They are still profitable, have very little debt and a ton of money into the bank.
Every company has hits and misses. Bezos started before Musk and still hasn't gotten his rockets into orbit.
They have the best selling model in the world (their Model Y). But their total sales of all models are way behind many other car companies.
These car companies sell more cars each year than Tesla (ordered by total sales): Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai-Kia, GM, Stellantis, Ford, BYD, Honda, Nissan, Suzuki, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Renault, and Geely.
Toyota and Volkswagen each sell more cars in a year than Tesla has sold over its lifetime, and Hyundai-Kia's annual sales are about the same as Tesla's lifetime sales.
By revenue rather than units these companies sell more per year: Volkswagen, Toyota, Stallantis, GM, Ford, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Honda, BYD, and SAIC Motor. (Edit: I accidentally left out Hyundai-Kia)
"His track record is unimpressive"... I can see why you say that, I mean, took Tesla from almost nothing to a trillion dollar company. Started the most prolific rocket and satellite company in history (but hey, it's only rocket science right?), provides internet to places that it never even had the possibility of getting to, and providing untold millions the chance to get on the internet.
Started a company that is giving the paralyzed the ability to use a computer controlling their brain, and is working to restore sight to the blind.
Totally unimpressive. There are so many people who have done these things /s
That's contradicted here:
> The two co-founders funded the company until early 2004, when Elon Musk led the company's $6.5 million Series A financing
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/12/29/how-much-equit...
Your claim was
> They contributed no money
Where did you get this from?
Tesla also licensed the design from tZero before the series-A I believe. And Eberhard was sort of keeping tZero afloat: