or (2) the mainstream car manufacturers learning to do EVs.
I'm inclined to favor the Big Auto. I believe they can easily catch up with Tesla's EV technology, whereas Tesla will have a hard time ramping up production to Big Auto scale.
Chinese corps will set up EV only marques and allow them to freely attack ICE competitors where it hurts, even if they don't initially rake in high profits, giving them a feel good halo and they'll get sensible long term support from their government.
At the moment Nissan, Hyundai and Mitsubishi are good mid-level electric options and I can see new Chinese entrants sweeping them aside as they take the whole market.
Geely have bought Volvo and also make the new hybrid London Taxi, and are trying to make a delivery van platform from it.
I know its the not the "race" you're talking about, but the real winners will be the electric power transmission line owners in a market system. Transmission line companies will be the new oil companies...
I tend to agree with you due to manufacturing scales and manufacturing excellence. Tesla still has a long way to catch up.