Elon Musk's stated goal with Tesla is to bring electric cars to the masses. To do this, the price has to come down, and the price only comes down with volume, and you can't build the volume for a mass car from scratch without a low price.

This is a classic Catch 22, and Tesla's strategy for this is to start at the higher end with performance and luxury cars, where the costs are more acceptable, refine the technology, learn the lessons, wait for battery prices to come down, build the brand and product volume and release cars closer and closer to mass market.

Look at the history: we started with an sports car (the Roadster), which could get away with high price and average range by being quick, then a luxury sedan at a lower price point (Model S), now more of a family car (Model X). Affordable cars are in the pipeline, this is just the route we have to go through to get there.

Personally, I think the strategy is masterful. Every other car manufacturer went straight to mass market, without taking into account that the economics didn't work.