Why legacy automakers are losing the race

Industries do not decline gradually — they polarize. One segment ascends, propelled by new technology and fresher economics; another descends, weighed down by the very capabilities that once made it great.

The world is watching as this dynamic unfolds inside the global automobile industry today, and the script is disturbingly familiar to anyone who has read Clayton Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma (1997). The question is no longer whether Chinese electric vehicles are winning. It is why the legacy automakers — with their century of accumulated engineering, brand equity, and distribution reach — are so structurally incapable of matching the speed of their Chinese competitors.