Volvo I guess decided in 2017 or so to quit (pure) ICE vehicles (Germans were laughing at Volvo advocating a german speed limit as Volvos obviously would become like Teslas on the Autobahn anyway ;-)
Jaguar like Cadillac is going EV, Toyota/Lexus is somewhat late but definitely prepared to build around their solid state battery in any numbers they'd see fit, even in parallel to a fuel cell line and hybrid lines if opportune. Just trust them insofar. NIO and others are pure players from the beginning. Genesis/KIA/Hyundai are building their platform that alone will have a massive impact, GM could start with Honda/Acura if it saw advantages
https://businessjournaldaily.com/article/ultium-doubles-footprint-in-lordstown/
Utilization of 7.5M capacity won't be easily given without cooperation of Tesla – but who'd want to cooperate to any important extent? They might produce like Steyr produces for different brands for better utilization. Or become more and more of a supplier, supplying an autopilot and the undetachable rear bumper or so... Who'd care much what they'll do except for some managers elsewhere buying that?
Now, BMW and Mercedes are shifting their ICE engines to Austria, eastern Europe and China for their own transition. They all are thinking platforms, not a model or four that might come and go. They are fine with faculties crumbling and ZF no longer developing conventional transmissions for ICE vehicles, they certainly do not fear running out of capacities or capital. They see opportunities to fight a union but even in that regard the Musk ain't worth much: EV as such mean leaner production and the leaner production is a two sided sword, politically it's one of their problems as it costs influence.
EV technically can come from Turkey like a TOGG and their own workforce around Stuttgart or Munich would start buying TOGGs; could come from a swiss or canadian start up, from GB or anywhere else. No one's ten years ahead in an e-mobility and certainly not Tesla who right now is running out of relevancy. No models, no quality, no fresh narratives, no real platforms ready, no backbones except for a Gigacharger name that I cannot remember right now as it means nothing. (Battery swapping 2.0 in China for NIO means something, even though it will probably not be around forever, because it's more exclusive and people order NIO instead of Tesla for the upgrade, swap and BaS-options alone. Not exactly the same as the Gigacharger against the 800V for E-GMP's 700mph, especially since solid state batteries should render some of that obsolete within a few years.)
"Autopilots" would probably be half as important at your east coast, in Moscow and Peking, rest of world even less so. Would be – if they were a barrier at all for NIO, KIA, VWPorscheAudiBugattiLamborghiniBentleyBoys, LiAuto, Xpeng, BMW, Mercedes – you can never name realities but they're out there.
Even chargers would tend to be a bigger problem than that. In the sense of acceptable chargers:
https://ecomento.de/2020/12/21/genossenschaft-ladegruen-baut-bundesweites-oekostrom-ladenetz-auf/
But people need not wait for a Caesar arranging their infrastructures, their grids like the US seem to mostly think when looking at whatever wiring as eternally nationally insufficient. The rest of world ain't that fascinated with branding. People e.g. become limited partners for the electricity from the windmill in their backyard plus 5% a year. And have their tsars deal with the devoted complements. Unless they lose their 5000€ building TSLA pyramids of wealth instead.
A windmill here, a group of chargers there running from the tramway's traction current, some conversion of big oil's gas stations, home charging from solar roofs installed everywhere already. Did I mention more than two or three times that I can get my Aiways U5 from the local electronics store?
No chance Tesla will ever get a foot into e-mobility anywhere else in the world so that it could let your so called market capitalization survive. They're producing phantasies that less and less people take note of wherever actual EV from all over the world arrive. And this Norway shows that one or two first entries out of 5 to 35 per platform from one major out of a dozen majors suffice to kill all real phantasy as the market matures and EV instead of Teslas are bought. Not much of a vicious circle actually as you're not looking fast enough ;-) Only a bubble leaving an also-ran.
The consumer is the winner? Well, the Tesla brand at least is not. I guess you asked about thinking of any manufacturer ever having been disruptive at some point... Turn that around: There will never have been any. Who'd even dare to affirm the idea of half of all cars around the world coming from Gigafactories? Which would not be sufficient future market share to justify current valuation.
But TSLA is more than Tesla, I know. And yes, your Muskaesar should spend more time in Germany from now – help buffering renewables, you know.
One more entry that only helps to keep this EV-section free of anything non-TSLA. I shall leave it at that to avoid pseudo debating, Jeff.
It's your hobby, not mine. I'm basically watching to see how exactly activism ends, but that's no more interesting to watch here than anywhere else. Boilerplates and figures, Abziehbilder und Charaktermasken – mostly exactly the same and always easy to understand.
