A EV car is not something new, manufacturers made them over 100 years ago.

The technology for making a EV is also common knowledge, making a electric motor is quite a bit simpler than designing and making a combustion engine. Same with making a battery pack. 

Initially, Tesla has this feel good story about them, first startup American automaker in a long time, and it carved out a EV segment from nowhere, but with the help of government subsidies. 

No one really paid much attention initially, it's a niche segment, Tesla took advantage of that and owns the monopoly.

Now that EV cars are getting into focus, other manufacturers are jumping into the pond to get a slice of the revenue. The pie is only so big, someone is bound to lose, and that someone will be the initial player, the one that hold the monopoly, Tesla. Yes the pie will grow bigger in time, but that growth is much smaller than the rate market share are lost. The general public simply isn't ready for a EV car yet, while EV cars are selling quite well, that's still a minority of people. The infrastructure simply isn't there outside of a few select cities, having a EV car outside of those cities is simply an inconvenience. 

Tesla fans say they have an ace up their sleeve, Autopilot. But 2 problem, first, the name is misleading, it is just a glorified cruise control, second, they are the only one using that technology while everyone else moved onto LIDAR. Perhaps the competition could be wrong if it was just one company doing it, but when EVERYONE is using LIDAR, then one has to wonder if camera based recognition is actually the wrong choice.

There are slandering and exaggerations from both sides of the coin, everyone is guilty. There are no saints there. The Tesla fanboys have a million reasons to prop up their choice, they needed to prove to everyone else that they made the right choice and they are at the forefront of the future. The people on the other side, of course have reasons to down play Tesla stuff, if they are shorting the stock, they wanted the stock to go down. But why would they want such a thing in the first place? They see something that's not right, doesn't compute to correspond to whatever the stock price is. Hence they bet on the stock to go down. Others simply don't like EV period and wanted the company to go away.

Another big argument from the fanboys is that Tesla made the other manufacturers scared. Well the reality is quite the contrary. Other car makers are flush with cash, something Tesla don't have, and they can use that cash to hedge their bets, make both and they can't lose. Plus, they have been selling cars for so long, and they have been running market research for so long, they know what their customers want, and it's not EV. A minority might, but the majority are still waiting for the infrastructure supporting EV first. Chicken and egg. 

 

 

 


--