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Comment by piva00 | Hacker News Reader

> The old European and US car makers are however failing quite badly. What they produce is hot garbage at a huge loss per car.

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.

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It sounds reasonable but people said the same thing 5 years ago. What year will I see the legacy automakers utilize their advantages to sell more electric vehicles than Tesla? I actually feel in 5 more years people will be saying the legacy automakers never had a chance because they were too set in their ways.

> What year will I see the legacy automakers utilize their advantages to sell more electric vehicles than Tesla?

<troll>Ford is selling thousands of F150 EVs a month. How many Cybertrucks has Tesla sold?</troll>

Yes, yet another promise that Elon broke!

5 years ago major automakers didn't have full lineups of EVs already in production. Now they have, it's heavy industry, not tech, things take a while to R&D and ramp-up to full-scale production. Now there is full-scale production from multiple manufacturers, it only gets easier from here, maybe another 5 years is a good waiting time to see clear trends emerging.

> What year will I see the legacy automakers utilize their advantages to sell more electric vehicles than Tesla?

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.

'legacy automakers' have been making EVs and Hybrids for years, and even long before Tesla was a thing (I've been to Geneva motor show enough times to have seen them).

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'.

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