"Everyone loses in a price war" is true if everyone is on roughly equal footing in terms of cost to produce. In that case, a price war takes everyone to zero profit or below.
But, if one producer has margins of 30% vs. 10% for the rest, then the lowest cost producer wins the price war simply by lowering their margins from 30% to 20%. As we know, Tesla's competitors in China already have to sell their wares for significantly less than Tesla so the comparisons are already not equal. Couple that with a lower cost to produce and the winner is clear. Add onto that fact that Tesla has plenty of under-served markets ripe for shipments of new Tesla in Asia-Pacific countries so they don't have to get in a vicious price war, they can initiate sales in those unserved countries where higher margins may be possible.
It's almost as if Elon has planned Tesla's expansions with an eye toward reducing exposure of future global recessions. I'm thinking a global recession might just be what it takes to wake up the rest of the investment community to Tesla's significant advantages when it comes to cost to produce and what a superior business model Tesla has compared to legacy auto. The rest can try to copy it but that will not work in a similar fashion when Tesla has been focused like a laser on this for the last decade and even sooner. It was a huge undertaking but it's much easier to build a lean, mean fighting machine from scratch than it is to turn an old, tired, overweight and unhealthy one into a competitive one. I just don't see that happening.