I think that you’re making Goofy’s point, rather than your point.
Tesla properly tending to its auto business is the analogue to planning for retirement. Sure, it’s possible that they might not need it - after all, they might suddenly be raking in those autonomy and/or robot bucks tomorrow! Why bother continuing to develop new desirable auto models, when they may never be needed?
But then if you don’t die tomorrow (if the autonomy doesn’t happen or someone beats you to it) then you’d wish you had planned for retirement (continued developing car models).
And Tesla’s sales continue to fall, even as the EV sector rises. Even the new products aren’t moving, they’ve started offering “special rate financing” on the New Y, and they’re chopping prices on the truck, like some local, corner store car dealer when sales are slow.
Meanwhile, and I cannot emphasize this enough, this is the mother ship . We’ve all seen what happens when a corporation gets distracted and forgets about what got it to the party in the first place. Nardelli’s run at Home Depot was a disaster, as he set about acquiring industrial firms and forgot what made the store great. (He got the broom, but not soon enough.)
The company has problems, and they’re not going to be solved in any reasonable (investor) time frame by Robotaxis or mechanical men or any other wild and crazy ideas.
They have clearly lost a step in the car business, not just with laggard (and extreme) development, but also in the marketing and brand value. Whether they can recover is an open question.
I yes, I thought so too. Humorous that he doesn’t realize it.
Yeah, it is stunning that Musk loudly takes positions that antagonize a large bloc of his customer base. And the fact that he did it without regard for the effect it would have on car sales for Tesla shows me that he either is not a strategic thinker, or he lets his emotional biases take over his thinking. Either way, I’m not doing business with him. Don’t care if others look past his outbursts and still buy his products, that’s their prerogative. But for a whole lot of other people, his mouth has ended any thought of purchasing one of his products.