It's interesting that two of the largest automakers in the world need to work together to compete with a company the size of Tesla in this arena.
It is interesting that Tesla thinks they can compete without doing this (I'm not sure how true this statement is).
It is unlikely a partnership would provide any value to Tesla unless a legacy automaker would like to hand over their manufacturing capacity.
Supply management is a core competency for the big automakers. Do not confuse not as far along with their EV journey with incompetent at it. If things are not available in their OE bin they are good at creating the supply.
Auto manufactures are not building charging stations because that shouldn't be a core competency. Tesla being first may have been forced to build them, but as EV takes off others will get into the game. It is better for the big automakers if they have a universal charging connector and let many others worry about how to get a charging station elsewhere. It is a distraction from building cars to spend time building a charging system (one Tesla probably had to take on, but as EVs become more common others will step up to create them)
These two factors mean that many small, single-digit percentage improvements caused by better optimization and equipment integraton will yield a double-digit improvement in vehicle performance.
This is readily evident in BMW, Audi and Jaguar’s current inability to compete with Tesla on price and performance in their EVs. Add to this the growing role that software plays in cars, which is very hard to do right unless you make a very focused effort.
My strong suspicion is that a «we will build this from commodity parts» approach is obsolete for a couple of decades, until general battery pack cost & performance is multiplied from today. And for software, until someone makes the Android of automotive software, if anyone will ever have an incentive and ability (pending manufacturer cooperation) to do that.