Maybe not too late, if they pull out all the stops and seriously invest in both production and infrastructure to match, but it will take a lot to beat China at its own game at this point. Needs investment at national scale not only in the US, but the UK and the rest as well.

Regarding Tesla. They have been a pioneer in some respects, but I have doubts that they will be the ones to bring electric to the masses. That will I think be done by the established companies (local and Chinese) after they switch over to mass production. Tesla won't be able to compete on volume or price in my opinion.

Right now, Tesla consumes more than 60% of the word EV batteries and their shares is still increasing. I'm sure most of the world's EVs will be Chinese but the most high-end ones will probably be Teslas (made in Shanghai if need be). One can draw a parallel with the smartphones market :)

I take it you're saying Tesla is Apple. Perhaps, you don't have the network effects and lock in with cars, that you do with phones, and Tesla don't seem to make 'the best' hardware like Apple do, but I don't have a crystal ball either, so I won't argue.

Maybe charging stations is the network effect, Tesla has lot stations across the US so you know you wont run out of juice on your trip.

It sounds a bit insane to have stations where you can get fuel for a mercedes but not a kia.

I wonder what the situation is in China. My impression in Europe and America everyone but Tesla had standardised on one charger.

Also, if China decides it needs extra EV battery capacity, expect the total number to significantly increase, and Tesla's slice will shrink (in relative terms).

Not sure where you heard that but that is completely false. BYD alone shipped over 100,000 electric cars (not including buses) in the third quarter (compared to Tesla's 83,000). Other Chinese car companies BAIC, Rowe, and Geel all ship over 20k+ plug-ins per quarter.

Tesla's luxury vehicles ship with 75/90/100kWh packs while BYD's model seem to have 63kWh (not accounting for busses which seems to have about 325kWh). No definite information available for Model 3, afaik, but I heard that the long range version has a 75kWh pack (50kWh for the "normal range" model?).

But yeah I'm not sure whether China doesn't report battery construction, or under reports or what because it sounds suspect to me also.

Official according to who? I suspect that, like much of the less critical reporting on Tesla, it's just reprinting a press release. In any case, that doesn't match the headline; it's just claiming it's the single biggest factory. There's no substantiation of the headline at all, and looking at the numbers it cannot be true.

And you may have noticed how the internet gets, when Tesla/Elon says something that isn't true, so I guess theres some basis to it.

The Tesla fanboyism goes both ways, there are many, many people waiting to point out they are wrong.

Or was there some kind of consumer boom for Škoda vehicles in the US/Canada/Australia/the UK, or wherever you are from, that I never heard of before?

They started to get OK reliability in the 80s which meant they started to become popular as value for money motoring. They got pretty common on UK roads. Popular and reliable enough to become a common choice for private hire use. Which as many at the time noted, meant Skoda had the last laugh.

The price advantage faded after the VW takeover, but they remained popular as private hire cars.

I didn't know that until the last decade or so they were seen as poor vehicles elsewhere, to the extent as to become the target of jokes. Thanks for the context – it definitely helps me understand better how this fits into OP's point.

The context of the era helps too, no 70s and 80s mass market cars were without a weak point or six, and jokes on the back of those.

Eastern Bloc makes had poor consistency, technology, and sometimes reliability compared to others. Applied to Lada, Skoda, MZ motorcycles etc. Simple tech also meant simple to fix of course.

Italian makes were beautiful but rusty before even getting to the showroom, with just as poor a rep for reliability and build.

Japanese makes didn't rust, but they couldn't weld and used bolts made of soft cheese pretending to be steel.

British and French? No one knew, they were on strike. ;)

Outside the eastern block countries, Skoda was the punchline of jokes and generally considered one of the worst cars you could buy up until the mid-late 90's when they became the Volkswagen budget brand. It's really only since the early 2000's that Skoda became a brand people wouldn't be embarrassed on being seen in.

I never knew that until very recently they had such a bad reputation in other Western countries. Thanks for clearing this up for me!