Never underestimate hype in keeping stuff alive, and absolutely never underestimate the willingness of government to save companies that should go under.

I don’t much care for Keynes, but as I’ve gotten older, the “wild animal spirits” makes more sense as markets are seemingly never rational. Even when they are, the government now likes to “bail out” companies that the market has said ought fall.

For Musk, be he one thing or another, he has been a political animal from the start. He chose sectors where government money was available, where politicians could gain credibility with the public by supporting his companies (electric cars, solar, space), and he consistently got the hype running high enough to provide radical over-valuations. When the political winds began to shift, so did he. He immediately pivoted to position himself no-longer as center-left, but somewhere right-of-center when the majority of the USA went that direction. The primary issue with this is that to the US right… electric cars and solar aren’t too interesting, and space while admirable isn’t a priority.

I think that any prognostication on the death of Tesla is a bit hasty, but Musk’s usual strategy is certainly in question.