GM and Ford were also at it for decades before Toyota even existed ... The idea that Tesla and China's head start is insurmountable needs justification.
Toyota at that point had a huge cost advantage because their labor was many times cheaper than American, even bigger advantage than China has today. They were not unionised and worked almost for food, as Japan was still poor and half-wrecked after WWII. And it was the time when an assembly line worker in the U.S. with Homer Simpson level of education attainment could buy a 4-bedroom home on a single income. So they managed to squeeze in in spite of America having a huge head start, much like China did with Tesla. Today's Japan is nothing like that.
But we are talking about "learning curves" and "supply chains". You still haven't explained why they won't be able to catch up and make a good affordable EV.
Because you need something to begin. Either a learning advantage (build better stuff as cheap as others can build crappy one because of less trial and error involved), or a cost advantage (but crappy stuff but cheaply due to lower costs and thus win market share). Not having either, they will have to compete head-on, and simple comparison of valuations and thus WACCs of Tesla vs Toyota clearly shows that if they try to compete, they will be drained and bankrupt very quickly.
I think they will eventually not try. They see the writing on the wall and know they will be bankrupt and dissolved in some years. Thus spreading FUD about EVs plus promising much better EV of their own to simply slow down this process to make some final bucks before going bust. That is the smartest thing they can do at this point.
They have experience with electric drive trains/motors with the hydrogen vehicles and experience with batteries with their (plugin) hybrids.
They just haven't bothered to release a full EV for whatever reason. Maybe they don't think it will be profitable at the moment and it will hurt sales of more profitable existing product lines.
> Thus spreading FUD about EVs
Are they wrong about their concerns over the supply of lithium? Or that for many people EV won't be an option - due to lack of infrastructure in their countries, range issues, ... etc.
But this isn't how it will work at all. EVs will take over because ICE cars will be excluded from too many markets by law for the remaining ones to stay profitable price wise due to negative scale effects. People won't switch to EVs because they will want it, they will just have to. Question is who will make the money resulting from it.
As for supplies of lithium - supply is created when there is demand. Surely today's lithium reserves are insufficient, just as existing oil reserves were insufficient for even the whole eventual production run of Ford Model T when it was first launched. Reserves are created by demand, we should ignore current data: when there is demand, miners will find and give it to us.
