[gutnor]

Tesla stock is speculative. You can't really compare Tesla to its specific market slice without losing much of the big picture.

The car market is a huge market, so there is a lot of room for Tesla to grow. Tesla is at a junction point right now. It is a strong player on the Luxury segment (eg: Porsche territory), and they seem to be going for the Premium segment (eg: BMW territory) which is what their valuation expect it to go.

It looks like the natural way to go, especially considering the investment in SuperCharger network. Except when you consider the scale of that market. Tesla would need to be able to scale by an order of magnitude (think dealer and garage network too) and a huge chunk of those purchases are fleet purchases. Once the competition enter the premium electric market ( all the premium brand have a 2020 target date, which of course means potentially nothing ), Tesla will need to be ready to have a new generation of all its car ready and be ready to do refreshes on a regular basis.

Even that context is not the full context. Automatic driving is coming which will change the relationship of people to car owning.

Tesla is a growth company, if you don't think they can go bigger you should short them.

[emergencevector]

be able to scale by an order of magnitude (think dealer and garage network too)

I hope they can do this without a dealer network.

[gutnor]

They will need a network of places to buy and repair. There are something like 15 showrooms in the whole of UK, half of them in London. 7 Service Centers.

A then Tesla.com lists the BlueWater as a showroom. It had 2 cars last time I was there, both in the same colour.

That's not nearly enough to sell a popular car in the premium segment.

note: I understand that Dealer is something special in the US. I use the term liberally to mean "Some places that sells Tesla car". I believe that the hate of Dealer in the US is not so fundamental that they would buy a 30K car online only. Hell Apple is doing great with Apple Store with the opposite approach and nothing they sell is close to the same level of financial commitment.