They will learn eventually to make a competitive product as they will have to adapt or eventually fade away into obsolescence. Savvy EV consumers are not going to be fooled.
And, based on the lessons of the film to digital transition, very few of the marquee names in the old will survive/thrive in the new. Some will get bought by new players to get access to tooling and mfg expertise for things that are common between old and new.
It's actually a pretty good analogy, in both cases all that's changing is the internal core (film vs. digital sensor, ICE vs electric motor) and everything around it stays largely the same. A few things you don't need anymore (film storage and wind/unwind mechanisms, complex drive trains and fuel delivery/combustion exhaust systems) and a few new things you need (sensor data processing and digital storage medium, large scale high power density battery pack) and a change in the ecosystem/infrastructure (developers go away, but need high quality printing to hang pics on walls, no gas stations, but need high speed charging infrastructure and possibly battery swap stations).
In the camera world it took the successful survivors a decade to realize the flexibility in design and the new capabilities they could deliver to their customers as a result of the new tech vs old tech. Newer players weren't held back and brought those features to market much sooner. Part of the problem was hubris: "we serve a PROFESSIONAL market and they don't want those bells and whistles." Turned out, they did, because it enabled another level of creativity or ability to get difficult shots (I.e the tilting LCD display with a live feed from the sensor enabled a much more accurate and successful shot from over head or very low positions).
Tesla has first mover advantage and genius on their side. A very small number of the old guard manufacturers will survive the coming shift and then it will take a while for the survivors to shuck the limitations of their ICE origins. Tesla, being fully vertically integrated with the new ecosystem/infrastructure (superchargers) as well as the hard parts of new core requirements (batteries and battery temp management) has a further advantage in the long term to be a supplier to their competitors, so they make money whether you buy a Tesla car or a BMW car (eventually).
My one disappointment from Tesla is that they have abandoned the battery swap concept too soon. Their problem was a business model and scarcity problem (only a tiny handful of swap stations, unclear how to manage getting the right packs into cars on the return trip). As I recall battery swap was proposed back in the 90's as the way to make electric as viable as gas and, until we have battery tech that can allow for a full recharge from near empty in 10 minutes or less, and a charging station able to deliver that massive level of power as often as a gas pump delivers gas there will be people for whom the old tech is a better choice (same was true with film to digital, until we had 24+ megapixels with good low-light performance the pros stayed with film because their clients (magazines like national geographic, etc) required incredibly high resolution for their print publications). The powerwall/power pack is going to be key to that next quantum shift at the infrastructure layer because it enables you to receive power at the levels the grid can handle 24x7 while use of that power is much more bursty. So you store that power in DC form where it can be dumped as fast as the battery tech can handle into the car. If they can move fast enough to get a battery pack that can charge without damage at 5-10C (C=capacity of pack) and either not require balancing or reliably balance quickly then the need for battery swapping goes away. Average gas station stop on a road trip is easily 10 minutes. 10C charge rate gets you from empty to full in 6 minutes, if you can get balancing done in 4-9 minutes you fit within the expectations of the average consumer road trip experience. If you can't deliver that experience with charging tech then you have to do it with battery swapping and the way you manage that is that you make clear that the vehicle buyer doesn't own the battery, the company does. Buying the vehicle gets you unlimited battery swaps for life or the vehicle is MUCH cheaper and buying the vehicle gets you access to battery swapping and swapping costs $40 a pop (like a tank of gas) with a nationwide infrastructure for swapping. And, for the typical daily commute or after arrival at your destination you have charging so you only visit swap stations on a road trip. That's a very compelling car for the masses who don't care or don't believe in climate change, and the other negative effects of an ICE infrastructure. Next step after that is to solve for the ground transport industry (big trucks) and other niche spaces like construction, etc. that need their pickups. The big truck impact is somewhat reduced through the growing use of CNG and the infrastructure that has been going in for a while to support CNG trucking, so from a JB/Musk/Tesla perspective that side can wait.
