I don't disagree that Musk probably isn't doing Tesla any favors lately, but even absent Musk, does the company actually know how to directly compete against established car makers in the same market segment? Tesla benefited a lot from being first with the "electric cars are cool now" approach, and they've been able to ride that early momentum pretty far as the other automakers struggled to catch up.

Now all the other companies are coming out with competing EVs, it's not obvious Tesla as a company has moved beyond a strategy based on being your only nice EV option to actually being better than the competition. The Cybertruck is an absolute joke for the truck market compared to competitor vehicles, which also have the advantage of being products you can actually purchase.

But even beyond the Cybertruck, the rest of the Tesla product lineup isn't the obvious choice it was even a few years ago. You can get a lot of nice EVs these days made by companies that also have a long history of being good at building cars in general and that you're fairly confident will be around for decades to come. Early on, the basic argument for Tesla was obvious...they were basically the only option for a cool, upscale EV. What's their marketing pitch in 2023?