[benwad]

Personally I think the strategy of starting with luxury cars and getting cheaper was a good one. The bigger profit margin of luxury cars could be fed back into R&D to make cheaper electric cars viable.

Of course, that's the ideal situation. Tesla in 2025 is very different from what they were talking about in 2014.

[sorenjan]

Yes, but Tesla has made several weird strategic errors IMO. The first one I remember reacting to where the falcon doors on the model X. They had issues which delayed the launch, and I remember thinking it was strange to put those kind of specialty doors on a SUV instead of focusing on delivering a functional car as quick and easy as possible. The next was of course the massive focus on self driving, and then the cyber truck. The company has had the same CEO during all of these decisions.

But what do I know, I assume their self driving AI hype is what drives their hugely inflated stock price, so it has made a lot of people very rich, which is a goal in itself. It's hard to point at the richest man in the world and say he made strategic errors.

[ethbr1]

> It's hard to point at the richest man in the world and say he made strategic errors.

It should be done carefully, but it should be done.

More than one company has been imploded by a leader who's been successful in the past and no longer has anyone to tell them "No."

Honestly, the best thing for Tesla would be to evict Musk as a leader, install someone who can focus on excellent delivery (like SpaceX), and create a separate R&D org for Musk to lead.

[aaronbaugher]

Yeah, that's just how developing new technologies works. Home PCs, VCRs, CD players, cell phones: every one was hundreds or thousands of dollars at first, a plaything for wealthy people. Then as volume increased, prices came down to where most people could afford them and they became mass-market consumer items.

It doesn't always work out. Sometimes another technology or a competitor gets over that hump first, and the other (LaserDisc, Betamax) never gets the volume it takes to become an affordable commodity. And it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with which one was better. But that's the path to selling a new tech to the masses: sell with a high price tag to the wealthy first.

[_aavaa_]

It’s a shame they chose to seriously pursue the ridiculous cybertruck and vapourware rather than cheaper cars.

[Yeul]

A pickup truck wasn't a bad idea but they should have made a normal looking one.