I hate to say it but not a single poster here has really figured out what Tesla's strategy is.
Tesla wants to primarily become a software company for cars, charging and energy storage devices, solar panels, pretty much everything to do with energy and transportation.
Will they make cars? Absolutely, but in due time it will be more about putting all the physical ingredients available elsewhere into an assembled product versus the heavily vertical integration they have now. EVs required a high level of vertical integration where the company designed and built most of the components in the beginning. Now that nearly every automaker is dedicating resources, and suppliers, towards the development of new EVs you will see this change.
Do they need the Supercharger network? No. There comes a point where a once emerging technology matures and experiences slower growth and reduced margins. Tesla was the first mover in this market. Now they dominate it. Now they can sell it at what he/they may think is its peak valuation. That money will be going to two areas...
Artificial Intelligence. Without digging too deep into the rabbit hole I'll just say that AI is to Silicon Valley what the Internet was to Silicon Valley 30 years ago.
Autonomous driving software. Tesla is making a huge bet that they can develop the software that makes autonomous driving possible. They will require enormous resources and cooperation with multiple partners (public and private) to make that a reality. The cost will likely be in the tens of billions over time and they will need to be, once again, subsidized.
Multiple governments will be involved with this along with many corporations that have resources that complement this push.
I wouldn't be surprised if you don't see another new model from Tesla for at least the next two years. Beyond that, they will take the 3/Y architecture and amortize it out to the greatest degree possible. No new models other than the semi-truck and others that are already works in progress. Whatever new model that comes out in terms of cars will be heavily based on the S/Y platform.
The Cybertruck for Tesla is a lot like what the Lisa was for Apple. An undertaking that had some merit in terms of technology but will eventually fizzle out. Gigcasting, 800V systems, and other engineering architectures that were focused on vehicle production will have most of their R&D funding re-directed towards AI and autonomy.
I am not long on Tesla. Mainly because I'm not convinced we have enough knowledge workers on this planet to make his goals a reality, given that so many others who are also heavily subsidized or have better technological advantages are pursuing the same exact thing. I may be wrong, but I think the Balkanization of the resources needed are eventually going to stagnate Tesla's ability to capitalize on AI or autonomy.
These fields are so new we just don't have the knowledge base quite yet. The money is getting ahead of the skill sets.
I sort of agree with you, except that I look at Tesla more as a VC running a bunch of startups under the hood.
Looking at the way they grow, they are selling a vision of fast growth, heavy capital investment, don't worry about profit if you can grow fast mentality. While you can say they make money only 2 out of 15, you can't ignore how fast they are growing and how they grow by stock appreciation instead of reinvesting profit. EV used to be fast growth, charging network used to be fast growth, self driving used to be fast growth, solar panel, battery storage, roof, tunnel boring, hyper loop, etc all used to be fast growth. Maybe you can also add alt coin (doggy coin) and flame thrower to the mix as well?
Why suddenly shift to only AI and ML? Probably because everything else has run its fast growth course and are now in commodity phase now, and nobody is making money. If you look at AWS and Azure, smart phone and tablet, etc, they are all just organic "slow" growth now in the 20% or so rate. Even Meta is starting to pay dividend (because you can't grow that fast anymore).
The only thing left is AI, so most likely that's why Elon just want to switch there. The only certainty is interest rate is no longer 0, and inflation is going to dictate how low interest can go and how much more money can we (humanity as a whole) print.
Maybe China will help them out on AI and self driving (partnering with Baidu using their map, keeping their China's R&D data in China, etc) when the free money is over? I don't know, they won't have many choices if they don't cut their R&D.
