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Why was it a waste of time/resources? From all we know, the X might even sell better than the S, the preorders are crazy. Which would make Tesla a much larger company than selling the S only.

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Assuming a limited number of design and engineering resources I think the article makes a sensible argument (though, really poorly written) that it would have made more business sense to prioritize those resources on getting a more mass market offering out to consumers, capturing that revenue stream and cash before prioritizing the X.

Without knowing many of the details of Tesla this argument makes sense on it face. That being said there's a hefty amount of hindsight going into this analysis and I'd respect it more if the author made this call about 2-3 years ago.

But they would have sold even more if they ignored the X and prioritized 3 which is the ultimate goal because they need the money

Can't prioritize the 3 until the gigafactory comes online. Not point to making lots of cheap chassis if you don't have the batteries to put in them.

I do think the X is making them way more money than the 3 could for quite some time, as the margins for the 3 are probably much less than those of the X. Only when they hit the 500k/year it might be the main moneymaker for Tesla.

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