Tesla is not proof of that. Tesla is an EV company from the ground up. They also do not have the capacity to produce vehicles at the rate of companies like BMW, Mercedes, Honda, etc.
Moreover, car companies do not have "infinite cash reserves". Retooling factories for EV production is an expensive undertaking. Combined with the expense of lithium cells and supply issues, it's not a simple or cheap task.
Tesla had to raise a lot of money from investors to keep the business afloat. In 2017 alone, they had to raise a debt of $2bn to keep their cash reserves alive so that they could continue investing on their products. Volkswagen, on the other hand, had a revenue of $230bn in 2017 alone.
It doesn't seem to me that money is a problem for the already established car manufacturers. And looking at Tesla's finances, starting an electric car business wouldn't make much of a dent on Volkswagen's finances.
So yes, Tesla is proof that there is some relutance in moving to a fully electric business in the car industry.
It does fund a lot of research. Volkswagens investment into electrical cars exceeds Tesla by a factor of five. The article suggests that manufacturing at large scale is not yet profitable, not that they're not actively working on R&D.
To be fair - the S Class is a relatively low volume car. I don't have exact figures, but I'd expect it to be in the range of 2-3% of the cars Mercedes manufactures.
BMW made nearly 2,000,000 cars in 2015[1], and this year, best case, Tesla will make 150,000. That's an order of magnitude difference in scale.
Yes, but in the context of a single production line that I feel like that reasoning doesn't stand. Yes Telsa doesn't make as much in volume, but we're already only talking about cars in the EV segment.
Moreover, car companies do not have "infinite cash reserves". Retooling factories for EV production is an expensive undertaking. Combined with the expense of lithium cells and supply issues, it's not a simple or cheap task.