I have encountered some
I have encountered some fairly implausible claims by Tesla bulls, but the notion that increased competition will actually help Tesla sales has to be the nuttiest yet. It is far more plausible to view the future for Tesla as quite gloomy - every technological advantage that they have had in the past (driving ranges, public fast recharge networks) have now been surpassed by the competition or soon will be. Tesla is out of the loop with respect to recharge stations - only TEsla cars use the chaging protocl available at Supercharger stations. The rest of the world (except Nissan) used the de Facto worldwide standard CCS protocol, an open standard, as opposed to Tesla's proprietary protocol.And the CCS stations can recharge twice as fast as a Tesla Supercharger, which provides those stations with a tremendous cost/pricing advantage and customer time saving advantage. Since there will be an overwhelmingly large number of CCS EV over the next several years, CCS recharge stations will completely dominate the landscape - they will be practically in every corner gas station, as opposed to the sparsely located Tesla Superchargers, which are seldom within 50 miles of one another. The coming avalanche of EVs,( more than 120 models) will be more than competitive - some will shred Tesla sales of their highest profit Model S and Model X vehicles, such as the Porsche Mission e versions,which already have lengthy waiting lists. Model S and X sales have not been very good lately - they seem to have tapped out their niche markets worldwide. But the biggest obstacle to Model 3 sales is the fact that they lose their tax credits and will have to compete against technologically superior vehciles that will have a $7500 pricing advantage. Such a possibilty has already caused significant defections from the Model 3 waiting list, which hasn't increased in size for quite some time. The fact is, Tesla will find it difficult to find buyers after it satisfies those on the current waiting list, which likely will take less than a year and a half. All those competitor automakers have millions of loyal customers and with all of the negative publicity that has and continues to hit Tesla Motors, I can't imagine anyone wanting to leave their brand and jump on Tesla's broken bandwagon.
Tesla's success has almost completely depended upon their position as a monopoly player in the EV field. That will end and likely so will Tesla Motors, when they try to build a $35,000 Model 3 and then compete against superior vehices that have a net cost of $28,000.. Small wonder that Elon Musk is desperately trying to convince the Feds to kill the tax credit.. Somehow that doesn't gibe with Musk's eternal claims that his only purpose in all this is to encourage the transition to EVs. Of course, anyone should know that declining battery prices are what's driving the increasing attractiveness of electric cars, and Musk has had nothing to do with that.