MKSGR:
SciFrog:

What is Tesla supposed to do? Artificially keep prices too high like Porsche does and let the others eat away at their market penetration? Tesla has no rules, it will change prices, options, offerings as needed to stay relevant in the increasing competitive EV space. They care more about volume than they care about profits.

This is a bit too simple... They burn other peoples money. Big time. Somebody has to pay for the resulting depreciation of the cars they sold... They will certainly gain customers with the much lower prices. But they will also certainly distract many, many existing customers whose money they took with this price reduction. This is an extremely risky undertaking, I feel. And given they are forced by liquidity shortage I am not convinced the strategic impact did play a major role in their decision process Smiley

Could not agree more with your statement.  Tesla is setting itself up for a price war; one that it will not be able to win when compared to the deep, deep pockets of the legacy automakers.  The German makers, for example, are promoting EVs as an alternate prime mover much as they have with diesel, petrol, and natgas.  Fuel cells form another alternate prime mover mode.  This strategy, while not appearing disruptive, allows for greater parts sharing opportunities which leads to economies of scale with improving costing options.  

A couple of evening's ago, I had an interesting pre-dinner conversation with a fashion industry consultant.  What impressed me was her understanding, though she did not realize it, of market conditions similar to that in the tech industry.  One of the best primers on the subject if Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm from nearly thirty years ago.  She understood the differences among first adopters, second adopters, early mainstream, late mainstream, and laggards much better than Tesla understands the differentiations.  

An associate recently quipped that he believes Musk is carefully calculating his exit from Tesla based on his rather unstable behavior as the SEC refocuses its attention on his Tweets.  Several days ago several security lawyers were quoted in an article stating that the SEC will have Musk removed as CEO of Tesla.  Coupled with these actions, Tesla is no longer able to tap the U.S. capital markets, and probably the reason he is crowing about raising capital in China.  That action can have an adverse outcome too as the Chinese government could wrestle a significant part of the company away.  

If Musk is removed from Tesla, he then has a platform to leverage if the company fails without his sterling leadership.  This does fit the Musk profile.