[Ah, Richard beat me to it, and much more succinctly!]
Sort of a topic highjack. I got a lot out of this article:
http://lanesplitter.jalopnik.com/why-no-one-will-sell-you-the-bike-you-want-1641411378/1641776874/+damonHere’s a quote that I hope ties in to your question:
“At its peak, the American motorcycle market accounted for 1.1 million total bike sales a year. Now, that's under 500,000. Harley sells 250,000 of those (because classic rock just won't die), Honda's the next biggest at 125,000 or so, and everyone else is orders of magnitude smaller.”
So, let’s say you dream big as a manufacturer, maybe not as big as Elon Musk, but you really want to have an impact on both the planet’s health and on your company’s viability. Would you even glance at a market that totals a half million, half of which is taken by customers loyal to the potato-potato sound of THE iconic ICE twin cylinder, and a quarter is already dominated by a company with a solid reputation of building reliable motorcycles coupled with innovative, proven marketing techniques? Would you tool up to try to capture a slice (wrestling them away from Yamaha, Kawasaki, BMW, Ducati) of the 125,000 remaining potential customers when you could focus on the multitudes of car customers? I don’t think a company as huge as Tesla wants to be would bother. I think a bunch of feisty startup types in Talent, OR or Santa Cruz, CA might. And did. But not Tesla. I mean Elon aims for outer space!
