Great points! I think you are correct, but the short term pain for them will be low profit margins, increased competition, and a bad economy. If you're long a stock it may pay out - but the valuation at 500 billion is still too high. Most car company's trade at book value, TSLA does not and factors in the robotaxi income and other future income. Tesla already is valued as the most valuable car company in the world without producing or being the most valuable on paper.
TSLA is an extremely risky investment.
Go do your homework, then come back and post.
1) Tesla makes more in NET PROFIT (and gross) than Ford and GM combined.
2) Tesla makes as much Auto Gross Profit per car as Toyota does on EIGHT cars
3) Tesla has ZERO net debt. The other autos have billions, sometimes HUNDREDS of billions on their books in debt.
4) Toyota just finished tearing down the Model Y and called it a "work of art". This from the largest (by volume) auto maker in the world with a history of (until Tesla) the best construction methods there are. And guess what? CURRENT Auto can't even match what Tesla did with the 2012 Model S (FULL OTA updates? Only Tesla can still do that - all others are limited to partial OTA updates - a limitation of how they have built their crappy architectures).
Notice I didn't even mention anything aspirational like FSD or robotaxi, or Optimius?
Fun FACT - there was recently a meeting of major auto manuf C-suite execs. They were polled and asked if they could catch up to Tesla technologically and profit wise. 92% said they believed they could NOT catch up. Ford's CEO even went on record during that meeting affirming that position.
No, Tesla is innovating faster than "the competition" can manage. They are doing so in such a quick manner that despite price cuts, they are finding additional efficiencies to keep profit margins up.
And I didn't even mention the elephant in the room . . . Tesla Energy . . . . which has already started their S-curve run and is poised to grow to the same size or larger than Tesla Auto in just 5-7 years.