| You should look up the new Mercedes system. If you haven’t heard about it it only functions up to like 37 mph, but it’s level three self driving. The kind where the driver doesn’t have to monitor it. So where it can work (map freeways) it can completely take over in slow traffic. Pretty impressive. I agree with you about the 5+ years thing. Ford released an EV that they basically never advertised and got swamped with orders. They announced the next one and got even MORE swamped because it was the F150. They’ve had to delay the introduction of at least two more EV models just to try and keep up with demand for the first two. My understanding is VW has been doing extremely well with the ID.4. I know there is heavy interest in the Kia Niro and the Cadillac Lyriq and of course the new Hummer. Other newcomers like Rivian and Lucid are pulling a lot of eyes/orders. Tesla owned the EV segment because outside the Volt/Bolt/Leaf there was nothing else. Certainly those aren’t equivalent to the S/X/Y or even 3. But the question is, can Tesla improve faster than the rest of the entire automotive industry can move to EVs. I doubt it. In some ways this feels like a double disruption. Tesla came along and disrupted car manufacturing I proving that EVs could work and were even popular/desirable. They also proved online car buying could be quite successful. But I think they will now be disrupted by the companies they tried to replace. I just don’t see how they can hold off every single major car company in the world. They may have the most efficient cars (from my understanding) and they’ve obviously got the whole over the air update thing figured out. But they don’t make enough models to cover everyone’s taste and they still have some real manufacturing/customer service issues that they could have grown a out of by now if they had wanted to. I feel like they may have spread themselves much too thin, and lost their chance at king of the hill because of it. In my mind they’ll never be a VW or Toyota sized car manufacturer in the long term. But will they be as big as Audi? Or just a Jaguar? Or gone like Pontiac? Don’t know. Bankruptcy? Merger? Acquisition? Exit the consumer market? Will be interesting to watch. |
Tesla's Autopilot works perfectly on the highways, in my experience. I've done a few thousand miles on the highway, and I think the only times I've had to manually take control are when my one lane is becoming two lanes, and it gets confused.
I do agree that eventually, the other manufacturers will surpass Tesla, but it's going to be a long timeframe (I think ~10 years), and it will hinge on being compatible with Tesla chargers, since the other networks are either too slow (Seriously, whoever decided that 7.2 kW J-1772 chargers should exist did a major disservice to EV adoption), too expensive, and too spread out.