Comment by stinkbeetle

> Tesla will become a case study on how to completely waste the first-mover advantage.

I doubt that because Tesla was not a first mover, established automotive companies were.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_R%27nessa#Nissan_Altra

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Ranger_EV

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_EV_Plus

Etc.

The innovation/imitation/commoditization cycle is not really new or limited to Tesla, it applies to everything from robot vacuum cleaners to CPUs. Whether Tesla survives or not probably depends a lot more on boring things like economic and trade policies of large countries.

The much more interesting thing to study would be how ice auto manufacturers not only completely wasted their first mover advantages, but also their long established brand value, supply chains and distribution and sales networks when it came to EVs.

It was not many years ago, industry "experts" were still going on about how Tesla could never hope to build cars at scale, that their "build quality" would sink them, etc. Whereas many people have rightly identified this commoditization and threats from Chinese manufacturers as being one of the biggest risks to Tesla from the beginning. Surely it's more interesting to study the things that were not obvious or well predicted?