[notaki]

But no one else is mass producing EV's. VW is just starting to talk about building a gigafactory. Everyone is doing a lot of talking, but they are all years behind Tesla. And even if they stop talking and start doing, they'll need to build a more compelling product than Tesla. That will be very very difficult. Tesla FTW.

[Certhas]

"Chinese sales of domestically-built new energy vehicles in 2017 totaled 777,000 units"

To first approximation none of these were Teslas. EVs are being mass produced.

Mass producing a car might be difficult. But the others manufacturers are already doing that.

They need to figure out how to mass produce electronic drive trains (vastly simpler than what they are building now) and batteries. Batterys are more complex, but most of battery production coming online in the next years is Chinese. Tesla is a fraction of what the Chinese are bringing online.

I don't see any reason why Teslas long term potential should be higher than, say BMWs. Mind you, creating a BMW size company from scratch while driving the electric transition and a pace faster than we otherwise could have hoped for are amazing achievements.

[adventured]

> Chinese sales of domestically-built new energy vehicles in 2017 totaled 777,000 units

Those are gasoline electric hybrids, no more impressive than a Prius technologically from a decade ago that has been brought down in price.

China is not mass producing EVs, which is why it's 777,000 "new energy vehicles." That phrasing is the give-away. Otherwise we could just pretend the Prius was the first mass produced EV, when it was not.

[Certhas]

You are right that this figure includes hybrids (PHEV), but the vast majority, 652.000, are pure battery (BEV):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_energy_vehicles_in_China#/...

I did check that before but copy pasted the wrong line.

[nikofeyn]

yes they are. in a recent trip to china nearly all of my didi trips were in electric vehicles from two or three different manufacturers. all of these cars were nice but clearly affordable. and as the other commenter pointed out, china still sells more electric vehicles than anyone else in the world. china also has a high-end electric vehicle maker in nio.

[Nokinside]

It's not just talk. Several projects have already started in Europe. Some of them have former Tesla executives.

Tesla owns the patents and innovates only in the battery packs. The battery cell technology is owned by Panasonic.

South Korean, Japanese and Chinese are leading in battery cell technology and not all of them are teaming with Tesla.