Bill Ford gave a talk at SXSW, and I asked him the question "Why hasn't Ford built the gigafactory". He gave IMHO a really weak answer about how they weren't sure the economics of it worked out.
Big car OEMs have so much invested in terms of R&D, brand and emotionally in the combustion engine that I think most are just not going to be able to make the jump to EVs. Nissan and BMW are trying, but they are still making really baby steps.
Nissan "built the gigafactory" a decade ago and it didn't work out for them at all.
In 2007, Nissan and NEC entered into a joint venture just like Tesla/Panasonic's: they created AESC, Automotive Energy Supply Corporation, and built a $1.1 billion lithium ion battery factory near one of Nissan's manufacturing plants. Nissan committed to buying the plant's output for some years. These became the batteries and battery packs for the Nissan Leaf, of which they've sold more than 200,000 to date.
However, AESC eventually lagged at least a generation behind Panasonic (and now several others) in chemistry, process and price, which significantly worsened Nissan's position in the market. It took them some years to get out of that arrangement (relatively recently) so that they can buy batteries for the next-generation Leaf and other Nissan-Renault vehicles at less than 1/2 the price from other suppliers.
There's no guarantee that 10 years from now, we'll look back and say the Gigafactory was a wise investment for Tesla. They feared insufficient supply or being locked out of adequate supply for batteries, but now that everyone's seen the writing on the wall that EVs could become a big chunk of the new car market in the 2020s, it seems far less likely that battery supply will be a short-term issue.
Boston Power, BYD, Foxconn, SK Innovation, Samsung SDI, LG Chem, etc have built, broken ground or committed funds for over 150 GWh of annual vehicle battery production over the next 3-5 years. Tesla will not be the only major player in that market, and Panasonic is free to supply batteries to other car makers than Tesla from their other factories.
He's right, the economics don't work out for a Ford. They only work out for a smaller, separately owned disruptor. Inevitable truth and pattern seen across all mature industries
The dealerships won't sell it. Any marketing they do for it will hurt their other brands. Any marketing they do for their other brands will hurt it.
It's like McDonalds selling an organic, grass fed burger. If they talk about the quality of the beef, they're basically saying the Big Mac is low quality beef.
McDonald's just a couple days ago announced a change from frozen to fresh beef patties in their Quarter Pounder, clearly to compete with Wendy's who joked about it on their Twitter (https://twitter.com/Wendys/status/847478772311834626).
I'm not sure what that says about your analogy. Perhaps Ford should have gotten started on this a long time ago and taken the hit then. Perhaps once Ford gets serious about electrics, their response will be equally as weak as McDonald's.
The sub-brand still messes with their marketing. Why do you think there is so much anti-Tesla astroturfing? There's no point in starting a sub-brand if you're just going to have to astroturf it.
For instance: The government of Sweden just announced suggested legislation for june 2018 that will severely punish any new registrations of non-electric vehicles (the tax penalty is linear to the co2-emissions/driven km above a certain treshold.) I think it goes sort of halfway towards Norway's current policy. (Which is rather extreme, and something they as a nation can afford, being a major oil exporter.)
Ford sells 6.5 million cars a year, and only 12,000 of them in Sweden. Ford already makes an electric car, and 12K cars is 3-4 weeks of production from one production line in one of their factories.
Big car OEMs have so much invested in terms of R&D, brand and emotionally in the combustion engine that I think most are just not going to be able to make the jump to EVs. Nissan and BMW are trying, but they are still making really baby steps.