1. The ICE manufacturers in the global auto industry, ALL have huge plant, equipment and product development tied up in the ICE platforms.
2. Any transition for them, must be slow and gradual, because they simply cannot afford to quickly abandon those existing ICE platforms and sunk costs.
3. Even if they wanted to, due to the sheer work, investment $ and repositioning/reorienting/retraining etc. required, it will take over 10 years.
4. The industry will have to rework their contractual and incentive structures with their union employees, the dealer network franchise agreements and the phasing out of the exiting ICE vehicles that are on the road ( billions of vehicles ), which still require maintenance, support, servicing and they continue to retain legal liability for all those vehicles sold on the iCE platform, which are and will continue to be on the road for sometime.
Therefore, they simply cannot go fast ( practically difficult ) or importantly, cannot afford to go faster - than a certain pace - because of the constraints of the current ICE platform. I am sure the CEO's and CFO's at each manufacturer have developed a glide path to the future, but glide it will be, because the CFO 's will be very clear about the financial ramifications of each change, vs. time . This financial proforma for investment capital and slow and gradual transformation is a pretty BIG deal.
Besides all of the above, there is the Bigger problem of battery supply and lithium required, and we all know that the current battery and lithium based technology may or may not be the paradigm ten years down the road.
So, a new entrant like TSLA will continue to have significant advantages in many respects for quite some time.
The ICE manufacturers will need to play both offense vis a vis EV tech and defense vis a vis ICE legacy platforms and costs.
I am sure many new entrants ( current like TSLA and in the future like , maybe Apple ) also understand and appreciate the strategic and operational challenges faced by the ICE manufacturers. This gives them a strategic advantage to start fresh without the constraints of the legacy systems.
I'm not sure the investment community fully appreciates the extent of the constraints placed by these legacy platforms and how it will continue to constrain and weaken the ICE manufacturers. The auto industry and the employees and dealers will be in for some big changes and some tough times starting in about 3-5 years and lasting until at least 2030, IMO.
So, the patient LT Tesla investor, IMO, will be rewarded because of the strategic advantages vs. time T and the constraints of the ICE platform investment and sunk costs for the ICE manufacturers. This is a LONG game.....forget about the quarter to quarter stuff and focus on the 2020-2025 timeframe. It will be quite interesting.