Said who? There are a lot of people out there saying all kinds of things on the internet. This is nothing more than a strawman argument.
Personally, I was never under the impression that the Bolt EV was going to "kill" Tesla, but I can only speak for myself.
Anyways, that's all tangential. Just about every major automaker has announced that they are transitioning to EVs within the next decade or so. Further, in a growing number of countries, these manufacturers are legislatively bound to fully transition to EVs by either 2030 or 2035 (depending on the jurisdiction). So unless you believe that for whatever reason automakers will not be able to figure out how to build EVs, the tipping point is going to come sooner or later. The exact date really doesn't matter.
Coverage like this (from 2016 in this case, well before either car shipped) was pervasive:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-bolts-range-is-a-buzz-kill-...
Just read that and keep in mind the actual cars that shipped, and their sales volume. Also keep in mind how the framing of the argument ("Tesla's clock is ticking") is almost identical to the grandparent post written five years later!
I don't know that it's really worth arguing that the tenor of Tesla coverage in business and auto press has been outrageously negative for years and years. And... it's been wrong basically every time.
And yeah, a common thing said is that major automakers will just crush Tesla when they decide to make electric cars. But Tesla is now producing almost 1 million EVs per year. This is no longer a company that doesn't know what they're doing when it comes to mass manufacturing, and it has turned out to be much harder to market and manufacture a lot of compelling EVs even for major automakers like GM (see the Bolt recalls... I'm not worried about GM long term just due to this recall, but it should make it clear it's not trivial for a traditional automaker to bring an EV to mass manufacture).
2011: https://www.businessinsider.com/nissan-esflow-photos-2011-2# 2013: https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1088628_chevy-volt-owne...
2014: https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/bmw-s-tesla-kill... Bolt being called the Tesla killer in 2015: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2015/01/11/gm-chev...
...and that's enough. It's most certainly not a strawman after a decade of these predictions being wrong and, if anything, Tesla is more dominant in EVs than ever.
Umm, no? That sounds like a straw man to me. I have been a Chevy Volt owner for a while now, and I love that car, and I certainly followed the news when the Bolt came along, and I don't remember anyone saying it was a "Tesla killer" (though, it's the Internet, I'm sure someone said that somewhere). I especially don't remember any "non-EV gearheads" (maybe EV gearhead is an oxymoron?) giving 2 shits about the Bolt.
I contrast that with the F-150 Lightning or the Mustang Mach-E, where I have "truck lover" family members who have never cared about EVs putting down deposits for the F-150.
Regardless of whether one chooses to anoint 2022 as "the year of X", it's clear to me that at least the EVs being offered (now or in the near future) by the legacy manufacturers are fundamentally way more compelling than previous options like the Bolt.
Mustang, F-150, Hummer, Volvo electrifying its entire line, etc. are legacy brands betting their core assets (brand equity) on electric. They have much more incentive to get it right this time. Which is not saying they will be successful! But it is fair to view these launches as the real initial wave of competition from the legacy makers.
Most electric F-150 sales will take away super-profitable non-electric F-150 sale.
Profit is made from scale and for the first few years they won't have scale for electric version so every F-150 electric sold will take away F-150 profit AND add a loss of their own.
That will be very bad for their quarterly balance sheet and Wall Street will slaughter their stock price.
That's the good news.
The bad news is: if they continue to drag their feet on transition to 100% electric cars, they might delay the problems by a few quarters but when the problems hit, they'll hit ever so harder.
A year ago Ford's official position was that making their own batteries makes no sense, they'll just buy the best and cheapest batteries from suppliers.
Today they're talking about 240 GWhr battery production in 2025 from JV with SK Innovation.
I have my doubts they'll achieve that. Tesla started JV with Panasonic in GigaFactory Nevada in 2016 and it took them 4 years to scale up to 35 GWhr. Both Ford and SK Innovation are novices at this so they don't have my benefit of the doubt.
Even if they execute on those 240 GWhr by 2025, it's still only about 20% of what Tesla is planning by 2025.
It would not make any business sense for the 2 trucks to not share most of the interior, body panels, wheels, breaks, etc etc etc.
Hell I I would not be surprised if the Frame is not the same, just the gas version omiting the battery between the frame rails.
>A year ago Ford's official position was that making their own batteries makes no sense, they'll just buy the best and cheapest batteries from suppliers.
A year ago they did not suffer massive shutdown due to supply chain issues, I think you will be seeing many manufacturers wanting more and closer control over the supply chain for their factories. This means ford will want battery manufacturers to be close to their F150 factories in the US, which likely means they will need to front some capital to get these companies to build said factories that do not exist today
Hence the article here where Ford announced massive battery plants in Kentucky and Tennessee closer to their other plants.
Though Ford's biggest supply chain issue right now is still processor chips. Maybe Ford also needs to also invest in a big semiconductor fab stateside. I know some minds in Kentucky and Tennessee that have wanted such a facility for some time, if Ford is interested.
Cybertruck vs F-150 Lightning in particular could go either way. F-150 has a ton of brand equity among people who already own trucks. It will not help Tesla that F-150 Lightning w/300 mile range will be effectively ~$17k cheaper at launch. Similar compares are likely to play out against Model X and eventually Model 3 and Model Y.
> Tesla is planning by 2025
I own Tesla stock, but nobody can take seriously their projections 4 years out. (Remember that we were supposed to be awash in fleets of self-driving taxis for the last couple of years.)
Yet other predictions did come true. Tesla has managed to keep up its growth up for quite a long time even when people made fun of them for their claims.
Self-driving is fundamentally different to scaling manufacturing.
They are still globally outselling VW by 2x in terms of BEVs and GM and Ford are not close.
In my opinion neither F-150 or Cybertruck will have a demand problem for years. So it really doesn't matter what the performance-vs-price is 'at launch'. Overall the Cybertruck is very competitive.
They used this differentiator to presell hundreds of millions (billions?) of dollars of nonexistent software to their customers. It wasn't a one-time gaffe by the CEO. It's absolutely fair game. (But if you don't like that, pick one of their other products and compare initial the initial announcement to the actual first availability. They miss their initial dates, it's part of their culture of setting dates very aggressively.)
Again, I'm very pro-Tesla. I can also recognize that their projected timelines are fantasy, even when they ultimately end up delivering in the end.
> They are still globally outselling VW by 2x in terms of BEVs and GM and Ford are not close.
As a Tesla shareholder, this comparison is silly. None of those legacy manufacturers have released "real" EVs yet. An EV Jetta vs Model 3 is the interesting compare, and it's still likely some years out.
> None of those legacy manufacturers have released "real" EVs yet.
This is simply not true. ID3, ID4, Mach-E are very real, BMW, Mercedes have also released vehicles of that class. Including from China, Geely (Volvo, Polestar) BYD, Xpeng and so on.
These are all build on competitive platforms that the manufacturer hope to reuse the next few years.
Its just that in the US, many of these are almost not sold so in the US Tesla has a huge market share. In Europe Tesla market share is already far lower.
It still could take three or four years for EV prices to come down to being generally affordable across the industry, but I’m pretty excited about some of the cars due to release over the next six months or so.
That's because of demand curve effects though! They launched at pretty much the same MSRP. And one has been getting more expensive as lead times got longer and longer and the other one had to be repeatedly discounted.
You're citing the price difference as if it's evidence that these don't compete for the same market, when it's actually evidence that they already did compete for the same market. And one of them lost.
That was supposed to be 2021. And 2020 before that. And 2019. Remember in 2018 how GM was going to kill Tesla because the Bolt beat the Model 3 to market by like five months? (Remember when people genuinely felt the Bolt was going to be competitive with the 3?)
> I don't see Tesla's moat lasting as long as people expect once the EV market expands to the general public.
Maybe 2022 is the year. But... I'm not holding my breath.