- The race for electric cars has been around since 2010, but it’s now essentially over, and Tesla has won: CEO of motorist Elon Musk dominates the EV brand
- But that market remains small, at about 2% of global sales.
- Musk knows that for Tesla’s big vision to succeed, that stock must grow exponentially.
- Winning the EV race means that for Tesla, the real work to eliminate the interbrand engine has just begun.
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The idea that motorists race to commercialize electric cars – and that one or some of them will come out on top – has always been flawed.
For starters, the auto industry is huge: More than a billion passenger cars roam the planet, with another 80 million each year. No single winner could satisfy that level of demand.
This was apparently even in the early days of the automotive sector, when scores of automakers, car manufacturers and coach builders competed to put Americans and Europeans behind the wheel. Yes, there were winners and losers, of course: Henry Ford conquered an early market share early on with his Model T, then General Motors grew into a competitor and took the lead. But for more than a century, they both follow through, more or less. That’s not how races work.
In the 20th century, many other famous names came into action. Wounded brands, such as Studebaker and Nash. Mid-century upstarts like Chrysler. Europeans have always been a factor: Mercedes, BMW, Fiat, Ferrari, Rolls-Royce, Aston Martin, Rover, Vauxhall, Renault, Citroën. Powerful Volkswagen. After World War II, an excitement of Japanese nameplates rolled into: Toyota, Honda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Mazda, Subaru.
The point is that on a planet populated by billions of people, a significant percentage of whom strive for personal mobility, you need many motorists to satisfy the demand and share the risks of trying to meet it.
However, that was the time of internal combustion. Which still makes up roughly 98% of the world market. Meanwhile, on the electrified front – 2% of world sales – there is already a clear winner: Tesla.
A single statistic tells the story. Nissan’s Leaf, an EV that arrived in 2010 before Tesla’s Model S followed in 2012, had sold just over 400,000 units, all the time. Tesla is now closing in on a million, for the five cars it has had on the market since its inception (the original Roadster, Model S, Model X, Model 3, and Model Y).
Tesla has an almost monopoly of a small market, then. The race, as it is, is over, and Tesla can declare victory. But here’s the thing: CEO Elon Musk knows the race is the wrong narrative, the one that does nothing. Here is the reason:
