Selling only 500k cars..whose half the cost is a battery from china.Mutalia sana
You're right if Musk drops dead so would Tesla pop off. One man guitar.
The battery is the deal actually. Noone is able to crack them just as noone has managed to crack SpaceX reusable rockets. If Musk had only Tesla we could question it as a fluke - but look around. SpaceX has literally killed Amazon Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, Lockheed-Boeing - heck even Russian Roscosmos and the Chinese! SpaceX bills 60m usd per launch vs 200m industry average and nothing these guys can do despite poaching his scientists and engineers over 5 years. From 2014. That some real hard, cold power not a fluke.
Now Tesla battery technology is better than all competition. For few years they are struggling to copy. Tesla supercharger are on man highways in US, EU and Far East. Tesla Autopilot is eons ahead of Ford or GM Cruise. While these vantages are beatable especially by the Chinese subsidy model - most auto business especially EV in China are private autos. Volkswagen has all but given up on the autonomy race to Tesla as Model 3 sales grow in Germany.
My view is that only Apple or Google tech types can successfully compete with Tesla. Not Toyota or Volkswagen whose only advantage is price thanks to scale. When that is gone they are dead.
Of course Musk is also cracking traffic and brain chips... hold on for super-brilliant swines coming soon