Right now, the only issues holding people back from buying a Tesla is:
1) Range
2) Price
3) Habits
With the new upgrade, the largest model S can drive 613 km on a charge. And this year or next year Tesla covers basically all of North America and Europe with their chargers.
Already now, the range covers what people need 99 percent of the time. I drive more than 600 km once every 2-3 years. So for me a Tesla would already cover 99.9 percent of my use cases. Some people take long hauls more often, but most of them pass superchargers on the way. Once the batteries exceed 7-800 km and the supercharger network is slightly more expanded in the American Midwest, Southern and Eastern Europe, Tesla will cover 99.9 percent for everybody. I simply cannot think of a scenario, in which an American or European in 2021 would drive 800 km and not pass several superchargers on the way, unless they drive outside of Europe and North America or go to arctic regions.
Price is another thing. Model 3 is priced like a midsize car. A lot of buyers cannot afford that even when incentives and money saved on gas is included. But from mid size class and and up, you basically get a car
- that is much safer
- that unlike gasoline cars is upgraded for free on a regular basis after you purchased it
- that unlike gasoline cars can be upgraded modularly for small investments (buying better batteries etc.)
- has much more luggage space
- that drives more smoothly (due to electrical engine)
- with better acceleration
- that to some - ever increasing - extent can drive itself
- that you can buy in the city center or a mall
- with longer range between charges/fill ups
- with cheaper fuel
for the same price as a gasoline car.
But mostly, Tesla buyers will get a car where the digital stuff is integrated in everything. Tesla learns from usage just like Amazon or Google learn from usage. And just like Amazon and Google use that to get an edge from their competitors, I have a hard time seeing how Mercedes or Audi are going to be able to compete in the mid to large size class unless they too integrate digital into everything.
Habits die hard, and for some people, gasoline cars are the only cars. But if the market for Tesla has been high income 30-60 year old first movers on the American coasts and Northern and Central Europe, it will soon be medium income people all over Europe. The demographics of potential Tesla buyers will be 100 times larger in a couple of years.
I truly hope the large car manufacturers introduce their own fully electrical vehicles in production soon, and not just a concept car here and there. Competition is best. But if they don't do it in the next 2-3 years, they are going to be gone from everything except very high end and cheap cars, and for cheap cars as well after a decade or so, when Tesla can produce $20,000 cars.
I don't think they fully understand how grave their situation is. They focus on the fact that Tesla is losing money. But Tesla basically hasn't played all their cards yet. Tesla is still 1-2 years from selling a mid size car, 5-10 years away from selling cheap cars. They haven't upgraded batteries to bury the range issue yet. They haven't integrated solar in the cars yet to further kill any range anxiety.
The autopilot is learning from around a million driven km per day at the moment and soon that will be from tens of millions of km driven.
Any day Tesla can license their battery technology and superchargers to any of the large car companies. And if bankruptcy threatens, they can sell to Apple, Google or another tech company.
Heck, I bet I am just one of hundreds of thousands of people who would gladly pay $5-10,000 for their shares in a future round just to save them, even if I thought there was a good chance I would lose it all.
The traditional car companies should be much more worried. We are in a situation like when Apple introduced the iPhone and changed the cell phone industry.