[mjamesaustin]

What makes me think they can't catch up is watching them spend dramatically less than their competition on the needed infrastructure when they are already very far behind.

To catch up from behind, you need to do more than your competition.

[mikeyouse]

This is an article about a single factory - Toyota spends upwards of $30 billion a year in CapEx -- Tesla spends under $10 billion per year.

Toyota's battery complex in North Carolina is a greater spend than the entire annual budget from Tesla and will have about the same output as Tesla's "gigafactory". The $1.3 billion in Kentucky is in addition to that.. it's a mistake to think they're not investing heavily.

https://www.just-auto.com/news/toyota-to-double-investment-i...

[chii]

I would imagine the catch up is not in the form of a factory, but with raw material supply chain.

Tesla would've locked in cheaper lithium supply than toyota.

[mikeyouse]

Sure Lithium is important - but Toyota has been selling hybrids for 25 years... so of course they already have a pretty sophisiticated lithium supply chain.

Here's one article from 2018 where they secured 100% of the sales rights to an Argentinian lithium mine that is equivalent to all of the lithium Tesla used worldwide in 2021.

https://www.toyota-tsusho.com/english/about/project/04.html

It's actually inconceivable to me how Musk & Tesla were able to launch a new auto manufacturer, especially with a novel drivetrain. The amount of things that had to go right, the number of decisions they had to make, the number of supplier agreements and sales agreements are a massive, monumental lift. The world is a better place for Tesla existing and for proving the market for electric cars.

However...

People massively underestimate the amount of money the big OEMs can throw at these problems. Toyota Group has an entirely separate mining and materials company with as much annual revenue as Tesla's entire org: https://www.toyota-tsusho.com/english/ir/library/integrated-...

Tesla has ~$100 billion in assets, Toyota has >5x that. I hope Musk settles down with his silly time-wasting edgelord nonsense on Twitter and focuses on Tesla and SpaceX - with more of a steady hand and a singular focus on EVs, I think they could be the largest manufacturer in the world but they're not there yet and a slightly cheaper lithium supply isn't the unique advantage that's going to get them there.

[dylan604]

When someone else has already spent money on the hard part of being first, those that follow do not need to spend the same amount of money repeating the same mistakes.