Very well put. Just to add, in order to build compelling product that actually competes with Tesla the incumbents need to build the product which competes with their own ICE offerings. Nobody so far demonstrated their willingness to do this. LEAF can't possibly compete with Versa, Bolt can't possibly compete with Sonic. BMW i3 is designed to scare away anybody considering BMW 3 Series...
Totally on point.
That's another big piece of Tesla's advantage. They don't have the inertia of 100 years of building ICEVs. TM is able to build superior products, in large part, because EVs have huge inherent advantages over ICEVs,
IF you mitigate the few drawbacks well. Being able to truly compete with Tesla, pretty much means abandoning their ICEV roots and diving in with both feet on a massive overhaul to their business model.
Incumbent automakers have a responsibility not only to their shareholders, but also to their franchised dealer networks. The business model for all incumbent automakers is factory produces cars -> sells them to dealers, dealers sell cars to customers with razor thin margins and make money on the maintenance and upkeep of those cars.
EVs upend that formula, and there is no easy way for an incumbent to sell a compelling EV in volume that won't either cannibalize their own ICEV sales (which the shareholders won't like, and they have a responsibility to maximize income), or have very low value to their dealers due to the reduced ongoing maintenance (and so there is a strong disincentive to selling them to a customer vs a comparable ICEV). We see this already with the compliance EVs and hybrids you can buy today -- the dealers actively avoid selling them.
Truth be told, Nissan (with the LEAF) is probably the closest thing to a no-compromises EV from an incumbent on the market today, and as you said, it still doesn't really compete with its platform cousin in Versa. The 2nd gen Volt is a pretty nice looking car, so GM seems to have stopped making EVs look weird to keep sales down, but its a PHEV, so it keeps all the maintenance requirements of an ICEV. Admittedly, Bolt is pretty much an long-range EV Sonic, so that's got most of the points, but the secret sauce its missing that Tesla 3 has, is that a $35k car needs to feel like a $35k car, not a $15k car thats been converted to EV. All that ignoring that even once they build a compelling EV, that feels like it belongs at its price point, and doesn't make compromises, they still can't begin to touch the Supercharger network.
I honestly don't understand how no other automaker has taken Tesla up on their very reasonable offer of "we will share the supercharger network if you build a long range EV that can use it and pay for your share of the costs".
Even if one of the incumbents builds a 'compelling' EV, how could they possibly compete re: Autopilot? My hunch is that they purchase the database from Google, but Tesla's product is just so far out in front. I'm shocked that 4 years after initial production of Model S that there's absolutely no competition on the horizon. This is the main reason Tesla can make mistakes and still be wildly successful.
I pretty much agree. Tesla can make mistakes, and still be wildly successful, because the incumbents are letting them. They're basically ignoring Tesla and hoping it goes away. They're starting to see the writing on the wall now (as evidenced by all of the grandstanding about what they're going to do in the next 5-10 years to match what Tesla is doing today), but I don't think we've even begun to see the world of hurt for them. The German luxury brands will feel it the most, the fastest, ESPECIALLY BMW. I think Ford/GM/Chrysler/Honda/Toyota/KIA/Mazda and friends have... a little more time before Tesla crushes them to smarten up.
