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- Legacy ICE makers took a long time to figure out how to respond. At first, many of them thought all they had to do to compete was to was to throw in a large portrait screen. Then there were many abominations of them trying to fit EV components into their ICE platforms. I would say the Germans didn't get good at it until 2023-2024 (but they still have a lot to figure out).

- During the time, the legacy ICE makers were figuring things out, the EV startups had the advantage of not having the burden of legacy and figuring things out from first principles. There was a lot of money to be made here. In my estimation, this window of opportunity has now mostly passed.

> It seems like a ton of them fail to make a viable base platform profitable and able to mass produce.

Automotive is essentially a volume game in the long run. This is hard and figuring this out is where the value is. Basically, if you're able to figure out this part, it's a lot less effort to figure out the other parts and control the entire thing. This is similar to how car companies make their own engines (other than in specialty, low volume cases).

> Is there a market for a white-label EV platforms that are proven able to be executed well on a production line and allow the startups to actually complete on the fit and finish bits?

There is a market but it doesn't make sense for EV startups to do this because most of the value is in the previous bit, and the value add from this part is marginally less. Also, cars are complex and it takes a lot of work to integrate things made by others. Car companies do form partnerships to share these things.

Some cases:

1. Honda was late to the EV game and found it easier to form a partnership with GM. This resulted in the Honda Prologue, which is built by GM and is essentially a Chevy Blazer [1]. This model has been a success. However, Honda has cancelled the deal and will be releasing new cars built on its own platform [2].

2. Rivian is one company trying to scale on the platform side – they came out with high price-point vehicles. e.g. R1S competes with Range Rover. They're using the same platform for R1T trucks and for Amazon delivery trucks. Rivian had a partnership with Ford, where Rivian would make the platforms for Lincoln EVs, but Ford pulled out and are making Lincoln EVs on their own platform

VW Group was having major issues with its internal software and electronics tier I Cariad. So, they invested $5bn into Rivian so that they could use Rivian's expertise in this. See [3] for Rivian's perspectives on the various partnerships.