> I'm increasingly questioning whether the electric drive train and the batteries are actual difficult and novel part about building an electric car.

Batteries are made by Panasonic, who can also sell to other car makers. And both GE and Siemens have centuries of expertise in electric engines.

The biggest hurdle for the traditional car makers isn't technical, it's actually changing their mindset from a product they've been making for a century to a new one.

I find myself nodding your head at the first sentence.

I think the second sentence is agreed upon/accepted knowledge. The batteries and electrics are NOT difficult.

I'm not sure if the third sentence is relevant. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Tesla-like success required thinking outside of the box. If GM just started cranking out mediocre electric cars like they crank out mediocre gasoline-powered cars, I'm not sure it would have made a difference. It took a new company with a fresh approach like Tesla to drive the market.

Whether it's a GM or a Tesla that ends up winning in the long term is up for argument, and it certainly seems like it SHOULD obviously be the big existing carmakers. But they didn't seem interested in doing more than bolting an electric drivetrain to an existing car, which wasn't enough to get people excited about the revolution that electric cars represent.

GM isn't a representative example of the car industry. They'd been getting their asses kicked in the car industry for decades before Tesla came along.

Toyota is another question entirely.

You're right, of course. Tesla has made electric cars sexy to people with money, the same way the Prius made hybrids sexy (okay, maybe 'popular' is a better word in this particular example) to the layperson.

Electric cars have mindshare now. But unless Tesla can do something Toyota can't for the mass market, another automaker will likely, eventually, eat their lunch. There's no reason Toyota can't bolt on some sexy electronics; the charging network can be accomplished ... somehow, some other way. That doesn't mean Tesla goes away but it means there's a finite market of people willing to pay the premium for a Tesla the same way there's a finite market for people who want the intangibles of (say) a BMW. Unless we presume that Tesla can get their efficiency and margins Toyota-low, which.. again, they can't simply bolt on.

I suppose it's still possibly Tesla can leverage their battery and charging infrastructure to their advantage for long enough to hold off the competition though. Or at least enough to make themselves an acquisition target, but of course, their value needs to be something affordable.

> There's no reason Toyota can't bolt on some sexy electronics; the charging network can be accomplished ... somehow, some other way.

Tesla's charging network is largely a US phenomenon, really. There are 1200 public charging stations in Ireland (owned by the state monopoly electricity distribution company; there are also some independent ones), a small country (many electric cars could cross it without charging) of 5 million people. Of these, 70 are 'fast' chargers (usually 50kW). Tesla charging stations? 2.

Tesla's fast charging stations are a big deal in the US, a very large sparsely-populated country. They are less of a big deal in many European countries, especially where there are robust non-Tesla networks being deployed. Ultimately, I suspect standard fast-chargers will win out over proprietary brand-specific fast chargers.

I think a Tesla acquisition is a good best-case-scenario for them. Their brand, design, and Gigafactories will be valuable for a company with the manufacturing chops to take them on. I’m more bullish on SpaceX, and I think Musk would be better served to focus on it more.

Brand, yes; it's valuable, though almost certainly not 50 billion valuable. Design, eh, questionable. "Gigafactories", certainly not; as mentioned in the article above their car factory doesn't work. As it stands it's a liability.

The gigafactory is their battery factory, which is the limit in the supply chain.

> The batteries and electrics are NOT difficult.

Setting up a supply chain to deliver as many batteries as 2015’s entire global production at below market rate is easy?

Because that’s what they’ll need to do if they want to sell the electric equivalent of a Toyota Corolla.

Having lived in Nagoya, Japan after growing up in America, I think industrials is one of those areas where Japanese sensibilities and approaches to innovation vs incremental improvement are going to be tough to beat. Like everything in Japan, it’s not simple. My friends who run companies that supply Toyota and Mitsubishi in auto and aerospace absolutely worship the golden age of American industry in a way that I’m not sure many Americans still do. At the same time, they’re brilliant engineers that operate at extremely high standards, and are playing to win.

It will be easier for Toyota and Honda to get up to speed on electric drive train production than for Tesla to get up to speed on mass production of automobiles.

Tesla has an electric drive train, they have a car production line and they are producing electric cars.

Assuming it takes Tesla three years to reach their output goals on that production line, it will need to take Honda and Toyota less than two years to get up to speed producing fully electric drive trains, installing charging infrastructure around the world, and rebuilding their downstream in order to even have a chance of competing with Tesla in the EV market.

Nissan is the only viable competitor, and they have been competing on price against Model S. The Leaf is not a competitor to Model 3 even in the same price bracket. There simply is not the infrastructure to support the Leaf, or the salesforce willing to sell it.

This race is not just about a manufacturer building electric cars. This race is about who will be first to kill off or convert their traditional downstream to get EVs on the road at reasonable prices.

Why, in your opinion, is GM’s Chevy Bolt still being outsold by the Tesla Model S?

Also FYI “electric engines” are not a thing.

My arm chair opinion as a millennial that rides a bicycle to work every day, knows nothing about cars, and has no interest in buying an electric car any time soon:

The Bolt looks like a great car for a dorky family man while the Model S is a totally different market. Families have different needs than luxury car owners, and it's likely that these needs are not being effectively met by EVs such as the Bolt despite the a universal consensus that from car critics that the Bolt is an exceptionally good vehicle.

Funny thing, for a family car I think the Model S is perfect, and every other electric car is too small. We're on our second Chrysler 300, just because I can't find another similarly sized, similarly performing car that's half as good for that kinda money. A model S would cost twice as much, although I'd sure love to have one!

The Bolt is TINY! Family car? For what? A family of dwarves?

> Why, in your opinion, is GM’s Chevy Bolt still being outsold by the Tesla Model S?

Because the Bolt’s a boring, though electric, compact car being sold at the price significantly above a similarly boring mass-market midsize plug-in hybrid (the Prius Prime) with sufficient all-electric range for reasonable commuting, and also somewhat above that of a competing boring compact all-electric (the Nissan Leaf) while Model S is a luxury mid-size electric vehicle with far less direct competition.

The Bolt is selling into a segment where utility/price is more important, and it's got strong competitors on that dimension. That's not a sign that GM can't make good EVs, but that GM is attacking the harder segment of the market; whether that's a good or bad business decision is debatable, but if EVs are ever more than a luxury niche item, the space the Bolt is competing in is going to matter a lot more than the space the Model S is competing in.

I'd say it's a failure of GM's marketing department and dealership salesmen that for some reason steer (no pun intended) people to ICEs.

GM should be capitalizing on Tesla's failure to bring the Model 3 out. They could absolutely sell the message of "Why wait 18 months for an affordable electric car when you can drive one TODAY?"

They could devour Model 3 reservations, but for some reason are choosing not to.

Unlike Tesla, GM doesn't own its dealerships. Each dealership tries to optimize their selection for their own profit, each salesperson to optimize their sales for their own income. There's a complicated web of incentives tweaking which models are best for which entity at which time, but as a general rule if they are relatively inexpensive to manufacture and/or there are lots of them in inventory that's what they want to sell you. Trucks and those SUVs built on truck frames are always at the top of the list (Ford's F-150 is rumored to be the most profitable vehicle ever built, I think the Escalade is among GM's most profitable vehicle). If someone can create a cheap to build electric truck it might well grab the interest of dealers and salespeople, but they're never going to be excited to sell you a hard to build, low-margin family sedan regardless of powertrain.

The people who reserved Teslas would probably wretch driving a GM. That company doesn’t belong in their psyche

GM is very VERY focused on the bottom line. The Chevy Bolt doesn't have a big margin. It's likely that they'd rather sell Escalades and pickup trucks. Because they have a fat margin.

Bolt and Model S occupy two very different areas of the car market.

The base trim Model 3 and the Bolt are competitors.

IMHO I don't believe GM is serious about electric cars yet. They may be, but they haven't demonstrated it sufficiently for me to depend on it. Until they show large commitments and demonstrate that they are betting the company's future on being able to do electric cars well and to continue doing so, I'm more interested in an electric car from a company that I know does have that commitment.

Where are the billions of dollars in contracts for batteries? Until I see that or a gigafactory of their own the Bolt will be a compliance car in my eyes. Albeit perhaps the best compliance car on the market at the moment.

The Bolt might be perfectly competent but it is not "sexy".

Can you see GM making competent electric cars? Yes they can do that all day long. Can they make it sexy?

That begs the question if GM can make any sexy cars. I would say that the Corvette, Camaro ZL-1 and Cadillac CTS-V might be fair examples of what GM is capable of.

So the question is can GM make a sexy mass produced electric car? They haven't tried yet.

It doesn't have to be sexy. It has to attract people that would buy a Prius or Leaf (and neither of those are the least bit sexy). It has to get good consumer reports ratings (the Volt does)..

I was actually surprised by the Volt, since a lot of my friends and coworkers bought them. Those people generally drove Mazdas, Hondas, and Toyotas.

If Chevy kept working on their eco-friendly image and continued to produce decent enough quality cars that get good consumer reports ratings, they'll probably do fine.