The EV transition isn’t a forecast. It’s a stress test.
The EV transition is no longer a debate about beliefs. It’s a test of who can survive reality.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb has a line that’s useful when trying to understand today’s automotive sector:
“Invest in preparedness, not prediction.”
Taleb’s broader point—consistent across his books The Black Swan and Antifragile—is that you should position yourself so you’re not dependent on being right about the future. You don’t need a perfect forecast. You need a strategy that survives imperfect ones.
Morgan Housel reinforces this in Same as Ever when he cites Taleb’s even more uncomfortable reminder:
“Risk is what’s left over after you think you’ve thought of everything.”
That idea lands hard in the automotive world because the industry is full of confident forecasts and expensive surprises.
And if there’s one area where prediction has been costly—financially, strategically, reputationally—it’s the EV transition.
The auto industry isn’t won by being right about direction.
It’s won by being ready for reality.
And reality is rarely linear.
The EV transition: from certainty to complexity
For the past decade, the automotive world has been divided into two camps:
those trying to be right about the future
those trying to be ready for it
In the early days of what looked like an EV revolution, being “right” felt like a cheat code.
Tesla didn’t just predict the EV future. Tesla made it real—both in the public imagination and in capital markets. Tesla’s early product decisions, its charging buildout, and its ability to make EVs aspirational forced every legacy automaker to respond.
And for a while, the industry (and the market) treated Tesla as if it was not only first… but also ready and right.
That assumption is now being stress-tested.
Not because EVs are “dead” (they aren’t). But because the transition is proving to be more like a long war than a quick coup.
EV adoption is now being shaped by variables that don’t show up cleanly in PowerPoint predictions:
This is why the best question in the auto industry today isn’t:
Who is right?
It’s:
Who is ready?
Because being right isn’t enough anymore.
Tesla: “Right + first” has become “right… and now what?”
Let’s acknowledge something clearly: Tesla was right.
Tesla proved EVs could be desirable, aspirational, high-performance, and software-forward. Tesla also proved that charging infrastructure isn’t just a utility—it’s a competitive weapon.
The market treated Tesla as if being right automatically meant being ready for every version of the future.
Frankly, Tesla may still be “right.”
But right isn’t enough anymore.
Toyota: the automaker managing “ready” better than anyone
If Tesla has been the symbol of being “right,” Toyota increasingly looks like the symbol of being “ready.”
Toyota’s strategy has been mocked for years—usually by EV purists who confuse conviction with competence.
While the industry declared EV inevitability, Toyota quietly pursued what looks boring but behaves brilliantly:
Toyota didn’t bet the company on a single outcome.
Toyota built the ability to win across multiple outcomes.
That’s what “ready” looks like.
And the industry is now entering a phase where readiness beats righteousness.
Operational excellence still matters… but that’s not the disruption
Operational excellence has always been a separator in the auto industry. Toyota has long been the benchmark, and that’s not new.
What’s changing now is what operational excellence must deliver.
Not just scale.
Not just quality.
Not just cost control.
But the ability to remain profitable while the ground shifts under you.
The winners in this era aren’t just the ones who design, engineer, manufacture, and sell vehicles well.
The winners are the ones best prepared for whatever the future brings—while staying profitable.
That’s a different level of readiness. It’s not just operational. It’s strategic.
TaaSMaster takeaway
Taleb’s advice is uncomfortable, but useful:
“Invest in preparedness, not prediction.”
Housel’s reinforcement is even more useful:
“Risk is what’s left over after you think you’ve thought of everything.”
Because the winners won’t necessarily be the automakers who were most right about EVs.
The winners will be the automakers who were most ready for the messy version of EVs:
Uneven adoption.
Uneven infrastructure.
Uneven regulation.
Uneven economics.
Uneven consumer enthusiasm.
In the real world, disruption isn’t a straight line.
It’s a stress test.
And the winners will be graded on readiness—not righteousness.
Until next time,
Tracking Disruption in Global Autos