What Tesla has not been tested yet is with real competition. Can their management deal with that? Elon has shown a tendency to shoot first and then ask questions, he is mercurial and not above letting his ego get in his way. Reports suggest that Elon threatened to quit Tesla if they compromised with SEC. He then hired Mark Cuban's lawyer and the Mark Cuban told Elon that he was better off compromising, it was not worth the battle. These may be attributes for a scrappy start up, not a leader on whose back there is a big target.
I don't know if the reports about Elon's reaction to the SEC settlement offer are true, but certainly such reports do exist, and so far as I know are not mere FUD. All the points you made here are well made, and quite relevant to the debate.
If a manufacturer came out swinging with the right products, the right commitment, and the willingness to take Tesla head on, would Tesla prevail or will their dominance slip away? Lucid has a billion dollars to burn for example.
Just one billion dollars isn't enough to fund even a tiny startup auto maker, let alone a rival to Tesla. Now, if they can get $10 billion, then that might make them a serious player.
Apple is supposedly developing a car and I cannot believe it is based on ICE technology.
There are many reports that Apple is or was developing an EV. I don't believe a single one of them. Apple isn't a heavy industry, and isn't likely to create a heavy industry division.
I think what Apple's intent is (or at least was), is to build or adapt testing platforms for self-driving car software and hardware. Perhaps Apple wants to be the Intel of the self-driving automobile industry. Intel advertises "Intel inside" on computers; perhaps Apple wants "Apple inside" self-driving cars.
I think there is a real potential market for Apple to develop an integrated suite of self-driving car hardware and software, from sensors to computers to user interfaces to actuators controlling the car's functions. That is something Apple could potentially sell to any and all auto makers, and it would be a far better fit to their business than trying to build entire automobiles.
Wyamo has invested billions in self driving technology and can partner with someone, say Jagur to build a car from ground up.
Waymo partnering with one single auto maker does not appear likely to me. As has been reported, what Waymo is likely to do is to license its autonomous driving tech to auto makers, once it's developed properly. I think Waymo has a real chance at this; they seem to be progressing much better than Tesla or any other individual auto maker is. Why would Waymo want to partner with one single existing auto maker, when they can license their tech to several... or even potentially all of them?
If auto makers were smart, they'd develop a consortium to develop self-driving car tech. It will work much better if autonomous cars can communicate with each other using a similar communications protocol, and it will also make them safer if they all react to similar driving conditions in the same way. The latter will make their actions predictable to other autonomous cars, reducing uncertainty and therefore reducing the accident rate.
The current situation, with each auto maker going it alone in developing autonomous driving systems, is in my opinion wasteful, stupid, and counter-productive. And yes, even as a strong Tesla fan, I think that includes Tesla. (Hopefully it's obvious that's only my personal opinion, which may not be shared by many.)
One might argue that Tesla is too far ahead and cannot be caught. I would say that we do not know that yet. What I have learned in so many years is that the unexpected can and does happen. Is Tesla prepared for that? That is my concern that they are not.
I think it is extremely unlikely, perhaps impossible, that Tesla can be "caught" in the short term; let's say, 3-4 years or less. Long term, that's certainly possible. But we will almost certainly see it coming. Apple was able to develop its first-generation iPhone and spring it suddenly on the market as a surprise. But the iPhone is a product of light manufacturing, and Apple was able to use a relatively small team to develop the first-generation iPhone, and keep it a secret.
Building cars is very different. It's hard to hide building an auto assembly plant (or refurbishing an abandoned one) and it's hard to hide hiring all the workers you need to mass produce even a single model of cars!
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Look at what Japanese auto makers did in the late 1970s and early 1980s, entering the American automotive market. At first Japanese cars were cheap, low-quality cars which were laughed at, deservedly. (I should know; my first car was a 1977 Honda Civic CVCC. That wasn't quite the first generation, but it was close.) But those Japanese cars rapidly improved in quality, and it wasn't many years before nobody was laughing at them anymore.
I expect the same from Chinese auto makers. Within a few years, I expect them to enter either the European or American auto market; quite possibly both. And just as with the earlier Japanese cars, likely they will be laughed at for their poor quality... at first. But within a few years, we can expect their quality to improve sharply, and then they'll be a real competitor.
But that won't happen overnight. It won't be any iPhone-like surprise event; it will take years to happen.
