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The independent EV makers, up to and including Tesla, are tiny hut villages on the mountain of Sleeping Giant Motors. When the major makers decide to take EVs seriously, the indies will be bought up for patents and IP and vanish into the history books. Within 2 years.
Seems to me there are a lot of parallels with the personal computer business of days gone by. IBM, a company that had quite a legacy in the computer hardware business had the PC side pretty well sewn up until parts and sub-assemblies to build clones became ubiquitous and by then it was too late for the sleeping giant to dominate.
I wouldn't be completely surprised if in the future lots of 'hut villages' spring up, each constructing vehicles (perhaps even doing specialized or niche products) using catalog components. Getting back to the PC business analogy, while "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" as the old adage goes, they do little if any business in the consumer sector these days. I suspect the EV business may evolve the same way.
Seems to me there are a lot of parallels with the personal computer business of days gone by. IBM, a company that had quite a legacy in the computer hardware business had the PC side pretty well sewn up until parts and sub-assemblies to build clones became ubiquitous and by then it was too late for the sleeping giant to dominate.
Good point, but you can't build a vehicle in a leased tech plaza building. Or a storefront. (I did well, for a few years, building white-box computers in my garage; my name, however, is not Michael Dell.)
The almost unbelievable overhead and difficulty of mass producing cars - as opposed to hand-assembling a few examples a month - has beaten many a well-funded attempt and may yet do Tesla in. The odds of any startup brand doing more than carving a small niche in the eventual GM-Ford-Toyota EV world are slim.
Good point, but you can't build a vehicle in a leased tech plaza building. Or a storefront. (I did well, for a few years, building white-box computers in my garage; my name, however, is not Michael Dell.)
The almost unbelievable overhead and difficulty of mass producing cars - as opposed to hand-assembling a few examples a month - has beaten many a well-funded attempt and may yet do Tesla in. The odds of any startup brand doing more than carving a small niche in the eventual GM-Ford-Toyota EV world are slim.
Yep. The smaller the company the weaker the negotiating leverage for parts from suppliers. Which means the higher the price for the car. Smaller company means last dibs on the engineering, manufacturing, and marketing talent. Them some giant company like Toyota comes in and offers the same vehicle for less with deeper pockets and a top notch engineering team, global serving and dealer network, and the deep pockets to withstand cyclical market downturns.
Small companies today exist almost solely in hopes of getting bought out by a larger company.
Yep. The smaller the company the weaker the negotiating leverage for parts from suppliers. Which means the higher the price for the car. Smaller company means last dibs on the engineering, manufacturing, and marketing talent. Them some giant company like Toyota comes in and offers the same vehicle for less with deeper pockets and a top notch engineering team, global serving and dealer network, and the deep pockets to withstand cyclical market downturns.
And that's just the beginning. All of that is reality for any large-scale business endeavor involving product development and marketing. The problem on top of that is that a tech ween, even a successful one, assumes that it's all the same business game, just played with different parts... and completely fails to understand how different cars are from nearly every other consumer product. Almost no tech products, for example, are subject to any kind of operational regulation, licensing etc. beyond FCC RF noise issues and UL safety. And while even something as complex and specialized as an iPhone can be ramped up and down in production all over the world on fairly short notice, auto production is still a heavy, massive-capital, slow-roll endeavor, as Musk found out recently. You can't just call up Foxconn and have them pull another facility out of storage... for six months.
In the early 1900's there were thousands of automobile makers. look at what it has come down to today. The big 3 and many more. The same thing will happen in the new EV age. A lot will come and go pretty quickly.
In the early 1900's there were thousands of automobile makers. look at what it has come down to today. The big 3 and many more. The same thing will happen in the new EV age. A lot will come and go pretty quickly.
It happened again after the war - particularly in Europe and par-particularly in the UK, many dozens if not hundreds of sports car makers popped up in barns. At a wild guess, it would not be hard to list over 100 makers who turned out fewer than 100 cars each.
Including the Teslas of the age, Tucker and Kaiser.
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