Is Tesla The Apple Of The EV Industry?

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Tesla is an interesting company at an interesting phase of the electric vehicle transition. Well, it has always been an interesting company in this transition. However, lately, as the industry has moved quickly into a new phase, I have been wondering where Tesla will sit amidst it in the coming years.

While there are now hundreds and hundreds of electric vehicle models on the market and EV share of new vehicle sales have risen to 32% globally (or 23% if we only count full electrics/BEVs), Tesla sells only two models but remains the second best selling BEV producer in the world. It remains solidly ahead of other automakers and only trails Chinese giant BYD (or also Geely if we throw in PHEVs).

In the US, where there’s much less EV competition (especially because of Chinese EVs basically being blocked from entering the market), Tesla’s share of EV sales is above 50%.

The Apple iPhone holds about 20–22% of the global smartphone market, and around 58% of the US smartphone market. While that’s a bit higher than Tesla’s shares, it’s quite similar. And considering that Apple just sells that one phone (but in a few different versions) and Tesla just sells the Model 3 and Model Y, it’s hard to not see a comparison.

As EV sales have been picking up in parts of the world, or at least reaching portions of the market in the USA, it seems to me that a lot of people choose Tesla because they’ve heard it’s the EV brand. Tesla has long been the face of the EV transition in most of the world, and even considered the only “real” option. I know of many buyers in the US who just went straight to Tesla without looking at other options. It’s a bit like how many people will only consider and look at Apple for phones. However, how much will that change in the coming years? Will Tesla’s dominance fade further (it’s already down from about 80% of the market in the US to a bit more than 50%) as more and more options come to market, or will it hold it’s special position as a first mover, a tech leader, and an EV-only carmaker?

One more interesting issue here is the matter of “Full Self Driving” — which only comes as “Supervised” at the moment, but Tesla is itching to make a fully hands-off, eyes-off option for Tesla owners. Could Tesla achieve a leading role for years again of having the only fully hands-off, eyes-off, self-driving consumer cars on the road? Or is it not going to beat other automakers to market with a self-driving feature that takes liability for any accidents away from the human operating the car and allows them to sleep, watch movies, work, etc. in the car? This has been hotly debated for about a decade, with Tesla nearly a decade late on Elon Musk’s targets for this, but the company is now operating robotaxis in a few cities and ramping up production of the Cybercab. Risky or not, is Tesla close to taking on liability for humans using FSD in their own cars? And if it does take that step, will that make demand for Tesla cars so high that Tesla sees its EV market share increase significantly again?

I know many people have strong opinions on these matters — on both sides of the debate. Some are certain Tesla is going to rise again and will release true Full Self Driving broadly soon, or at least long before other automakers. Some are certain Tesla’s vision-only approach is fatally flawed and Tesla will never take on full liability for Tesla owners using FSD. I don’t have enough insight or expertise to say one thing is absolutely certain and the other is not, but I do think the FSD matter is quite important to Tesla remaining “the Apple of the EV industry” — even potentially without taking on accident liability. Even with things staying as they are, I wonder if Tesla could remain the dominant EV player in the US and some other markets just because of its early reputation, branding, and 21st century marketing. We shall see.