Tesla is a given. The Chinese manufacturers (like MG) seem to be quite successful. The old European and US car makers are however failing quite badly. What they produce is hot garbage at a huge loss per car.
That's not what I've seen in the numerous reviews I've read. Plenty of others get reviews similar to those of Tesla both from reviewers and their owners.
Tesla has got by far the best charging network, and their drivetrain is top notch, but the car shaped object they put that drivetrain in is not great. The old car makers seem to be learning how to make good electric drivetrains faster than Tesla is learning to make the rest of the car.
> at a huge loss per car.
Aren't you jumping the gun a bit? It took Tesla 12 years from the time they started actually shipping cars to the time they started having profitable years.
The issue for the big car makers is that their differentiation is in the ICE drive chain... Making that thing to any sort of modern standard is very difficult, making millions of them at the right price is really difficult.
Electric motors in the wheels - not so much.
So, the established players have to find reasons why consumers will buy their implementation of a generic technology. The potential ones are specialisms, brand & service. Service is difficult because EV's don't need much. My 4 year old tesla has had 1 tyre repaired and a lot of washer fluid poured in the front. Specialisms will include things like bullet proofing, radical looks... Brand will be available to Ferrari, Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Porsche, and few others but these will be small scale - although overall they will add up to be somewhat significant. But companies like Ford, GM, VW, Mercedes, Renault, Toyota and Honda are really screwed. Even Tesla! Personal mobility is going to be commoditized, margins are going to go, costs are going to have to be cut radically
You have can the same batteries (or engines) in a car and get widely different driving dynamics. How does it put power down to the wheels?
EVs are fantastic 0-60 machines in a straight line but the luxury brands you listed care about more than that (including status, of course). How does it corner? What happens when I floor the accelerator at 70mph? Does the car feel like a wild animal you're taming or a machine that feels like an extension of your body?
Then you get to the other differentiators of interior design, extra tech capability, NVH management, etc. I'm excited for those areas to see some more useful innovation once 0-60 times stop being interesting.
I think vehicles like the Prius, Leaf, etc are for the same audience as the corolla, altima, etc buyer. The playground for those who care about a particular 10% of their driving/badge experience will always exist regardless of what powers the vehicle
Also the magic of drivechains is in the magic. Electrical connections and software are much much easier to deliver than gears and other precision manufactured physical components. Replication of software over 1000000's of instances is trivial. Replication of a precise physical component is hard.
And that's just moving the car forward. There's still a suspension, geometry of the wheels and suspension, balancing torque on front and rear wheels, weight distribution, steering, and more that all influences how a car feels as it drives.
Pretty much all of these things can influence a car's performance and how one perceives the car. A better quality inverter or better logic driving it can lead to better performance or efficiency. Tuning the windings and rotor magnet designs can change efficiency and torque curves at high speeds. Obviously, gear ratios can change things as well.
> Electric motors in the wheels - not so much.
Very few EV cars actually put the motors in the wheels. Tons of EVs only have a single motor in them, the extreme majority have 1-2.
Where I live (Switzerland) they don't plan to phase them out anytime soon. All EU goals will shift to later in future, everybody understands that, including politicians pushing for them.
Also, Tesla had some good momentum in the beginning but right now they are just another e-car manufacturer among many, say Porsche beats them on everything actually important in car (apart from price, but then we talk about premium brands). So I wouldn't bet seriously on its future, it can be stellar or can flop ie if EU subsidies dry up.
Family member was looking for an electric car, but found new ones still a bit too expensive. There have been discounts from manufacturers. They decided to go for used. Bought a VW ID.3 for 23k Euro with 16000km. That's a car from 2 years ago. No crashes, battery still at 97% capacity.
VW Group (VW, Audi, etc.) seems to be moving quite well into EVs, I don't understand how manufacturers with a huge know-how to manufacture ICEs could be taken as "failing quite badly" in a market that's barely 5 years in the mainstream. ICEs are much more complex machines to produce than EVs, battery tech is something that most automakers have gotten into.
I think it's still too early to call shots like that, Tesla is still holding on its almost-first-mover advantage but it isn't a given it will stay that way when the competition increases. And competition has been increasing quite substantially.
<troll>Ford is selling thousands of F150 EVs a month. How many Cybertrucks has Tesla sold?</troll>
The EU was supposed to vote for the end of the sale of any ICE vehicle by 2035. I don't know where the final vote is but several manufacturers, including Mercedes, already said they'd stop producing ICE before 2035.
It is coming. I'm in the EU and I do see 100% EV cars from the VW group on the road, just as I see 100% EV BMWs. And they're not all stuck on the side road or I'd see them.
I think it's really a bit early to call all these legacy carmakers dead.
What they have been doing is milking their petrol & diesel markets for as long as they possibly can. Why cannibalize your existing market for EVs when you're still selling plenty of the old cars, until you have no other choice?
Once they can't make money off petrol anymore, those companies will very quickly pivot to EVs and are currently more than technically capable of doing so. And they'll say 'thank you very much Elon for educating the public in what it means to be an EV owner, and what infrastructure is needed to support them. We'll take over from here'.
It most certainly is not.
Tesla: 0.11
Toyota: 1.06
GM: 1.65
Ford: 3.3
VW: 1.05
Seems fine to me...
Any company can fail (for a fairly broad definition of "fail"), given time, but there's no practical likelihood of Tesla suddenly going bankrupt in the near future.
It'll probably keep doing very well. It may have some sudden event happen that makes it stumble. I wouldn't even state that the future of transportation in 20-30 years is a given.
I wouldn't bet against Tesla in the next decade or so, but I wouldn't state its future performance is a given. You know, that whole "past performance does not guarantee future results" thing your broker keeps chanting. Unless you happen to have a crystal ball or some kind of time machine, in which case I'd like in on that.
Maybe you need to polish that crystal ball a little bit more.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/F/ford-motor/gross...