For BMW and others, they should have the advantage. They already have R&D, factories, distribution, and the workers in place. Tesla is having to build up everything from scratch including a battery factory.
a new company producing cars isn't doing much "from scratch", other than design, and the basic concepts there are also pretty well established. as far as i can tell tesla is producing the same basic product as everyone else except all the tech people are into it because of elon musk, where they probably hated or didn't pay attention to cars before.
I agree that Tesla's are an economic substitute for Toyotas but when you step into a Model S as a car guy you know it's different.
There's only two reasons I didn't buy it 1) I love road trips and there's one supercharger station in my province, and more importantly 2) I couldn't afford it. Tesla's are like BMWs you know they aren't that reliable, are really expensive, but there's nothing like driving one. Like BMW, it's a smiles per gallon car you buy it because when you step on it, it goes, not because it gets great gas milage.
in other words, same basic product as any high end fast car. this is coming from someone who has a high end fast car, is a car guy, has a 'brand', and has ridden in all the high end fast cars.
they're all basically the same.
musk is a car guy and lives in LA (bel air), car capital of the known universe. he's a genius for recognizing this market angle.
Tesla does source its current batteries from Panasonic though.