Agreed on Musk's fixation or maybe an inability to change his start up mentality - some people are great at kicking off or joining in very early startup efforts and getting things rolling but then fail when they need to take it to the next level. Musk has succeeded with Tesla up to the release of the Model 3 - which is much further than many startup kids are capable of. I could provide an example of another company in the FSD space that is really struggling with the transformation from research and development to manufacturer, and it's primarily because the pace of innovation and iterations against the learnings is still too fast to industrialize. As far as Musk and Tesla, throwing all credibility behind FSD in 2016 really captured interest and imagination but (and this is coming from a family who bought and paid a premium for FSD with our Model 3 in 2019) the results have seriously disappointed. My wife and I each tried it once, and it scared the living sh1t out of us such that even with the latest iterations of the software I won't take that risk again.

The Cybertruck is a disaster IMHO and one of the signals of someone who believes their own hyped up genius. Moving into commercial semi trucks though is an astute gamble that I believe is a far better bet. Revisiting the decision to rely exclusively on the camera array to now include radar and lidar was long in coming but a good correlation nevertheless. Whether it was early enough to turn investor and consumer sentiment will be seen.

Now, if I were Musk and the board of Tesla, I would make a serious move to acquire Luminar from under the noses of Volvo and Mercedes Benz. That investment would show that Tesla is serious about completing a world class FSD system, and you would be able to drive the innovation and release vehicles with new generation lidar some 2-3 years before your competition. That would make up for some of the shortfalls in terms of battery development and the design fails over the last 5+ years.