Source: French to English Tester Published on: 2026-05-04
Source: The Conversation – France (in French)– By Eric Viardot, professor of business strategy, SKEMA Business School
When companies evolve along very different trajectories and at very different speeds, their competitive signals can be misunderstood or underestimated. One can see an analogy with the “Doppler effect” in physics, which explains that the sound of an ambulance is deeper or higher pitched if one is not moving at the same speed as it. A company thinks it is competing against a traditional car manufacturer; it finds itself facing an integrated technology company. One believes they are competing with a low-cost player; one discovers a coherent and fast industrial organization.
The current tensions in the electric vehicle market, illustrated by the closure of thePoissy factoryof Stellantis, the weakened results ofRenaultwith a loss of 10.9 billion euros,Fordwith 11 billion dollars (more than 9.38 billion euros, editor’s note) on the fourth quarter of 2025 alone, orVolkswagenwith a profit plummeting by 44.3%, to 6.9 billion euros, go beyond the mere slowdown in demand.
In a context of massive investments, squeezed margins andincreased Chinese competition, the transition to electric costs more and generates returns more slowly than expected.
This situation reveals a recurring mechanism: established companies often underestimate new competitors who transform their industry.
Doppler Effect
Wikimedia
Not all companies are doomed in the face of change. As I have shown in my work onlongevity of companies worldwide, some have endured through the centuries: more than 1,700 are over 150 years old and about 250 have existed for more than four centuries. Their endurance is not due to luck, but to their ability to anticipate, understand their clients, and accurately perceive the evolution of their competitors. Most disappear because they failed to adapt to the market or misinterpreted the arrival of new rivals.
In physics, theDoppler effectdesignates the change in the frequency of a wave when the source and the observer are in relative motion. It explains why the sound of an ambulance is higher-pitched when it approaches and lower-pitched when it moves away; the waves are compressed in front of the source and stretched behind it. This phenomenon is used inmeteorology, where the analysis of emitted and received frequencies allows measuring speeds (or flows) invisible to the naked eye and analyzing the internal movements of atmospheric systems.
In strategy, a metaphorically comparable phenomenon appears. The vision that one company has of another is all the more distorted when they do not develop or transform at the same speed. The greater the gaps in trajectory and speed of evolution, the more difficult it becomes to understand the competition. This discrepancy can lead to late or inappropriate decisions.
A gap difficult to bridge
This is what happened withTesla. Many traditional manufacturers initially saw an electric car as a high-performance vehicle with a beautiful design. They thought the challenge was to offer an equivalent model with the same range, the same acceleration, and the same style.
Tesla was not a car manufacturer, but a technology company producing cars. Its advantage lies in software, remote updates, and battery integration. Whereas a traditional manufacturer launches a new version every five to seven years, Tesla can remotely improve a vehicle that has already been sold; the car evolves. This logic transforms the customer relationship, but also the economic model with more services, data, and continuous interactions.
Also to read:
From Ford to Tesla: what the automobile teaches us about the art of adapting
This difference in pace creates a gap that is difficult to bridge for organizations historically structured around long industrial cycles, multiple suppliers, and complex hierarchies.
Where a traditional manufacturer renews a model every five to seven years – like Renault with theClioor Peugeot with the208Â – Tesla continuously improves an already sold vehicle. The customer does not change the car; it is the car that transforms. The signal was visible but perceived belatedly, through an old industrial prism.
This gap was only fully acknowledged belatedly. Jim Farley, CEO of Ford, after his teams disassembled a Tesla Model 3,declaredA: “We were very astonished. When we disassembled the Model 3, what we discovered was astonishing.” Herbert Diess, then CEO of Volkswagen,qualifiedthe Tesla Model Y as a “reference car” for its group.
BYD and the Chinese “strategic Doppler effect”
Still in the automotive industry, the “strategic Doppler effect” is also observable in the more recent case ofBYDand those of other Chinese manufacturers, such as Geely, SAIC Motor, NIO, or XPeng. Long perceived as mere low-cost players, they were primarily evaluated from a price perspective. In 2024, Carlos Tavares, CEO of Stellantis,declaredà :
“No question of leaving the electric car market at 20,000 euros or less in the hands of the Chinese.”
This focus on pricing has obscured the main point. Chinese competition is based on shorter development cycles, advanced vertical integration, and industrial mastery of the battery. BYD designs and manufactures batteries, motors, and critical components, reducing costs, lead times, and dependencies. The Chinese electric vehicle battery giant, CATL, and BYD alone concentrate more than half of the global production of vehicle batteries.electric. The battery representing approximatelyfrom 30% to 40%Regarding the cost of an electric vehicle, this control constitutes a decisive economic and strategic advantage.
The failure of the European project ofNorthvoltillustrates the difficulty of catching up this distance belatedly. The investment was massive but insufficient to close the gap accumulated in industrial skills and supply chains. Once again, the threat was visible but poorly assessed from a distance.
This metaphor of the “strategic Doppler effect” complements the researchers’ analysesClayton Christensen, Rajesh Chandy and Gerard Tellison internal biases that hinder the adoption of disruptive innovations. Unlike physics, where the signal is actually modified by movement, the analogy here highlights a knowledge and organizational interpretation bias, linked to analytical frameworks that are unsuited to competitors evolving at a different pace.
The curse of the established leaders
In the case of the electric vehicle, traditional manufacturers have indeed invested in the technology, but often by interpreting the transition as a simple replacement of the internal combustion engine with the battery, whereas it was a change of system. The failure of theBlue Solutions batteries from Vincent Bolloré’s group, based on proprietary technology that is poorly compatible with emerging industrial standards, and the limitations of the first generations of theRenault Zoé, designed as an evolution of the product rather than as a complete reconfiguration, illustrate this partial interpretation. In both cases, the challenge was primarily systemic, and not solely technological.
Industrial history shows that leaders can reinvent themselves, as, for example,Michelin,Schneider ElectricwhereSafranto take only examples of French companies. These transformations rely less on the volume of investments than on the ability to see competitors as they really are in constantly evolving industries.
In the era of rapid transitions, the analogy of the “strategic Doppler effect” recalls a simple truth: misunderstanding the competition can be as dangerous as seeing it arrive too late.
Eric Viardot does not work for, advise, own shares in, or receive funds from any organization that could benefit from this article, and has declared no affiliations other than his research institution.
–ref. The automotive industry is not exempt from a “strategic Doppler effect” –https://theconversation.com/the-automotive-industry-does-not-escape-a-strategic-doppler-effect-276650