When it comes to understanding Tesla and its future, no one is better than CEO Elon Musk.

But when it comes to assessing other automakers, and potential competitive threats to Tesla, Musk isn't as good.

Case in point: Last week, Musk said that while Apple got a late start on its secretive car project, the Cupertino, California-based colossus will catch up and have volume production by 2020.

As an aside, or perhaps a gentle taunt, Musk said Tesla would be delivering a million vehicles a year by then (the company is already shooting for 500,000 annually by 2018).

There's an outside chance that Apple could actually be selling a car by 2020, but not much more than that. In fact, Musk's comments suggest that he wants to keep Tesla in a Silicon Valley-oriented discussion about the future of transportation, with tech companies such as Apple and Google serving as Tesla's competition, not, you know, the automakers that are already building and selling electric cars.

Apple hasn't stopped specializing in the Steve Jobsian "reality distortion field," and the Apple Car, code named Titan, is 2016's exhibit A. Thus far, we've seen used minivans driving around the Bay Area with what appear to be sensor rigs strapped to their roofs. Apple has bought up real estate and made some fairly odd hires. And that's it. Otherwise, it's all speculation and the odd design study.

So if Apple manages to get a car to market by 2020, it will be a frankly astonishing achievement. That is what Apple obsessives expect — that the company will unleash a (probably) electric and (probably) self-driving vehicle with dramatic fanfare, fully formed and ready to rock.

Slim and none

That will be impossible. Cars aren't smartphones. They're big and, in a world jammed with iPhones, impossible to hide. Apple would have to test its car on public roads — in fact, it would have to let various governments know that it was doing so, and if it wants to shoot for self-driving features, it will be required to apply for permits in California.

Old-school cars tended to be driven by humans typically take about four years to develop from "clean sheet" designs, so if Musk is right and Apple got a late start, then it's unlikely that a game changer from Project Titan will hit the road by 2020; I'd say 2025 is optimistic.

What Musk's comments really boil down to are studied efforts to deflect the true competitive threats that are about to begin arriving — and an opportunity to distinguish Tesla's vehicles from some of the new, longer-range electric vehicles that are soon to hit the market.

Tesla is on the verge of transforming itself from a low-volume, high-profit-margin manufacturer of luxury electric cars to a relative high-volume, low-margin manufacturer of mass-market EVs, with the forthcoming Model 3 to be the first example.

General Motors is already going to beat Tesla to market with the 200-mile Bolt, due to arrive later this year. And GM, Ford, and Volkswagen are moving rapidly to develop futuristic new-mobility businesses.

Detroit is happy to point out that its traditional car companies have been raking in cash for the past two years and might be interested in acquiring or investing in high-tech startups based in Northern California.

And that's just in the US. The German and Japanese automakers are also ramping up their own electric-car and autonomous-driving initiatives.