GrandPrix@gle2d
Who's going to be the last brand standing in the auto industry?
If we look at the rising players:
Legacy side → Toyota and Ford (maybe one or two more).
EV side → Tesla, plus a couple of Chinese brands.
This whole game probably started back in the early 2000s, when Chinese companies began seducing Europe into becoming their customers.
While European brands got drunk on rising sales in China and shifted everything to satisfy that market, China quietly put on the 'green' mask and started laying the groundwork for EVs everywhere.
In legacy ICE, China couldn't even catch up to Korea, let alone leap over Japan's wall. Anyone who's worked at a Chinese brand back then knows: engines, packaging—everything was scavenged and half-baked. Slap fancy design on a broken foundation and what do you get? Nothing.
But EVs?
Completely different story.
It's easy to grab hegemony when the Communist Party pushes like crazy. Plus, building cars is way simpler in this space.
NIO hooked people early with battery swapping.
Other Chinese legacy brands spun off EV sub-brands left and right, pulling autonomy tech from Alibaba and friends, competing fiercely within joint-venture frameworks.
They poached JV execs with cash, then went after Europeans pushed out by internal politics—Build cars that sell in your home countries. Those guys went wild with excitement.
In the end, European brands basically self-destructed.
Meanwhile, Tesla quietly kept going its own way and now eats everyone's lunch with overwhelming real-world data.
So the in-between, mediocre companies? They're getting torn apart.
Car purchases are dropping overall, there's no real merit left to sell, and self-driving cars are rolling out on their own—game over.