The proud makers of the world’s top-selling luxury brands such as Mercedes, BMW, Audi and Porsche could not fathom how a small-time, loss-making upstart from California could ever compete with the giants of the industry that had a century and a half of experience and expertise. In November, a former Daimler chairman, Edzard Reuter, even called Tesla “a joke that can’t be taken seriously compared to the great car companies of Germany” and dismissed Musk as a “pretender.”
But the patronizing laughter came to a screeching halt after more than 325,000 buyers from around the world lined up to put down $1,000 reservations to order Tesla’s Model 3 in the first week — even though the company’s electric car for the masses, priced from $35,000, won’t go into production for another 18 months.
Some in Germany are now, rather belatedly, seeing Tesla as a long-term threat to the pride and joy of the country’s economy: the car industry that employs 750,000 workers and indirectly accounts for 1 in 8 jobs.