As a pioneer and pacesetter, Tesla dominated the early days of the electric car era, and in another corner, the two traditional giants of Volkswagen and Toyota also realized that the era of electric vehicles had arrived, and began to fight back to maintain their leading position.
Last month, five days apart, Volkswagen and Toyota developed electrification strategies, spending a total of $170 billion in the next few years to fight Tesla, and it is clear that neither wants the Nokia vs. Apple story to happen again.
Former Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer said that when two of the world's largest automakers decided to switch to electric vehicles across the board, there was no need to doubt that electric vehicles would be mainstream.
The Volkswagen Group's confrontation with Tesla is the most comprehensive, and over the past 84 years Volkswagen has grown into an automotive empire with more than a dozen sub-brands that produce about $280 billion a year. Since Diess became CEO of the Volkswagen Group, Volkswagen has announced an increase in its electrification budget every year.
On December 9 last year, Diess unveiled one of its biggest plans to date, allocating 89 billion euros for electric vehicles and software development over the next five years. Volkswagen's initial foray into electric vehicles was first-class models such as the Audi e-tron and porsche Taycan. Last year, it tried to make a splash with more mainstream products, ID.3 and ID.4.
In the first ten months of 2021, Volkswagen has delivered 322,000 pure electric vehicles, only half of the annual sales target of 600,000 vehicles. Diess is not discouraged, the Volkswagen MEB platform is accelerating the launch of new models, and the scale of production is expanding worldwide.
In contrast, Toyota is more diversified, and they have not given up hybrid technology. On December 12 last year, Toyota announced its electrification strategy, which will invest $70 billion in the next few years and launch 30 electric vehicles by 2030.
Until then, Toyota's overly conservative electrification strategy had been criticized, and even protested by investors. That's why Toyota began to accelerate the development of pure electric vehicle technology.
In the face of the onslaught of Volkswagen and Toyota, Tesla did not sit still. Last year, Tesla delivered 936,000 pure electric vehicles worldwide, an increase of nearly 90%, and also expanded its production capacity globally.
For the current competitive situation, industry analysts have given different judgments. Emmanuel Rosner, an analyst at Deutsche Bank, believes that because the market demand for electric vehicles is significantly greater than the productivity of the industry, the success of electric vehicle companies no longer depends on orders, but on production capacity, supply chain capabilities and cost control capabilities, in which Tesla has a great lead.
Others believe that as more and more new entrants appear, Tesla's advantage will no longer exist. IHS Markit expects Tesla's share of the U.S. electric vehicle market to fall from 50% to 20% by 2025.
Anna-Marie Baisden, head of automotive research at Fitch Solutions, believes that Toyota and Volkswagen are in a better position to compete because traditional car companies have the advantages of scale, manufacturing experience and brand loyalty over new companies.
Of course, the competition is not only in the field of electric vehicles, but also in software capabilities, which the Volkswagen Group has suffered losses, and Toyota's software capabilities have not been verified, so Tesla is still ahead.
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