"Tech giants like Xiaomi, Huawei and Alibaba are now making EVs, bringing consumer technology into the car industry." [Xiaomi]
The entry of consumer tech giants into EVs directly supports the claim that software convergence is dissolving the boundary between automotive and electronics, undermining incumbent OEM moats.
Reasoning from this article
Xiaomi launching a top-selling EV brand within one year of market entry, and Huawei's sedan outselling Porsche and BMW 7-series combined in the luxury segment, demonstrates that software ecosystem lock-in (phones, apps, smart-home) can substitute for decades of automotive brand equity. This pattern — tech-platform firms using existing user relationships to rapidly commoditize adjacent hardware categories — has precedent in smartphones displacing cameras and GPS devices, and now generalizes to automobiles. The structural implication is that automotive incumbents face a two-front threat: Chinese cost competition at the low end and software-ecosystem competition at the premium end.