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>Then there was the crazy claim from Musk that the cars would be appreciating assets because of the software.

They were also going to appreciate because Tesla cars would operate as autonomous robot taxis by end of 2020, and it wouldn't make sense to sell a car to a consumer for $35,000 when you could have it earning money 24/7 as a taxi.

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It would make sense to sell it at that price if you had competitors. So Musk was essentially saying "we are going to create a monopoly and then milk the market for all it's worth". I found it weird that nobody criticised him for that back then.

Well, the competitors in this case would've been taxi companies, not other car companies.

The case was basically that for every $35k Model 3 that comes off the lot can be sold for a profit up to $35k, or be added to the robotaxi fleet where it can generate whatever revenue it can produce. For example, if every Model 3 could generate $5/h of profit, then running it 24/7/365 would be $44k.

I suspect 24/7 use of a tesla would consume most of it's useful life in 1 year.

Also electricity isn't free so that's going to be a substantial code and likely several sets of tires.

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