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Originally Posted by Chief Pagan
Any company can die.
I'm not motivated to research and post but Tesla is burning through cash. It remains to be seen how patient those investors are.
Tesla's competition isn't likely to be Ford. It is more likely to be the German makers who are going to start cranking out upscale electric sedans that compete head on with Tesla's products. They started out behind, but they can spend tens of billions on development without having to take out loans and they have gotten very good at cranking out reliable vehicles on relatively low margins.
I hope Tesla survives and stays independent, but I got real doubts about that. I could see it getting to the point of having to be either entirely sold or partially sold through a strategic investment by another car company in order to stay afloat.
And I could see Musk refusing to see the writing on the wall and driving it into the ground before letting it be sold while it still could be.
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Competition for Tesla is a good thing, not a bad thing. Elon Musk has chosen to open source battery patents even if that means someone builds a better mousetrap. Restricted competition, on the other hand, is a big reason Tesla hasn't scaled as much as they'd like. Battery patents were hidden. Big Auto purposefully tanked innovation on EV and that's a huge barrier. If European manufacturers invest in EV, then more and more users will adopt EV, which means more charging stations will pop up. And investors will be more willing to take risk on transformational technology - the biggest one being... a better battery probably exists, but it'll take big risk takers to find it.
It's like VHS vs. Beta. Beta failed because they couldn't scale enough to make it the media standard. Tesla knows their growth is dependent on competitors jumping in. I imagine European competitors will innovate a better core technology, while Tesla continues to innovate on features. More entrants means rapid improvements to core technology, cheaper material prices, and biggest of all... more charging stations.