Tesla: An Electrician’s Dream, or a Fool’s Paradise?

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It is a vulgar error to believe Tesla (TSLA +0.03%) is abandoning the electric carriage. The truly remarkable thing is not that it persists, but that others, having briefly glimpsed the future, so swiftly retreated to the comforting familiarity of the past. They mistook a temporary inconvenience for a permanent condition, a common failing amongst those who confuse prudence with vision. Tesla, it seems, remembers what it set out to achieve, while its competitors are busy rewriting history to justify their inertia.

Tesla Doubles Down on the Current

The bear case, as it is so unimaginatively termed, posits that Mr. Musk is distracted by baubles – robotaxis and robotic assistants – to mask a decline in the core business. A rather pedestrian assessment. It is, in fact, a demonstration of a singular, if eccentric, consistency. While others chase fleeting trends, Tesla is quietly building the infrastructure of a new age. One might say it’s less a deflection, and more a refinement of ambition. A trifle more elegant, don’t you think?

The recent commitment of twenty billion dollars to capital spending – a lithium refinery in Texas, a battery factory in Nevada, and the Gigafactory itself – is not merely investment; it is a declaration. It is a rather extravagant statement, admittedly, but then, genius rarely concerns itself with moderation. It’s a vision the rest of the industry once promised, then promptly forgot, preferring the comfort of incremental improvements to the audacity of genuine innovation.

Automakers and the Siren Song of Self-Driving

One recalls, with a touch of amusement, Ford’s pronouncements of a self-driving service by 2021, a promise as fleeting as a summer romance. And General Motors, abandoning its own robotic ambitions only recently. The allure of the autonomous vehicle is undeniable, of course. The most cost-effective use of an electric vehicle, after all, is to maximize its mileage. But to believe it a simple equation of cost savings is to misunderstand the fundamental nature of human folly. It is a rather obvious point, wouldn’t you agree?

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Tesla isn’t retreating from the electric vehicle; it’s watching its rivals stumble over their own hubris. The billions written down by Ford, GM, and Stellantis – a staggering sum, one might add – are not signs of a challenging market, but of a profound miscalculation. To lose one billion may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose twenty-seven billion looks like a rather spectacular lack of foresight. GM’s modest foothold in the U.S. EV market, a mere thirteen percent compared to Tesla’s forty-six, is a testament to the power of consistency, or perhaps, simply, the absence of distraction.

Where Next for the Electrician?

While the legacy automakers scramble to produce lower-cost, more targeted models – a rather belated admission of their earlier errors – Tesla continues to pursue its grander vision. The discontinuation of the Model S and Model X, while perhaps surprising to some, is merely a pruning of the garden, a refinement of focus. The Cybercab, and the expansion of the robotaxi business, are not distractions, but the logical extension of a long-held belief.

Success, of course, is never guaranteed. But Tesla’s strategy is, at least, consistent. It is a refusal to compromise, a stubborn adherence to a singular purpose. And in a world obsessed with expediency, that, my dear reader, is a quality to be admired – or, at the very least, to be carefully considered. After all, a little eccentricity is often the price of genius.

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2026-02-22 17:12