1) Automobile efficiency has moved dramatically since the 70's and that's due to government regulation. That regulation continues to push the industry as a whole.
2) The regulation goes beyond automobiles, were moving to alternative fuels as a people. Auto's will be drug along with that shift.
3) Automobiles and selling cars, in general, are a lot more than JUST the drivetrain. All that was really talking about with electric is a drivetrain. It's not clear to me yet that everything about a car has to be rethought to simply make it electric.
it isn't "has", it is an opportunity to rethink what hasn't changed in the last 100 years.
Google/Apple (and probably Uber) can attach drivetrain to their platform while Ford/GM just aren't capable of producing a platform to attach to their drivetrains. Tesla is an intermediate step in that direction and it looks like a good [though far from sure] candidate to make it successfully into the future of electric connected self-driving cars.
In the case of cars the key performance characteristics that we need are ability to accelerate into freeway traffic, braking ability, range, and recharge time. Electric is naturally worse than gas on all of these characteristics at the same price point, however battery technology is improving at a predictable rate and it will eventually meet the characteristics that people need for daily life. At which point pure electric becomes viable for all of us.
Therefore the prediction from 20 years ago was that the pure electric cars would likely to come from something that perhaps looks like a glorified golf cart, which will eat out the car market from the bottom up.
Tesla doesn't look like this because Elon pursued an unexpected angle. He found that he could produce acceptable high performance electric cars long before the initial projection, because the profit margins on gasoline cars in that category were high enough to absorb the insane cost of the batteries. As battery technology improves, he is able to move down the quality curve. But to do so, he has to keep thin profit margins.
Traditional manufacturers still face the traditional problem. They can't afford to offer an equivalent electric car at an equivalent price because their cost structures are too rich. But he's moving down the value chain and broadening, and not moving up. By the time he can offer a mass market car, he'll have an unbeatable edge.
Of course even if Tesla's plan doesn't work, don't count out large electric golf cart companies moving up market into automobiles like Marshell Electric Vehicle Co Ltd, EZ-GO, Xiamen Dalle Electric Car Co. LTD and Polaris. Just as was predicted 20 years ago.
Either way, I do not think it likely that most established automobile companies will survive the electric transition. If they do, it will be the first case that I know of where established brands are successful in switching to an inferior technology.
GM released the Bolt several months ago, which has a longer range than the Model 3, and you can drive one off of a dealer lot right now. I test drove one and it's an awesome, fast, and affordable electric car. An average person, without any kind of pre-order, will not be able to drive off a lot with a 3 for at least another 2 years. Tesla has completely missed the ball. GM will be on their 3rd revision of the mass-market electric car by then. That's not even counting Toyota who are several revisions into the Leaf and many more into the Prius which eats Tesla's entire product line for lunch.
The Model 3 is a comparable car starting at $35,000 but is planned to sell at an average of $45,000 with an independently estimated profit percentage of around 25%. That means that the cost of production is somewhere around $34,000.
If costs continue looking like that, as both companies scale electric car production up, which manufacturer would you prefer to be?
Also I called them comparable, but they really aren't. After looking at safety in accidents, the driving assist and so on, my family doesn't consider them equivalent. We put a deposit on a Model 3 which we hope to buy next year. Traditional manufacturers are well behind Tesla on key amenities like that.
Tesla expects to produce and sell 80,000 units of the Model 3 in 2017.
We'll see if they hit that target, but come on ... in what reality can this be described as having "completely missed the ball"?
With an already outdated charging system! In terms of styling and execution, I'd accept a position that GM is more competent than Tesla -- especially for the conventional vehicle-as-appliance crowd. But in terms of knowing where to go in the future, I think GM has a considerable disadvantage.
Congrats, you got a hybrid now (not unlike a Chevy Volt).
It is worth reading those books and understanding the thesis. Because it is directly relevant to the current situation. We are looking at the gas -> electric conversion, in about the projected time frame, and all of the reasons for why traditional manufacturers were likely to fumble are all there. And the creation of hybrids that you point to is as relevant to the survival of traditional car manufacturers as the creation of sail/steam hybrids was to sailboat manufacturers roughly a century ago. (News flash, the big ones all made those hybrids, and none successfully made the transition to pure steam ships.)
This is not to say that Tesla will be a big player in the all electric age that is coming. But its odds are better than Ford, Toyota and GM.