I know four people who have been offered jobs as designers at Tesla. One was offered the job as head of interior design, which comes with a $250,000 salary and almost a half million bucks in stock options. Only one of the four took the job, and that was the kid looking for an internship. My wife saw him last time she was in LA and said he looked like a starving refugee. If it weren't for the personality cult of Elon, no one would put up with that bullshit.
Have you read the book? There's a great bit about Elon and his main designer buying flat panels and mocking them up in the cockpit to see what size iPad is best. NONE. NONE IS THE BEST SIZE. It's pretty deplorable that the automotive industry was caught completely flat-footed on the whole electric vehicle thing, but at the same time, the automotive industry has a pernicious need to turn a profit. That's one thing Tesla's got going for it - permission to burn money.
I'll never defend the dinosaurs running the Big 3. They are their own worst enemies, and they deserve to get out innovated. That said, permission to burn money only lasts for so long. At some point the bottomless pit gets filled up. Obviously, I don't have the slightest clue as to where that point is, but I can tell you that a price target of $400 for their shares sounds to me like a death wish for the would-be investor.
It's a cult stock. The pricing on it is so far out of line with fundamentals that you're absolutely buying on greater fool theory. Some wag pointed out after the 2008 crash that Tesla had a higher market cap than GM... that says a lot more about market capitalization than it says about either car company. He's already been anointed as the next Steve Jobs, though. When Apple stops selling computers, people will see it as innovative and amazing, and Mac SEs will go through the roof on eBay. When Tesla stops selling cars it won't be capitulation, it'll be market beneficence or some shit. I'll say this: 30 years from now we'll look back on the Model S the way we look back on the Ford Granada. "It was a car, and it was car shaped, and we have no desire to emulate that ever again."