By this logic, every startup should have practically zero value until it's brain dead obvious they've cornered the market. Clearly past projections about the future prove this strategy to be ill advised purely on this standard.

I agree Tesla is overvalued, but try looking at it this way. There are cars, and electric cars. They are separate, and you shouldn't mix the numbers. Care are obsolete, and will be gone in the future. Maybe soon depending on the global fear level around climate change.

Cars are the horse and buggy market. Electric Vehicles are the entirety of the future car market. If you have 0% of the horse and buggy/car market today, but have over 50% of the electric car market, you are very well positioned for the future.

I'm exaggerating. The horse and buggy analogy is flawed (VW, BMW, GM, Ford, Toyota, Honda, etc are all real electric car competitors). But just looking at Tesla vs the petroleum car market is also flawed. The reality is in the middle, with Tesla well positioned to be a top electric car manufacturer, but not to dominate the market.

Tesla is making big investments in building factories, both for cars and batteries. Those numbers should increase significantly over next 5 years.

They have more vertical integration, less reliance on suppliers.

They own their 'dealership', charging network and are also getting into auto insurance.

Also, residential solar and energy storage. Oh yeah and they are getting into mining as well to ensure they can keep up the battery production.

How many of those 92 million cars are EV? Tesla isn't really in competition with ICE car production - the next ten years is all about EV production and legacy car makers are off the back.

The stock price is built on the expectation that the 0.7% is going to quickly grow to a lot more.

If that expectation holds, the current high price may be sustainable. If it becomes clear that it won’t, there will be a big sell-off

Tesla has like 28% of the global BEV market and has been growing that % every year. They have been doing that essentially with 1 car program and another 1 that is half ramped.

There are gigantic segments, like trucks in the US, they they don't even have an offering in yet.

Tesla also controlled a huge amount of the global battery supply and threw its own production will control even more.

This transition will take another 10 years, what matters is not now, but what the situation will be in 2030.

1) people aren't what it is, but what they expect it to be

2) Cars are just one thing in Tesla's portfolio. Both home and grid scale energy storage is another.