The bottom line is that Tesla shot itself in the foot. It made its entire mission about autonomy when it didn't need to. Sales were going along just fine before Autopilot. Tesla could have chosen to focus on quality, comfort, performance and range. Instead, it chose to focus on performance and this other thing called Autopilot. At a time when the competition was nowhere close to providing autonomy. Tesla didn't need to do it, nobody even had this expectation of Tesla. It's Tesla's own fault threads like this even exist.
It is arguable about the Autopilot. Elon is nothing if not forward thinking. Actually, if he has a fault in his strategic thinking, it is that he looks ahead too far and reacts too quickly. Timing is everything and Elon sometimes needlessly sacrifices short term profit for long term gain by reacting too quickly, but the threat is real, so eventually he's right.
So on the Autopilot, Elon can easily see that the rest of the auto industry will eventually, slowly, catch up to Tesla. It is already starting to happen today with the Bolt. 2-3 years from now we will have a slew of competitors with greater than 200 mile range and a much better CCS charging infrastructure (thanks VW dieselgate!). Tesla could continue to produce ordinary EVs, but Elon decided that he needed something else to differentiate Tesla from the eventual competitive onslaught, and that was Autonomy.
Not only that, but Elon perceived that autonomy was the next killer app for transportation. We all know that EVs are the current killer app for transport now. But if GM brought out an ICE with full or near autonomy, people wouldn't give a second look at an EV unless it too had similar autonomy. Autonomy is THAT important.
Moreover autonomy is REALLY REALLY difficult. Any car company, even an Elon managed Tesla, can't sit on its thumbs and decide one day to bring out autonomy. You need to build it, learn from it, deliver what you can, learn from your successes and mistakes, and build a competent engineering team. All that takes years. And almost all of the other car manufacturers know it too. Almost all of them have autonomous engineering teams of their own.
So I don't think jumping in with autonomy was the distinctly wrong thing to do. Tesla has certainly been more bold about it than other car companies, but that's at most an issue about style.
As far as the other focus on performance goes, it isn't my cup of tea either. The original Model S had plenty of power for me, and since then we've gotten Insane, Ludicrous and Ludicrous+. I shudder to think what Maximum Plaid will be like. Nonetheless, read any almost any review and the car's power is surely one of the selling points. I suspect the Model 3 will be back to normal - slightly better power than the Bolt, but that's about it. Regardless, power sells. It has been like that for over a hundred years...
