Except Tesla aren't cheap enough, they aren't reliable enough, and they have a terrible culture of quality control problems. It'll be very tough for them to shake that off, if they ever do. They can get away with it with more expensive cars, there's more slack to deal with the problems. But on a truely mass-produced economy car? They'll get crushed. History isn't kind to mass-produced economy cars with terrible quality control.
You can't keep comparing this to phones. Smartphones added significantly more functionality to the devices compared to the older phones. It wasn't just "the same but better", it did a ton of things the old phones could never do. For example they didn't just kill dumb phones, they killed portable music players too. But a car? A car drives from A to B. That is their functionality. All that fancy tech might be nice, but it doesn't really change much about the basic purpose of what a car does and how it fits into people's lives. New tech has NEVER driven the wider population to suddenly start rushing out and start buying much more expensive cars, instead they've always just continued to buy the economy cars and waited for that tech to filter its way through. The only exception to that might be hybrid/electric tech because a larger upfront cost is offset by cheaper running costs, but that's not specific to any company.
And don't say autonomous driving. The leap between "fancy driving aids" to "self driving car" is absolutely enormous. It might be the next big step, but the economy electric car war will have been won long before that happens.
New tech doesn't win the economy car race and it never has. It's price and reliability every time. And Toyota has always done very well in those respects. They won the economy car war over hybrids, but haven't made their move yet on electrics. The reality is no car manufacturer is anywhere close to an electric car that can truly compete directly with ICE cars on the economy level (with the same practicality and without subsidies).
It'll all come down to cheap, mass-produced batteries. And Toyota already have a supply chain in place through AKE, and if they are successful with their solid-state battery tech then Toyota will win. Tesla have neat cars, and will have their place in the future, but they're behind the game when it comes to the supply chain. Fancy tech might win the battle, but logistics wins the war. If solid-state batteries work then Tesla will look like the dinosaurs. But I don't know how that'll play out, and I don't have to, because they'll both use lithium. Even if Toyota loses, then AKE's lithium will just be sold to someone else.
AKE Price at posting:
$9.02 Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
