Elon Musk's Reaction to Tesla's Competitors

Toyota and Daimler

It is hard to imagine that both Toyota and Daimler had considerable investments in Tesla during the early days of the company. In 2009, when Tesla was almost on its deathbed, Germany's Daimler AG bought a 10% stake valued at $50 million. Then again in 2010, Toyota invested another $50 million in Tesla. They also sold their NUMMI factory, which is now Tesla's Fremont factory, at a heavily discounted price.

Musk has confirmed in various talks and interviews over the years that these early fundings and partnerships had not only saved Tesla but also propelled the company to a global stage. As he stated in a 2010 interview, "Such great partners, I think, is a strong endorsement of Tesla." Subsequently, both automakers sold their stakes in Tesla for a good profit in 2017 after the company went public.

Today, Tesla has captured a large chunk of the EV market share and has left both Toyota and Daimler behind. Daimler has only recently committed to an enormous $47 billion investment in its EV capabilities to catch up with Tesla, while Toyota's EV vision has leaned heavily on the use of hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles. Given Elon's views on hydrogen fuel cells, it is easy to deduce his opinion on Toyota's flagship hydrogen-powered car, the Mirai.

Apple Car

A good part of the last decade was spent speculating over whether Apple would step into the EV market with a Tesla-like vehicle. When asked about this in 2016, Elon Musk said, "I think companies like Apple will probably make a compelling electric car." In April 2021, Apple CEO Tim Cook finally hinted at their plans for an autonomous electric vehicle that is scheduled for launch in 2024.

However, based on another interview in 2018, we can see that Elon thinks Apple missed the opportunity to jump into the EV market sooner. As he stated, "It's just like it's a missed opportunity." Although Elon sounds modest in this interview, it is not hard for us to imagine that he doesn't consider the Apple car as a serious competitor to Tesla, at least for now.

Google Car

Google's parent company, Alphabet, also owns a subsidiary called Waymo that develops autonomous driving cars. However, for Elon, they don't feature in his list of competitors for Tesla. As he said in an interview, "I wouldn't say, you know, Google's a competitor because they're not a car company."

Volkswagen

Many see the Volkswagen ID.3 electric car that went into production in 2019 as the only major competition for the Tesla Model 3, the more affordable Tesla car. It is also an open secret that Volkswagen aims to overtake Tesla as the world's largest EV maker by 2025.

This fact has not missed Elon's attention. He and Herbert Diess, the chairman of Volkswagen Group, have always shared a convivial relationship. In September 2020, it was reported that Diess hosted Elon at Braunschweig Airport, a facility mostly used by Volkswagen to test drive the ID.3 and ID.4 electric cars. In the video released by Volkswagen, Elon can be seen driving the new cars and asking all sorts of questions about their performance. His first overall impression of the car was good, although he didn't quite like the slow acceleration.

NIO

Another competitor that Elon Musk congratulated recently is the Chinese EV manufacturer NIO. He congratulated NIO's landmark milestone of rolling out its 100,000th vehicle off its production line in April 2021 with a tweet, "Congrats to NIO, that's a tough milestone." The Chinese EV market is growing at a tremendous pace, and by Elon's admission, it is going to be Tesla's biggest marketplace of the future.

BYD

BYD, a Chinese EV manufacturer that Elon didn't take that seriously back in 2011, was a company in which Warren Buffett had invested heavily. As you can see in an interview clip, when asked about the chances of BYD becoming a significant force in the US EV market, Elon laughs. In a way, Elon got it both right and wrong in gauging BYD as a potential competitor to Tesla. It is true that in the US market, BYD is nowhere close to Tesla's market share. However, in China, it is a different story – they are Tesla's major competitor there. In September 2021, BYD sold 36,606 battery electric vehicles in China, second only to Tesla's tally of 52,171.

GM and Ford Motors

When it comes to Elon's opinion about the legacy car manufacturers in America and their EV potential, this clip sums up his thought process nicely: "It's tough, you know, for a company that's been around for a century like as in the case of GM, there's just so much tradition and ways of thinking and operating. I think it's very difficult." This organizational slowness and realizing the potential behind a new opportunity is what made these car manufacturers so uncompetitive compared to Tesla in the EV sector today.

However, these giants of the automotive world are slowly waking up to a changing future. GM recently announced that it has plans to build a Chevrolet Silverado EV with a 400-mile range, but has given no release date. Ford, on the other hand, has said it will launch its EV truck next year, dubbed the Ford F-150 Lightning, with a range of up to 300 miles. Tesla, as we know, has said it expects 250-plus miles of range for its Cybertruck.

There are various other EV brands that are sure to feature in Elon Musk's competition radar, like the Mustang Mach-E, Audi e-tron, BMW i3, or the Jaguar I-PACE. At the end of the day, we believe that Elon sees electric vehicles as the only alternative to our current gas-guzzling transportation market. In that sense, he has always publicly welcomed competition, as he sees Tesla as a tool to catalyze the automotive industry and speed up this revolution by decades or more.