Rather than Tesla being worried about Chevrolet, I think they'd be more worried about the likes of LG & Samsung in the longer term.
Tesla has hired Li-Ion specialist Jeff Dahn, so at a minimum Tesla is involved is prescribing the additives to their cells to give them the unique properties that Tesla wants.
Tesla has also dictated that the cells have a unique form factor, "2170" instead of the 18650 standard, and most automotive OEM's used prismatic cells instead of round anyway.
A commoditised battery/drivetrain solution allows the incumbents to focus on what they do best - building high quality cars at scale. So in this respect the challenge lies with Tesla.
(FWIW I'm a huge Tesla fan but I enjoy reading EV articles on HN because the discourse is a bit more balanced than more pro-Tesla communities.)
Yes, their battery tech is improving, and they make pretty damn good cars, but most of all Tesla is getting people excited for electric cars.
Before they came around, electric cars were shitty ecoboxes that were worse in just about every way to an ICE car. They were ugly, had no range, were missing features, expensive, slow charging, etc... There were exceptions, but for the most part this was what the average person believed.
And while you could argue that much of this is still true with Teslas when compared to other luxury brands at the same price point, Tesla has gotten people interested. They've gotten people excited for electric cars. They've made people want them even though they might be worse on paper.
And that's a big deal. They are not only making a great product, but they are pushing their competitors to step up their game and really focus on their electric offerings.
The EV1 spawned a movie, with most owners very interested in buying.
If you think a RAV4 is a shitty ecobox, well, I'm not sure how I can help.
similar to intel and microsoft making first party hardware, their core becomes more valuable when oems get better.
So, you mean the opposite of Android?
I do think that you are exactly right in regards to their competitive advantage, though. A company that competes with them will need to do a lot of work to convince the market that their electric car is in the same class as a Tesla. That will take years of work, a lot of money, and it will require them to do some things that risk damaging their existing business.
I suspect that we are actually agreeing here and maybe I'm just saying it in a different way?
Yes, they have changed people minds about EVs, but calling them a marketing company is silly, when you compare them to traditional OEM's that mostly just do final assembly and buy advertising.
I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla ends up licensing their battery tech and that supercharging becomes a standard.
I would bet it is actually. Licensing is really where the money is. They've built a substantial lead in the EV market and have some pretty impressive technology.
If Musk is really serious about expanding the markets he says he is, the fastest way to do that is license his technology to other companies. Let them help him increase these EV markets far faster and scale up far greater than Tesla ever could on their own.
Of course, it doesn't make a lot of sense on a commercial perspective, but that's probably one of the most effective ways to bootstrap the market. Plus, it would make for a very interesting case study.
AFAIK, LG doesn't get involved in medium and heavy industries like ship building, but Samsung (now Samsung-Renault) has made cars in the past. Knowing that the Chaebols like to use a "fast-follow" approach, once electric cars become commonplace, it would be a fairly small lift for any given Korean car maker (Hyundai/Kia, Samsung, etc.) to engage with the existing supply chain and just put some product out.