You make good points, but I still wouldn't take that side of the bet. TSLA price has been divorced from reality for years and it's entirely unpredictable when and how that will end.
Amazon was a bit divorced from reality as well for most of its history. They had extraordinary continued sales growth to fuel that divorce, to underpin those high expectations, along with a quasi segment monopoly. That held up for a time. However it began to stall as online retail growth rates began to falter (look at Amazon's stock from 2011-2015, nice but nothing crazy while still carrying a ridiculous multiple; that's the result of retail profit & margin reality setting in). And then they started publishing AWS results and its software-like margins, and eventually the hyper margin ad business; kaboom goes the stock, due to that earnings growth and its forward expectations.
What's the Tesla AWS / Ad explosion? There isn't one. They don't have a business like that, where they'll get to print monopoly-like software profits. Amazon blazed a new path with AWS that they got to own as they went. Tesla has to take auto share from companies like BMW, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Daimler, VW, Ford, GM, etc. as they go (to say nothing of the Chinese EV makers that will eventually dominate that domestic market and gradually push outward globally). Entirely different context.
Tesla is an increasingly boring automaker, nothing more. EVs are just vehicles, they don't come with 4x or 6x the margins of ICE vehicles that Mercedes or BMW produce. The best case scenario, realistically, is that Tesla becomes Toyota or Daimler. That will be an astounding outcome, to get there and then hold that ground against that much competition. There's no AWS business coming to save their valuation. Batteries are not a stellar business, the solar business sucks big time (just look at the solar companies, their earnings and their market values), and the big rig business is also not at all spectacular.
Tesla also is not going to own the luxury market, they're horrible at making luxury vehicles. Daimler & Co will continue to dominate luxury vehicles. Tesla had its shot, a huge headstart, at conquering luxury EVs and entirely failed to put a big enough stake into the ground, they're out of time (look at what their high-end segment of sales is worth today or yesterday, it's a pittance despite the huge headstart; they've done a terrible job there).
The Cybertruck isn't going to take over the truck market.
What's left? The Model 3 has to conquer planet Earth in four to five years. Everyone has to buy one. It's not going to happen.
I defended Tesla for most of a decade on this forum. When a lot of people here said Tesla would never produce the Model 3 at scale, I argued against that skepticism across numerous threads over and over again; it was obvious it could be done. There's a difference between recognizing Tesla wasn't going to go bankrupt a few years ago for example (an easy argument I took up across numerous threads), and buying into really really crazy forecasts that are well outside of the realm of believable. There's being objective about what's actually likely, plausible, and just frothing at the mouth on bubble kool-aid.
Anyway, definitely agree with you on the valuation. Even if you believe there's a chance it's going the Amazon route and we'll all be driving Tesla autopilot cabs in 5 years, it's priced as if that's a certainty.
Were most people in 2011-2015 aware of the "AWS / Ad explosion" that was about to come? Or did we know ex ante that Amazon was willing to shift their focus towards these units? Likely not, but the high multiples (despite the retail margins dragging down the gross margins) suggest that a large portion of investors were willing to bet that better units with protective moats (i.e. AWS) were coming soon.
I don't follow Tesla as much, but it seems difficult to dismiss that some of their business units won't follow high-growth/high-margin paths. What if their FSD software is licensed out? What if the supercharger network is shared with other EVs for a per-charge fee? Given Musk's personality, I can see investors taking on risk and betting that he'll be bringing something better than just selling cough regulatory credits cough cars. It makes me wonder if Tesla losing market share in the EV market will be the ultimate catalyst for this shift.
That being said, I agree with you that the market has "priced in" all these what-ifs for Tesla with extremely high expectations of success -- which did not seem to be case for Amazon. A slip or trip in car sales these days doesn't seem to move $TSLA much - investors that are long seem to be betting on other stuff and we'll see how patient they are in times to come.