The problem was they needed to pretend be a technology company (with FSD, and now robots) to juice the stock price/earnings multiple. If they were simply a car maker with EV motors, the stock would have a much lower multiple.
I don’t think they _needed_ to do that. They chose to do that. It’s been fairly successful in the short to medium term but the jury is still out on what happens if/when the market acknowledges that they are in fact just a car company.
padjo|4 months ago