Market And Demand Formation

Tesla is here to stay and keep fighting for the electric car revolution.
Elon Musk

How do markets form?  What happens when they do?  Let’s look.

The modern mass-produced electric car market began in 2009.  As Figure A displays, there was a sole entrant then, the Mitsubishi i-MiEV.  By 2012, in Figure B, many more entrants came into play.  Three years later, with Figure C, prices for most models fell, and they attracted more customers.  Producers were able to drop prices because their production lines displayed learning curve effects.  They benefited from lower costs from more efficient workers, standardization, economies of scale, and other factors.

Figure D shows us that by 2018, many new models moved into the market.  Several models (all Teslas, marked with the yellow dots) combined to form the market’s Demand Frontier.  That line is highly correlated (adjusted R2 95.4%, P-value 5.04E-04) and relatively flat, with a slope of -0.36.

In 2019, electric car sales fell about 10% from 2018, despite Tesla’s Model 3 success.  Given the flattish Demand Curve, that suggests buyers would be eager for a high-range vehicle with a price lower than the Model 3.  All competitors priced less than the cheapest Model 3 have less range than it does.

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