QOTD: Why Are People Surprised That Tesla Is Facing More Competition?

by Tim Healey

Published: January 9th, 2023

qotd why are people surprised that tesla is facing more competition

Recently I got a bit annoyed with two New York Times columnists for seeming to be surprised that legacy automakers were pumping out EVs to compete with Tesla.

Today, it's the Washington Post's turn to annoy me.

In order to avoid being redundant, I won't do another op-ed. But in some ways, the Post's story bothers me more. It's a news/analysis piece -- and it uses as a news peg Tesla boss Elon Musk's controversial involvement with Twitter, suggesting that Musk is distracted by Twitter at a bad time for Tesla.

I'm not arguing that the premise regarding distraction is wrong -- I think it's probably true -- but it boggles my mind that once again, a major outlet seems to just now realize that the legacy OEMs are poised to compete with Tesla, when that seems to have been common knowledge among auto-industry observers for a year or more now.

I'm not picking on the individual reporter here -- this seems to be an issue with a lot of the hard news and business press. It seems that a narrative took hold that Tesla was just eating the legacy's lunch when it came to EVs and would continue to do so. The first part is mostly true -- Tesla did have a huge share of the EV market -- but anyone who has been paying attention knows that the legacy automakers have been getting EVs ready for launch in larger numbers for quite some time now.

I'm going to stop there since I am verging on redundancy. My question is why did so many people seem to forget that Tesla wasn't the only automaker building EVs? Is it because Tesla had a large market share and people just assumed the status quo would remain? The general Tesla hype? Cynicism towards the other OEMs to build EVs and/or come up with "cool" tech/cars? Something else?

Or is my entire premise flawed? Maybe my premise is fine but I am being too hard on WaPo here since it is true that Musk is distracted by Twitter right as more and more Tesla competitors hit the market? Maybe the writer was fully aware of the market changes but found the timing to be a good news peg?

Of course, this is a QOTD where multiple things could be true. Sound off below.

[Image: Tesla]

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Tim Healey

Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.

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4 of 42 comments

EBFlex on Jan 10, 2023

I'm not surprised. All automakers have cozied up to the feds to receive billions from the government to build these silly EVs. It's just a shame that once these awful appliances are built, they need government incentives to sell.

It figures that the current, fraudulent administration would force these crap cans on people when there is no demand.

1 Reply
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- VoGhost on Jan 10, 2023
  
  The only federal bailouts I'm aware of were for GM and FCA (now Stellantis) during the 2008-9 recession. Maybe you're thinking of all the tax incentives Big Oil gets?
  
  1
- EBFlex on Jan 11, 2023
  
  FCA is not Stellantis.
  
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Motorqjoe on Jan 11, 2023

I owned an F150 and is was the best vehicle I've ever owned, so not throwing shade there. What is impressive about Tesla is their profit per vehicle, which is near top of heap. It's really hard to make money in the industry. So many carcasses, especially in EV space.

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