"Over the past five years, the major auto companies have invested massively in electric vehicles (EVs). The Volkswagen Group in 2017 announced that they would offer 80 new electric vehicles across their brands by 2025 and electric versions of every one of its models by 2030. In the same year GM went public with plans to put at least 20 new electric models on the road by 2023. They are not alone; Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicts that 500 different EV models will be available globally by 2022," reports Harvard Business Review in an article co-authored by Professor of Engineering Geoffrey Parker.

"Yet, despite investments that add up to many billions of dollars, none of the major incumbent automakers seems to pose much of a threat to market leader Tesla, which has become nearly synonymous with EVs. This is surprising since one might reasonably have expected that once firms with annual revenues in excess of $100B, deep manufacturing expertise, and large market shares turned their attention to the electric vehicle market, the game would be up.

"The reason why consumers still choose Teslas over products like Audi’s eTron or attractive EVs from GM’s Buick, Cadillac, GMC, and Chevy brands is perhaps surprisingly simple. They can drive their Teslas for long distances in full confidence that they will find convenient locations at which to recharge their vehicle. While the incumbent automakers are still focused narrowly on perfecting their electric cars, Tesla has been thinking about the entire vehicle system, with the aim of solving consumers’ core driving needs."

Similar coverage in: CleanTechnica