Well with a market valuation of $ 1 Trillion, Tesla settles the argument whether it is a valuable company of a terrible company. Its is only the 4th. company to join, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and now Tesla in the trillion $ club.
No one in this thread has said Tesla isn't a valuable company. They've said Tesla is an awful software company.
Tesla is not the 4th company to have a market cap over a trillion. Apple, Microsoft, Saudi Aramco, Alphabet (Google), and Amazon are currently on that list. Facebook has been there before, but fell below $1T.
To be clear, the "trillion" in "trillion dollar club" means they reached a market cap of a trillion. All that means is that the value of their outstanding shares is worth a trillion ($1.02T as I write this). That's it. Sure, share price is influenced by profits, or speculation, or other factors, but share prices are truly only determined by what people buying shares thinks they're worth. In theory, a company could hit a market cap of $1T with zero profits, no products, and be purely hype/speculation driven. Unlikely, but possible.
Tesla didn't achieve a a market cap above $1T because of their touchscreen UI. No one said "damn, that UI makes me want to go buy a share or two." I'd think someone was crazy if they said that. Not because the UI is terrible, but because Tesla makes an amazing car despite its terrible UI.
If someone said they bought Apple shares because of Apple's focus on design and UI it wouldn't seem crazy at all to me. Apple is known for investing substantially in UI design. Whether you like using Apple products or not, you can't deny that one of the reasons that people are willing to pay $1000 for a phone that, functionally speaking, does the same thing as a $200 phone is because of the UI. Apple's profit margin on their hardware is substantial because of their focus on UI and design.
It's this sorta thing that I think Tesla drops the ball on. There will be a time soon when competitors can match Tesla's hardware and tech. The tech Tesla uses, or how that tech is produced, isn't unobtainable by other companies. Just like with phones, there will be a time when one of the major things driving a consumer to buy from one company or another will come down to how well its UI (software or hardware) is designed. If Tesla doesn't start prioritizing things like the UI, they'll fall behind.
And before anyone says it: it doesn't matter if Tesla is currently considered the best. It doesn't matter if no other auto makers have better UI's currently. It doesn't matter if you love Tesla and don't like people being critical of Tesla. Being critical doesn't mean I hate Tesla. I want Tesla to continue to succeed, and I want their market cap to grow. The more their market cap grows, the more my shares are worth, making it more likely that selling some of those shares nets me a new Tesla. I want Tesla to devote Apple level effort to their UI in terms of making it effortless and effective. If someone beats Tesla to that, it'd be hard for me to not look at them very seriously.