About incumbents and challengers

In many industries, incumbents have often been trumped in the new product/technology race by rank outsiders. Will EVs' fate be any different?

A recent statement by Rajiv Bajaj, the gutsy chief of Bajaj Auto, at the launch of the company’s first electric offering got me thinking on the issue of core competence. Bajaj said that he was surprised that battery and motor makers, even “television, fridge, mobile” importers had rushed into the electric vehicles or EV space. And that many industry peers were merely shopping for EV-tech startups unlike his firm, which was doing it in-house, as “we at Bajaj are engineers who do our own jobs”.

Bajaj might have a point here, and we need people of his ilk by the dozen