Smartphone share has no relevance that I can see.
Auto plants are huge and extremely costly endeavors. Scaling auto (or any other huge capital intensive plants ) at 50% annual growth is unprecedented in history (aside from Tesla) to the best of my knowledge. Much less the 70-80% rate Tesla is aiming for in the short run.
There is the factor of competition starting from a smaller base that makes it easier, but there are also many countervailing factors and handicaps for both startups and legacy that should more than offset that.
Can you give any examples other than Tesla of sustained 50% annual growth in capital intensive heavy industries?
The problem with this logic is that it ignores what happens when major disruptions happen. For reference:
Ford Motor Company 1909-1920, General Electric, Bell Telephone, At&T, International Harvester or even Kodak and Xerox.
Smartphones are indeed capital intensive, but are not necessary.
There are of course the Standard Oil Company, Firestone etc.
I did not list the growth rates because all of these had major mergers and reorganization that made accurate estimate possible but prone to major errors.
The point is that major technological developments produce massive growth rates until they reach saturation. The question is whether renewable energy products, including electric vehicles will have similar durable competitive advantage to those others. That question is the fundamental one we all keep discussing and debating.
Arguing that Tesla is unprecedented ignores the history of major disruptive events. It si well to recognize that it does not take much to destroy those wondrous examples. Many of them disappeared entirely, some survived but quite diminished. The lessons of Kodak, Xerox, Nokia and others are instructive, in my view.
Still we all think mostly about automotive issues.Therefore the legacy fo automotive brands, and technology changes are closely intertwined;
en.wikipedia.org
We should think about how durable Elon Musk might be, and wonder whether Tesla, SpaceX etc can thrive without him. The timeline linked shows just how ephemeral success tends to be. Sustainable growth rates as some of us imagine do indeed diminish when growth becomes too frightening or other people begin to attack.
Right now we see Amazon, Apple and Huawei are under hard attack because of their outsized success with business models and technology that other find difficult to match. For all of them FUD has become official government policy just as accusation so nefarious deeds. Facebook, Twitter, Ant group and many others have seen FUD becoming widely believed, We may the seeing similar threats for Tesla and Space X, with SpaceX perhaps the most blatantly obvious example of unprecedented technological advance over everyone else.
So, I think the question fo how long a gigantic growth rate can continue is essentially a political question, not technological.
Perhaps most of us ignore how deep the technical advantage is for Amazon, driven by mastery of logistical and analytical innovation largely unmatched.
So, with respect, I think the question fo growth rate for Tesla ends out being a political question more than it is technological.
