What I gathered from this conversation was to bet on the longer term success of tesla but leave their first few generation mass-produced models to the die hard fans
The entire car part of Tesla’s business could disappear and it would still have a story for shareholders in stationary storage alone. They’ve said half of their battery production will go there. Think about what that means for revenue.
The Semi is a huge market.
And even if Model 3 didn’t exist and Tesla pushed itself as developing Model S as the number one car for self driving mobility services, they’d still have a claim at the lions share of the automotive market. Vehicle cost is a much smaller concern in the post-self-driving world.
Let’s imagine Model 3 only pulls Model S numbers, and their annual production only goes to 200k by 2020. I don’t think that’s enough to see a total collapse of the stock the way you seem to be suggesting.
I think Elon has many more cards in play than you let on.
I couldn't find exact numbers but it seems like Must owns around 20% of Tesla. Some shares are locked down and secure around 1.6B of loans from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
Not sure if Musk will be actually making any decisions here when things go south.