All of its major competitors have existing lines of business they can amortize investment across as well as large dealership networks they can sell into with minimal investment.
If Tesla doesn't have a technology advantage it can defend, then it's going to be in trouble.
Often when Tesla comes up I try to refrain from posting the reality on the ground in China - I failed today - electric vehicles are everywhere already: electric scooters ("e-bikes"), electric cars, electric tractors, electric buses, electric taxis, electric golf-carts (police patrol vehicles), etc. It seems to me that Tesla probably has some great tech staff but it's media presence seems to be mostly western hemisphere posturing, as if they are to claim originality and innovation in a field China is 5-10 years ahead in already and demonstrably leading in adoption and infrastructure.
Whether this type of learning will allow them to compete with super experienced automakers who haven't yet brought an autonomous vehicle to market remains to be seen.
Tesla has been hiring people to develop their own autonomous systems. They have learned from the MobileEye interaction, MobileEye has their own lessons.
So now we have Tesla who make cars and have learned a lot about training autonomous vehicles, and we have MobileEye who have experience building autonomous car brains but need a car manufacturer to pair with.
Tesla has a huge technology and infrastructure advantage in BEV manufacturing experience, the established car makers have the disadvantage of being schooled in the art of manufacturing ICE vehicles. Other battery manufacturers are ramping up production, but are any of them paired with vehicle manufacturers and designing BEVs that are integrated from the ground up?
Who is designing the power electronics for these BEVs? There is another technological advantage that Tesla has: they gave had the opportunity to attract some very good power engineers. Where are the other companies going to get their talent?
FUD? I said Tesla doesn't have any defendable moats. Reading your post I appear to be correct. All Tesla has is some additional experience and (perhaps) better talent in a few areas. All things easily addressed by investment - which it's investors are well positioned to do, better positioned than Tesla, in fact.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/6/11866868/comma-ai-george-ho...
While the chips wouldn't be moved in-house, I wonder if the fact that this chip is related to the self-driving technology is just a coincidence: perhaps this is to switch to another vendor that might fit better into the Tesla supply chain.
