I never understood how any investors really thought this wouldn't be the case. They seemed to think that Tesla was going to devour all the traditional carmakers in a borg-like fashion. The evaluations have always been unsustainable.
Right? Even if they did somehow take over all traditional carmakers, the margins on those businesses suck. It’d just scale a shitty business (making cars).
It's a deceptively seductive industry. How hard could it be, especially with EVs? I think it's relatively easy to design a single car with some cool batteries and engines. It's another thing to build them in quantity, maintain quality, sell them, support them with spare parts so that repairs don't take forever.