Comment by danans

> In this way it is similar to the iPhone coming in and basically killing Nokia, Motorola and Blackberry. The iPhone targeted different values than the dominant "smartphones" of the day.

As much as the iPhone killed off those companies, it grew the market for smartphones more.

There is no significantly growing market for cars like there was for "handheld internet-connected personal computers". Every EV sale is effectively 1 less ICE sale - a 1:1 replacement in the market. Whatever market growth potential exists is in the very price sensitive developing world (South Asia, Latin America, Africa, etc), where EVs will show up en-masse last.

Now that practically every company is selling EVs, Tesla only has its brand to differentiate it, which was at one time significant but perhaps less so lately.

As I see it, their only meteoric growth opportunity (by eating into competitors' market share) would be if they released a $20K, 250+ mile range, 5 seater EV in the very near future - like what the VW Beetle did in its generation.

But that's hard to achieve in an EV (especially from a luxury brand used to high margins), since the majority of the cost of an EV is still in the battery, and that cost doesn't scale down much with a lower price tag.