Tesla changed the world in 2012. The company existed long before that. But that was the year when the company proved its thesis. The brand launched the Model S, creating a brand new product category out of whole cloth, and blowing countless others to bits with its all-electric super sedan.
Through iterative improvements, Tesla would go on to build the world’s best-selling premium sedan, its best-selling EV, its best-selling luxury sedan, its best-selling SUV and its best selling vehicle, period, depending on the year. It is worth more than every other car company combined
Yet most of the so-called “legacy” automakers have not been able to follow its lead. None of them build EVs at a consistent profit. And none of them are quite ready to build the whole system, as Tesla does.
When Tesla built the Model S, it also built up a sales, service and charging ecosystem that made owning one pleasant. Many automakers still haven’t learned how to do that with EVs.
End-To-End
Last month, I took a road trip in a 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 XRT. It is the absolute best EV that any “legacy” automaker sells in the U.S. It is the best you can do, if you don’t “build the full stack.”
The 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 XRT is one of the best EVs made by a “legacy” automaker. Photo by: Mack Hogan/InsideEVs
But Tesla builds the whole stack. There’s a robust charging infrastructure that is more seamless than any non-Tesla system at typically far lower prices. The vehicles are purchased from no-haggle company stores, not dealerships with high-pressure finance departments. The cars integrate seamlessly with your home, your power grid, your solar panels. The only good hotel chargers in the country seem to have “Tesla” logos, as do the best home batteries.
This is weaponizing the core advantage of EVs: You use power everywhere. So your universal power bank should follow you everywhere. The more services you can connect to it, the more money you are going to make.
Tesla is increasingly integrating its solar, home energy and vehicle products.
Photo by: Tesla
Hyundai wants to do all of that. But it is its own fiefdom inside a conglomerate that is responsible for 11% of South Korea’s economy. It has the money and the stamina to do this, but it isn’t there yet. It wants to build up a full software and energy platform that integrates with the infrastructure and with other smart devices. But for now, in the auto sphere, it simply builds great EVs.
So when I set out on a 650-mile road trip this past weekend, I knew not to bother with Hyundai’s included route-planning software. I loaded up A Better Route Planner—an app now owned by Rivian, a competitor that builds most of its own stack—and used that instead. But since it wasn’t built by Hyundai, and the XRT is brand new, it didn’t know how efficient I’d be. And since the best app for doing this isn’t integrated with the Hyundai, my car wasn’t actively updating the plan with its real-world battery consumption.
More and more EVs have access to Tesla Superchargers. But on my Ioniq 5 road trip, I realized that charging third-party EVs still isn’t as consistent as charging a Tesla.
Photo by: Suvrat Kothari
A Tesla does all of that automatically, and routes you only through the best chargers, because it only uses the ubiquitous Tesla Superchargers. Aha, Hyundai fans may say, but the 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 can use Superchargers. It even has a native Tesla-style NACS plug, another sign of the brand’s utter dominance in this space. Yet even this didn’t solve its charging problems.
The first two Superchargers I visited refused to initiate the charging session. I tried on the Tesla app and using the supposedly automatic plug-and-charge feature. Neither worked. Because Superchargers were originally built for native back-end Tesla magic to sort everything out, there’s no way to identify or rectify faults. I called my contact at Hyundai, who gave me the default, scripted advice. When that didn’t work, I bailed to a Rivian-branded charger in a disused parking lot, and plugged in yet another adapter.
Rivian is also building its own charging network, albeit on a much smaller scale. Photo by: InsideEVs
On the way home, I tried to use Hyundai’s route-planning software. It directed me to a CalTrans charger in the middle of the desert. The charger in question had one stall, operated at 50 kw—about one-fifth of the maximum charging speed of the car—and, most notably, has been closed for months for a construction project. It was also 25 miles from the nearest charger and the car’s efficiency declined as I drove, so if I had followed the Hyundai’s guidance, I would have likely ended up stranded in the Mojave desert.
It doesn’t matter how good the rest of the car is. If you can’t plug in a destination and trust the vehicle to figure out a reliable and efficient route, it’s not good enough.
A Long, Pricey Road
Representatives from Hyundai, General Motors and Ford et. al. will all explain how unfair it is to judge their cars by the condition of the infrastructure. They aren’t in the business of building gas stations, and that never stopped them. Why, suddenly, do EV companies have to be infrastructure companies, too?
Well, because EVs aren’t gas cars. They’re a new business, with new opportunities. And while automakers don’t have to build charging stations, home power systems and home charging setups, they should want to. If electric energy is the main way we accomplish work in the future—and, arguably, it already is—then you don’t want a piece of that pie. You want to own the pie shop.
Google is also trying to solve route planning. It wants to use its Gemini AI chatbot to direct you toward charging stations with specific food options, or amenities. Photo by: Rivian
Tesla owns its bakery. But getting there was expensive and tough. Many automakers have still not caught on to the opportunity here. (I won’t name names because I don’t want to piss anyone off at Honda, Toyota or Stellantis.) Others are just now starting the journey Tesla set out on over a decade ago.
Among them, I’d wager that General Motors shows the most promise. The company already has a mature EV platform with a mostly-common software stack and good route-planning, albeit with a heavy assist from Google. It also has a real home-energy product, charging partnerships with EVGo, a stake in the Ionna charging network and a robust battery supply chain. It recently announced further pushes into home energy and robotics.
Brands like BMW, Hyundai, General Motors, Toyota and Honda have partnered up to build Ionna, a nationwide charging network. That’s a good step in the right direction.
Photo by: Suvrat Kothari
Competitors have bets in some of these places. Mercedes, BMW, Toyota, Honda, Kia, Hyundai and Stellantis all invested in Ionna, and a few are working on their own charging products. But no one is near the scale or maturity of Tesla, and you can feel that every time you use their cars.
That’s because this isn’t an easy road. Tesla had the luxury of losing billions of dollars for years to make the business model attainable in the long term. Legacy automakers, meanwhile, must thread this needle while simultaneously investing in and profiting from their internal combustion portfolios.
Clear Eyes Win
There lies the fundamental problem for legacy car companies. Gas car companies and electric car companies aren’t just building different devices, they’re building different ecosystems. Every part of building, selling and servicing EVs is different, and the more you’re configured for selling gas vehicles, the harder it is to take advantage of these changes.
Tesla and Rivian have another key advantage over legacy rivals: They control their own retail networks, rather than relying on dealers for customer relations. That means it’s much easier for the companies to educate and assist buyers. Photo by: Rivian
How can you drive out cost if your tech has to be backwards-compatible with gas vehicles? How can you have top-tier over-the-air update capability if you’re supporting a bunch of cars that can’t quietly turn on to install them? How can you sell someone a $50,000 car without building a software tool that can guide it anywhere in the country?
Maybe legacy automakers can find away around these problems. They can build good-enough EVs until the infrastructure and supply chain matures, than take advantage of the lessons learned by companies that actually innovate.
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But that’s a dangerous strategy. EV buyers tend to be loyal, and so if you miss the window to sell someone their first EV, you might not be in the conversation to sell them their second. You need a great product as fast as possible. And as Tesla has proven, if you can’t rely on infrastructure and software that’s already available, you’re going to have to build it yourself.
Contact the author: Mack.Hogan@insideevs.com
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