[spectistcles]

That's an interesting comparison — we could very well end up in a market where existing manufacturers catch up and vastly outsell Tesla in the long-run (Android), and Tesla ends up as a very successful luxury model (iOS).

[jernfrost]

Android was not an established player either though. So we had a situation where new entrants like Apple and Google both destroyed the established players like Nokia, Black Berry, Windows Phone, Siemens, Sony-Ericcson etc.

There might very well be another electric car maker upending the market, but really I think Tesla has quite a number of years head start now. Building and planning something like the Giga factory took many years. A competitor will not be able to reproduce that in a couple of years.

Tesla also sits with years of experience designing batteries now. They have a competency advantage over the established players who mainly know how to make a fossils fuel engine. Each year passing that becomes useless and dead knowledge. They also lack the software development skills of Tesla. They have mostly bought that from vendors. Tesla thus sits with expertise in the key areas for the future of automobile while the competition is very weak in these areas.

I predict a bloodbath. 10 years from now I think Tesla will be quite big and the established players struggling hard to hang on.