At this point the Tesla brand is so valuable that the company is unlikely to die. A more likely outcome is that Tesla will be partially or fully acquired by another company.
The Ford-Mazda partnership that ended around 2015 is one possible model.
The Ford-Mazda partnership that ended around 2015 is one possible model.
I'm more and more convinced that we need strong, supportive policy to transition to a carbonfree future in time to avoid the worst effects of climate change, and that the current political situation looks incredibly grim from that perspective. It's pretty common for states nowadays to pass punitive taxes on EVs as "compensation" for lost gas taxes, universally over-estimating the number of miles an EV driver typically does in a year: https://www2.greencarreports.com/news/1123069_1000-illinois-... https://cleantechnica.com/2019/05/17/whos-behind-the-war-on-...
China has incredibly supportive policy for EVs right now. From a purely industrial policy standpoint, we're close to strangling our own nascent EV industry with the sunsetting of the EV tax credit and all these new punitive state-level EV taxes. (Few Bolts are made, the Volt was recently canceled, and Tesla is struggling after having to deal with roughly a $3750 impact on their car price, soon to be increased to $5625 and then $7500... many of the rest are compliance cars or are available only in extremely limited quantities.)
If things don't change soon on the political front, it could be really bad. For the US and the world.