I once had a private conversation with a Ford exec who was basically in-charge of the EV team. He thought it will be hard for them to ever catch up to Telsa, if at all.
They just have so much damn money because of their stock is so inflated.
Telsa will have to majorly mess up to lose its head start on the other companies.
The biggest bottle neck that is getting batteries made.
Tesla's inflated stock makes it easy to acquire companies, but Tesla lacks cash flow so it is hard to acquire debt and enter into long-term contracts. Few companies are going to accept $150M in today's Tesla stock as collateral for an agreement to purchase $30M in parts every year for five years unless you give them the stock today so they can unload it. The idea that Tesla has some magic beans when it comes to batteries seems to be driven more by Tesla fanboys than by people in the biz (quick reality check: Tesla's batteries are made by Panasonic and not Tesla, oh and last month Panasonic dumped the entire hoard of Tesla stock they had been holding.) Tesla has some useful long-term agreements with Panasonic but they seem to have far less battery IP than you are suggesting.
Yes, batteries are a limiting factor, but there are a lot of companies out there not named Tesla that know a hell of a lot about lithium battery cells and unlike Tesla some of these companies actually produce batteries.
The reality is other automakers can't put out EVs right this minute, even if they wanted to. There aren't enough batteries.
Tesla will likely continue to ramp up production while the other automakers struggle to get any going on the scale they need or want.
And the Telsa battery packs that they use (Panasonic or not) are way more advanced than many other companies can produce at scale right now, or likely in 2-3 years from now.
Other automakers _are_ putting out EVs. Right this minute. I have a choice of several nice EVs here in Europe and Tesla is not at the top of my list if I were in the market. So far you are making a lot of unfounded claims and assumptions regarding the struggles of other automakers, but what I can see is that those automakers are just starting to ramp up production and while they 'struggle' they are collectively selling more EVs than Tesla. The VW group alone appears to have sold as many EVs last year as Tesla. The model 3 may be the best selling model of EV, but others are closing the gap and as purchasers start to value novelty less and features and build quality more the Tesla offerings are going to seem less impressive.
They just have so much damn money because of their stock is so inflated.
Telsa will have to majorly mess up to lose its head start on the other companies.
The biggest bottle neck that is getting batteries made.