Tesla's end game isn't automobiles.
He is attempting to create a Von Neumann probe. But it's no easy endeavor. So he has to monetize and publicize the whole affair.
But if you tell people that you're making a Von Neumann probe people will either have no idea what you're talking about or think you're crazy.
So he's sell the public on the idea of rockets. hes selling them on the idea of electric cars. He's even somehow made batteries that mount on the wall of their garages exciting. And the even crazier thing is that he's selling them himself and somehow making that interesting.
But what he's really building with all of this is a Von Neumann probe. The interesting thing with SpaceX, Tesla and Solarcity aren't the products -- it's the factories that make them.
How long until he can use these factories to make more factories and they can fit into a rocket I wonder?
The presentation covers the viability of constructing Von Neumann probes for colonizing the entire universe and illustrates the feasibility of it with a few different technological scenarios.
All in all it seems feasible and the implications of that are enormous.
I think another possibility worthy of serious consideration given the implication of the presentation I linked above is the existance of many bracewell probes[1] in our solar system.
If an alien civilization has the capability of seeding the universe with spacecraft it's definitely not a stretch that they would burrow them inside an asteroid to conduct subtle observations of noteworthy planets.
Well, since we can never know that for sure (even if we identify a filter, is it the filter? Is there more than one?), the best we can do is try to move forward and make it increasingly unlikely that the things we think are candidates to being a filter can effect us. First and foremost, get off-planet, which brings us full circle to Musk, who is on record as stating he started SpaceX to spur Mars colonization.
Either because it tends to involve the development of Von Neumann probes that unexpectedly turn on their creators or because it signals to latent berserker probes sitting in the asteroid belt that we have reached a threat threshold and need to be eliminated.
Either way I agree that we need to try to get off this planet in a meaningful and permanent way.