Tesla’s (NASDAQ GS: TSLA) electric cars have always been flashy and ultra-cool, with huge name brand recognition. And with the ever-confident Elon Musk as CEO, there’s no doubt that Tesla talks a good game…
The problem is that they’ve always talked big. And often, they don’t fulfill their promises.
Tesla has said that they will be delivering 500,000 cars by the end of 2018.
That’s about 18 months away.
In the first half of this year they only managed to deliver 47,000.
If they keep up that rate… they won’t even hit 150,000 deliveries by year-end 2018.
It’s disappointing, but not perhaps, unexpected.
What is unexpected? Volkswagen AG’s (OTC: VLKAY) leap into the EV market.
Honestly when I used to think of Volkswagen I thought of the VW bugs that kids loved (and I hated).
Not anymore.
Volkswagen plans to start deliveries of their first battery-powered car in 2020, and they plan to be selling one million electric cars by 2025.
It’s a lofty goal, like many of Tesla’s… But here’s why I believe that VW will do it: they’re the biggest automaker in the world.
VW owns names like Audi, Bentley, and Porsche, and as such, they have the money and the minds to put a dent in the EV market.
I don’t think they’ll compete with Tesla. I think they’ll outpace them.
Fortune.com writes, “Although he [Herbert Deiss, chairman of VW brand] acknowledged that the U.S. automaker [Tesla] ‘is a competitor we take seriously,’ Deiss declared that ‘anything Tesla can do, we can surpass.’”
While VW is the biggest, they aren’t the only auto company jumping into EV’s.
Volvo recently released news that all new cars will at least be partially powered by batteries (using hybrid engines) from 2019 on. They also plan to release 5 new electric cars between 2019 and 2021.
Tesla might have led the charge, but there’s a big chance that they won’t be the one to capture the EV market.
