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by lock-free 2002 days ago
The hard part of electric vehicle has never been assembly - its batteries and charging. Toyota and VW can ramp up as much as they want, but they'll probably have to buy the batteries from Tesla.

Tesla is not without its problems, but I think it's a bit naive to focus on the solved problems as limiting their potential. It's also the wrong thing to look at - Tesla is concerned about dictating the future of transportation and energy, selling cars is a means to an end.
2 comments
vesinisa 2002 days ago
Why would Toyota and VW need to use Tesla batteries? Patents after all expire and are circumventable. And AFAIK Tesla does not hold too much original IP on battery tech to start with.
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gostsamo 2002 days ago
What Toyota and VW have is politics and that's why they are still trailing behind Tesla. Big parts of their engineers and managers have expertise and background in internal combustion engines and this means much more coupling with this technology. A turnaround in such businesses is much harder than in software, so I expect that only those of the traditional manufacturers who can rebuild their strategies and sell it to their middle management to survive the next decade or two.
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