But Tesla likes to bring production in-house, whereas Apple outsources everything possible. It would not surprise me in the slightest if Tesla is looking to build a fab at some point in the future
So I think getting in the fab business for Tesla would mean trying to be a direct competitor with TSMC, Intel, etc. by making chips for a large number of customers.
That seems way down the list of Tesla's priorities and best uses of dropping hundreds of billions of dollars.
Intel reportedly produces roughly 10 million wafers per year [1]. Roughly 70 million new cars are sold per year [2], with Tesla currently accounting for 0.5 million of those [3] with roughly 50% YOY growth numbers and a plan on continuing those for multiple years [4].
Cars/wafer is a pretty unclear number, at 5 Tesla is 1% of Intel's market (today), at 25 0.2% of Intel's market. It will take quite awhile for Tesla to hit intel's scale - but the automotive market as a whole might actually be pretty close to it if all new cars start including giant computers.
[1] 884k/month * 12 months/year, from https://www.eenewseurope.com/news/top-five-chip-makers-domin...
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/200002/international-car...
[3] https://backlinko.com/tesla-stats (or see [4] but then you have to add up quarters yourself)
[4] https://tesla-cdn.thron.com/static/ZBOUYO_TSLA_Q2_2021_Updat...
There are already multiple competing companies whose sole job is to make the best fabs at high production rates.
Tesla doesn't even make most of their batteries in-house, which is way more core to their business of EV manufacturing. They partner with Panasonic, LG, CATL, etc. because they are in the business of building out manufacturing capacity for battery cells.