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> most people are reluctant to buy

if people were really so reluctant to buy a cheap, high quality car, BYD wouldn't be selling millions of them.

Many countries in latin america still subsidize gasoline, so EVs just aren't as viable here compared to e.g. Europe where gas is taxed significantly.

(anecdotally, Chinese cars are pretty popular here in Ecuador, but they're fossil fuel cars, not EVs)

Tesla doesn’t have the engineering or supply chain chops to compete with the Chinese firms.

I'm sure this is how they lost their first mover advantage, by choosing to reinvent the proverbial wheel of car manufacture instead of partnering with e.g. VAG, Ford, or even a Chinese company.

I think they could have pulled that off with a full-time CEO. The quality-control problems didn’t seem intractable, but they didn’t have the equivalent of a Shotwell providing the sober engineering execution which a hype-chasing CEO was never going to deliver.