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Comment by Solstinox | Hacker News Reader

It's uncertain whether Tesla has won. Less uncertain is that a lot of the existing manufacturers have already lost.

I don't understand this sentiment. Do existing manufacturers even see TSLA as a threat? Tesla has about 0.5% of the global market share for autos. Toyota has 275 B revenue and 50 B gross profits Tesla has 24 B revenue and 4 B gross profits Toyota sells ~ 10,7 million vehicles/yr and Tesla sells ~400k

It seems that rise and fall of various large auto manufactures are dictated more by the competition between them, than anything the upstart Tesla is doing.

This might be true today, but will it hold in the medium/long-term future? The precise concern is that the existing manufacturers aren't paying attention to the upstart that could conceivably eat their lunch in the medium-term future.

The pivotal question here is whether the existing manufacturers are simply burying their heads in the sand, or are ignoring the growth of EVs due to a principled strategy that has legs. That case has not been made sufficiently clearly, if it even has any merit, in my opinion.

My point is that I don't see any reason to believe it won't hold true in the medium/long term future?

Do they have any interest in fighting for the EV market now? Are there barriers to entry that can stop them from leisurely moving in one the technology has wider adoption and maturity?

A single data point certainly does not make a trend, but VW has actually tried to compete and had to change their tune rather quickly by admitting that Tesla has a sustainable lead in the EV space.

I think that is fair evidence suggesting that tesla can hold its own in the EV space. That said, Im not convinced that this is an existential threat for any of the top manufacturers. If tesla has the entire EV market for the next 10 years, it will become on of the top manufacturers, not eliminate them.

Hell, they could even be synergistic. Tesla charges a consumer premium for clean EVs, sells the credits to auto manufacturers, who get to sell high profit/ low mileage vehicles.

One thing is for certain - existing manufacturers will have to compete in a different way.

So the iphone came out in 2007 and pretty much wiped out the competition in phones. blackberry and nokia and even palm were pretty much forgotten in short order. But now there are alternatives. But then apple lost its founder. I wonder what things would be like if steve jobs were around.

Tesla is the Commodore 64 of cars. (A comment that makes as much sense as arbitrary comparisons to the IPhone).

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