Just staggers me that Elon could have just… not done any of this. And yet here we are. He’s had to sell billions in Tesla stock to finance this ongoing mayhem, this is surely going to be up there as one of the greatest examples of hubris in modern business.
It's hard to overstate what a crucial time this is for Tesla. They had early-adopter success when they had the field to themselves. But now every major car company plus a bunch of other people (possibly including Apple) are coming for them. Pivoting to the mainstream market and fending off all the competition is going to take both dedication and gobs of capital. Capital that is going going to be harder to raise with a distracted CEO and a bunch of investors who've had their fingers burned.
The latest is that they have given up trying to make it autonomous-only and will be looking to launch in the next few years.
Not entirely implausible given that their close partner Foxconn is already making EVs:
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/18/business/foxconn-electric...
By 2026 it'll be next to impossible to make any serious impact in EV market, certainly not serious enough to affect Tesla.
In 2026 Tesla will be at run rate of 5+ millions cars.
There's no magic in this business.
Even if Apple has a car with that kind of demand, it takes 1 year to build a factory and 3 years to ramp it to 1 million cars a year. This is what Giga Shanghai did and that's faster than anyone ever done it.
So we're talking 2030 for 1 million cars, if somehow Apple can build it's first factory at the same scale and speed as Tesla it's second factory, after lots of painful learning scaling Fremont production.
Plus, without robotaxi what's the point? Luxury brands like BMW / Audi / Mercedes top out at ~2.5 million a year. That's a business, but it's not a Tesla destroying business.