And there are people that think Tesla is doomed. You can't run losses forever and expect to keep the lights on. I don't know what is so hard to understand, it is simple math. They, Tesla, are not "successful" in any sense of the word as it relates to financial stability.
You're conflating the basic unit economic principles of fixed vs. variable costs. And you're ignoring the breakeven point.
A company that loses money on every unit sale has no breakeven point (Uber). A company that makes money on every unit sale has a breakeven point (Tesla). Because Tesla's fixed costs are very high, their breakeven point is out there, and thus they must operate at a loss for a period of time.
Now this is a simplistic one product view. When you add multiple products and release timing to the model, the complexity increases. Not only does the complexity increase, we don't have enough external financial numbers to break apart the data per product.
Don't get me wrong, Tesla has execution risk. But financially, I'm not at all concerned. They won't fail for lack of profitability or demand, they'll fail because they couldn't execute if anything. And... well... they've been slowly but surely derisking their execution risk as well.
> A company that loses money on every unit sale has no breakeven point (Uber)
What? Uber spends an additional ~$0 on every additional ride. They only lose money because of growth and price wars with the competition.
In mature markets with no competition (eg. Toronto) there are no driver incentives or bonuses and they are still cheap and popular with riders and drivers alike.
Hm. I just got driven home from the bar for $4. It was an uber pool, but for the whole ten minute drive, nobody else was in the car. This was in silicon valley, a very mature market.
This sort of thing is super common, where I get a deep discount on a 'pool' ride but I end up riding alone. The drivers tell me that they get a regular rate (on top of whatever the bonuses are) which is per-mile. The guy tonight said he thought he was making like $7 for the ride in question, just on the mileage.
I... am pretty sure they are losing money on many pool rides.
So you're telling me that Uber isn't selling their services at a loss on a unit economics scale in the majority of their markets? What percentage of their markets have positive unit economics? This is news to me, and I'm open to updating my viewpoint given data to the contrary.