From where I sit, Tesla has GROWN their lead over the rest of the pack over the last year as well as over the last 3 years. The recent price cuts were but one indicator of this.
Price cuts are a sign of Tesla needing to juice order flow during those regions and during those periods. Nothing more. Nothing less. They are NOT a sign of Tesla growing their lead. The fact that Tesla can cut costs rapidly such that they can still have good gross margins, is incredibly wonderful, but even more wonderful to cut costs, keep prices the same and have higher gross margins.
I.e. if Tesla has been truly present and near future production constrained during periods when they cut prices, those price cuts would only have achieved two things:
1) Decreased Operating Cash Flows: Meaning Tesla had to do Capital Raises (diluting shareholder value and incurring more debt). Those price cuts in Q2 if maintained throughout 2020 mean that Tesla will have $1B / year less cash flow which could have been well used servicing debt, or in building out Superchargers and Service Centers more rapidly, if not even more rapid future GF expansion.
2) When production constrained, price cuts would increase customer wait times as more orders come in. This increases dissatisfaction.
Tesla carefully pulls and removes demand levers (including prices) as necessary to maintain a healthy, but not too large backlog of orders.
If Tesla starts regularly hitting over 30% gross margins and cut prices so that they are not gouging, that may be a sign of it not being to juice demand. But even in that case, the only result may be that the order book grows too large, and white times grow too long.
