Can Tesla's technology be ever duplicated by the competition?

Musk is ahead on this lap of technology. But technology changes as people learn. Science evolves. Ingenuity prevails.

There are several other battery technologies being studied. Some will work, some will fail. My guess is that within five years, there will be viable alternatives to Musk’s batteries – to say nothing of different approaches to navigation and manufacturing – that will give Tesla serious competition.

No way, now, to know what those will be.

Musk has two major issues to think about (and ton of smaller ones):

1) He is stretched way too thin with his companies (Boring, SpaceX, batteries, Tesla) – not financially stretched, but intellectually stretched. He needs to hire and encourage other creative people – not just him doing the thinking. Without that, the Tesla bunch of companies is one car wreck from falling apart.

2) Tesla is making money – lots of it. Where’s his impetus to improve it? This is the time when complacency will kill a company. I think there’s a risk of stagnation.

There is no doubt in mind that there will be serious competition coming their way.

I’m lock step with @elbanditoroso. Maybe it will take a little longer than 5 years for the new batteries to come to market, but I think they are coming. There also might be some sort of technological advancement we don’t even have on our radar right now that causes competition for him that is unexpected.

Look at a 5 year old car. Go ahead, I’ll wait…
See how dated it is? Every component says older tech – from the tires to roof antenna. Look at that electronics display. It’s a fossil. Heck, it even has room for a CD player and a USB stick. And the batteries use boat anchor technology. Oh look! They paired their phones with Bluetooth! So quaint.
Five years from now, the Teslas you see today will be considered just as quaint.
Tesla will need to innovate a lot to keep up The vehicles under wraps at the big companies are out to leapfrog anything you see today. That is how the industry works.

IMO legacy auto makers are doomed. They haven’t made the necessary investments in mass battery production necessary to achieve economies of scale and they would love nothing more than gas cars to keep being produced for the next 50+ years. Their electric offerings are feeble attempts at compliance vehicles, but they have no incentive to push them because they cannibalize their higher margin ICE vehicles. They also have a major problem with the structure of their companies. They have a team dedicated to their climate control systems that are used in most of their vehicles, so they have to design their EVs to use existing parts. This is a terrible strategy for designing and building EVs that are necessarily reliant on higher efficiencies. The attitude is basically take our standard stuff, throw in an electric motor and source the batteries from a 3rd party and call it a day. It will never produce competitive EVs.

I think Tesla’s biggest competitors could be from Apple, Google or Amazon. All of these giants have the cash and the technical knowhow to build a solid, blank-slate EV design, which is what it’s going to take to beat Tesla.

@elbanditoroso “He needs to hire and encourage other creative people – not just him doing the thinking.”

While I agree Musk is stretched too thin, I can assure you (despite how it may seem in the media) that Musk isn’t doing everything by himself. He does have an incredible team of some of the most talented people in the world working for him. Legacy auto has a lot of senior guys making decisions who are very resistant to change, and guard their own internal fiefdoms. It’s the same kind of problem that Microsoft struggled with under the Ballmer era—lots of internal politics and infighting.

“Where’s his impetus to improve it?”

I think Musk has a drive to revolutionize the transportation sector. Tesla still doesn’t produce a $25k “everyman” car yet. They have the Cybertruck, Semi, and Roadster all awaiting production. Those projects alone will keep them very busy for the next 5 years. The bottleneck is battery production, and ultimately its battery cost as the limiting factor. If they can mass produce their 4680 and hit their production/pricing targets, it’s going to put them even further ahead.

They have been slow to jump into it but BIG car companies are committing to all-electric fleets in a decade or so. (Volkswagon ; GM. ; Ford.)
They have massive R&D budgets and know they are going to get their lunch eaten if they don’t succeed in carving out a piece of the electric car market.
Can they catch up? I won’t count them out.

Here are some round numbers…
Total new light duty truck and car sales in the US is 15–17 million every year.
Total production of Tesla per year is hoped to be 0.5 million and go up to 1.5 million by 2025.
That means Tesla has to grow 10–20 times larger.
Don’t count the big manufacturers out. They know how to build cars. They just need an economic reason to go to electrics.

My worry about Tesla is their giant mega factory in China. Once it becomes successful and profitable China can steal it. They have done it before. Chinese company Chery Automotive stole the GM small car design. Look at the Chevy Spark and the QQ. They stole/copied the entire factory. it is an interesting story.

Of course they will. He is making expensive, bland looking electric cars, not some revolutionary, free energy powered, anti-gravity vehicles.
Honestly, I would rather have a BMW i3, or a VW ID4, before I would even consider a Tesla.
At the high end, get a Porsche Taycan.
As former racing driver and Top Gear presenter Chris Harris said, Teslas are cars for people who do not like cars.
Seriously, I will never understand why people keep sucking this guy’s dick. Is it the memes? It has to be the memes.

@elbanditoroso You granted that Musk is ahead on this lap of technology.

So, unless Musk sits on his laurels, he will stay ahead. In fact I think Tesla will expand its lead. You are correct in saying that There are several other battery technologies being studied. And you think Tesla is not in the forefront of such research?

Musk is rather thinly stretched, I agree. However, all his projects are taken on by choice. He decided to let go of his hyper loop concept because that would have been too big a byte. Of course, he succeeded in having the California bullet train dream squashed.

As far as Musk’s incentive, he is wealthy beyond imagination. Yet he keeps on going. It is the adrenaline rush, and most of us fully understand that.

@JLeslie On this issue, you cannot straddle the fence. I am of the opinion that whatever surprises are in store for us will come from Tesla, and not the competition. And, in the unlikely event that a competitor develops an idea, Musk will be ready to jump on it.

@LuckyGuy I drive a 2019 Model S, my wife drives a 2020 Model Y. I do not see our cars as jaded. Changing fenders and the rear end a bit every year is Detroit’s idea of an annual refresh; I would rather have continuous improvements through software updates, and major changes every 5 years or so.

@gorillapaws I agree with your thorough analysis (we have kinda come to expect that). Except I think in these days of employees being pirated away, no catching up is possible. Anybody with a revolutionary idea will have the idea stolen so fast it will make your head spin.

@dabbler You are absolutely right. Big Auto is going electric! Finally!

Unfortunately, they have a huge bureaucratic overload. I’ll give you one example. In November 2019, Ford introduced its concept for the Mustang Mach-E. I was intrigued enough to plunk down $1,000 for a reservation. By November 2000, I had second thoughts and canceled my reservation. Not only do I not have my deposit back, nobody at Ford can even track it down!

@LuckyGuy Sure the Chinese can, and will, steal Tesla technology. That is why Tesla will have Fremont, Austin and Berlin. Not all the gigafactories will have the same secrets. And, by the way, I wouldn’t put it past GM, Ford and Chrysler to be poaching employees from Tesla. Heck, my daughter’s very small company lost two employees to their competition.

As far as Tesla’s share of today’s auto market goes, just keep in mind that gasoline cars will soon be museum pieces…

@ragingloli I am seeing a lot more of the bland Teslas. And even you must admit blandness is in the eye of the beholder.

Is Tesla as sexy as a BMW or a Porsche? Probably not. However, give it a few years…

In my opinion, electric cars, as they are today, are for people who never go out of town. The range of an electric car will be further limited in the hot summer months when the A/C system is employed, and in the winter when the heating system is employed..

@kritiper A range beyond 500 miles is probably unnecessary given the limits of human endurance. However, with autonomous driving, and comfortable sitting/sleeping arrangements, I guess the sky is the limit. My 2019 Model S has a a range of 370 miles, which is ample for my body. I usually need food and rest well before the car does!

I agree with @LuckyGuy. It isn’t a question of the competition keeping pace. Rather, the threat that the competition, particularly the well capitalized German and Japanese competition will build and extrapolate from Tesla’s innovations. Tesla’s struggles to deliver on its promises in deliveries of the vaunted model 3 are instructive regarding this. Musk’s present advantage in that eager speculators are willing to throw endless money at him is by no means guaranteed, and there are particular difficulties in attaining the efficiencies realized by his competition in view of the anemic and decaying infrastructure of the United States and the collapse of its industrial base. Prior to the pandemic, when I was on the freeway here daily, I began to notice that Tesla was transporting cars from its Fremont plant on auto carrier trucks some 6 at a time to an obscure and little used pier near India Basin here in San Francisco. And I remember thinking how odd and inefficient the process of an endless parade of daily transport trucks, and why the choice of San Francisco as a port. Actually, I know why it must be truck transport. There is no longer a viable freight rail network into San Francisco, and there hasn’t been for decades. It would make more sense to utilize the rail lines from Fremont to the huge and infrastructure rich colossus which is the port of Oakland. But I’m drifting. Musk faces some heavy odds dealing with the short term quick profit mindset defining his adopted country. God help him should the flash and fireworks diminish.

“Is Tesla as sexy as a BMW or a Porsche? Probably not. However, give it a few years…”
Not if that design abomination that is his “Cybertruck” is anything to go by…
It is like he looked at a Playstation 1 LOD-5 model of a Lamborghini Countach, and though “this has too many curves”.

@ragingloli I have never owned a truck in my life. So I am not preconditioned to a particular body style. I must admit that when I first saw the Cybertruck my reaction was negative, probably because I was brainwashed unwittingly into the standardized shape. A day or two later, I was sold on the Cybertruck and made a reservation. When we were planning storage cabinets in the garage, I made sure that the longer Cybertruck would fit before finalizing the cabinet design.

This was in the automotive news today GM Developing Solid-state batteries
An excerpt:
“General Motors has begun a joint development agreement with lithium metal battery innovator SolidEnergy Systems (SES). Solid-state batteries that eliminate liquid electrolytes should theoretically be safer, more power dense, and offer a longer electric vehicle (EV) range, however the materials used to make early models are very expensive.

GM’s lithium metal battery with a protected anode will feature a combination of affordability, high performance, and energy density. The initial prototype batteries have already completed 150,000 simulated test miles at research and development labs at GM’s Global Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, demonstrating real-world potential.”

I don’t know how this stacks up with the Tesla batteries but I would not be surprised if this is the next generation. GM does not have people throwing money at them. They need to be careful and spend on projects that will leapfrog the competition.

@LuckyGuy Are we talking about the same General Motors that needed a bail-out of about $50 billion in 2009?

@crazyguy Yep. The same. General Motors. The one that employs 200,000 people and has legacy pension expenses for 870,000 retirees.
And has facilities and factories all over the world churning out 6.8 million vehicles annually with sales of $122 Billion. (2020)
That General Motors.

Tesla numbers for comparison: 70,000 employees, 500,000 vehicles, revenues $8.8 billion
And that was with the $7,500 electric vehicle subsidy which has recently ended. $7,500×500,000 = $3.7 Billion. That Tesla.

So you do admit that your earlier statement: GM does not have people throwing money at them. was absolutely false. In fact the US lost over $11 billion on the bailout. See
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-gm-treasury/u-s-government-says-it-lost-11-2-billion-on-gm-bailout-idUSBREA3T0MR20140430

You’re right the GOVERNMENT bailed GM out. Tesla, however is not “too big to fail”. Would that it were only our “big three” that Tesla was up against. However, outfits like BMW or Toyota are massive operations which unlike Tesla, do not operate at a constant loss from places where short term quarterly profit is the be all and end all of “investment”. They also have the crushing advantage of cutting edge technology with the depth of reserves to quickly bring their discoveries to bear and implement those of Tesla as well. And they can only achieve this without suffering the consequences of manufacturing in a place no longer able avail itself of a functioning industrial sector. Then there is the final and crucial advantage defining BMW or Mercedes proficiency in cleaning our clock — they are allowed to produce minus the crippling financial and bureaucratic nightmares saddling our automakers—health care expenses being first and foremost.

@stanleybmanly
They are also heavily involved in motorsports, and the associated development of actual racing cars.
Wake me up when Tesla decides to compete at Le Mans.

@ragingloli “Not if that design abomination that is his “Cybertruck” is anything to go by…”

I was shocked when I first saw it, but then it really grew on me. Here’s why it looks the way it does, and I think it’s illustrative of why Tesla is going to beat legacy auto in the long term. Tesla decides to not build it using the body-on-frame technique. Instead they use the skin of the vehicle as the “exoskeleton” structure. This saves weight and material, which increases range for the same quantity of batteries and ultimately cost. The body is extremely thick (apparently bulletproof) and cannot be pressed with conventional presses to make compound curves that we see on modern trucks. So if you have to design an aerodynamic truck with a 6.5 foot bed and can only use simple folding geometry, the Cybertruck’s design starts to make a lot of sense. It was designed to maximize utility. It’s rugged, efficient and will likely beat the pants off of all other trucks in it’s class. After fully understanding all of these details, I started to really admire the aesthetics because they come from a place of maximizing the design goals: having a sturdy truck that’s competitively price with reasonable range.

@crazyguy The government did bail them out. And GM did pay most of it back. (GM says it paid it all back but that is open for debate) Meanwhile that money was used to keep the factories running, the employees working and the retirees in Florida.. Not all, but most.

My point is that with all their employees, factories, high volume of production, and high sales GM’s market capitalization is $85 Billion today.
While Tesla with ⅓ the number of employees 1/10 the volume, 1/15 the sales, and ½0 the facilities.has a market cap of $640 Billion. Individual investors are throwing money at Musk so he can afford to try different things. His personal stock is worth about $110 Billion – more than twice the GM bailout. And that $110 Billion is going into one pocket: E. Musk’s.