Tesla (to their credit!) took advantage of an unserved opportunity, including heavy government subsidization, to build electric cars. And they fucking did it.

Tesla (to their credit!) took advantage of an unserved opportunity, including heavy government subsidization, to build electric cars. And they fucking did it. However, I strongly doubt they will succeed going forward. They are in the midst of a wave of competition from Porsche, Mercedes, GM, Ford, VW, Kia, etc; across all segments of the market. They have failed to deliver on self-driving, and have a 0% chance of success moving forward (as admitted by pulling their lidar sensors out). They still aren't particularly good at fit/finish/quality of their cars. And finally, Tesla (imo) desperately needs a ceo who thinks about little more than threading the needle on the narrow success path moving forward. Instead, they have someone busy breaking Twitter. So, is Tesla objectively successful? I'd say no, because I don't think it's clear they will be a live company in 10 years. I think a huge amount of their success came from being the only company that sold a non-shitty electric car, and now that competitive umbrella is gone, they're likely to fail.