Does the lead need to be maintained? If everybody else catches up, but does not surpass, that's not a loss and Tesla is still competing. And by then Tesla may be competing at the lower margin segments of the market too.

The fact that they will stay competitive is already priced in, given that Tesla is by market cap about the size of GM and Ford. However, I find some of the loftier predictions of analysts ($1000+/share) somewhat unjustifiable at present.

I wonder if Tesla should not have entered the mass market with the 3 and stuck with the S and X. Higher margins and lower CapEx there.

I think people routinely overestimate the ability of auto-manufacturers to innovate.

In 2013 Tesla won (by a wide margin) the Consumer Reports rating for the best infotainment system. It turned out that a lot of owners loved large, fast, responsive touch screens for viewing maps, navigation, controlling multimedia and vehicle settings.

You'd think that everybody in the car business would be elbowing one another to introduce a better, brighter, faster, more colorful and capable infotainment system, given a clear product market fit.

Yet the winner for that Consumer Reports award did not change in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 or 2018.