That’s my point, other didn’t succeed because Elon alienated people with his promises of bringing the Hollywood blockbuster style future the masses dream of. It’s about time, where are the flying cars and hover boards. Why would one buy an boring car when one could have the car from the future from the man from the future. But it’s just a scam, teslas won’t drive themselves as it was promised, à la "driver is there only for legal reasons". It’s too late, the very people that got scammed are trusting his bullshit even more. No amount of facts will change their minds. Same as trump followers. He will achieve full self driving in 1 year with no lidar. He can do more with less. He can do everything with nothing.

Now how will other business compete? Will they need to go full bullshit to survive? Because in the end if lots of people buy, it’s a success, right? It’s just about money, who cares about truth and facts?

I think he is a terrible role model, and his "success" only proves that there’s a growing amount of people participating in a collective delusion. I’m sincerely worried.

If making unfulfillable promises was a good strategy to put competitors out of business, you'd see this happen everywhere. It doesn't. In fact that's usually a surefire way to drive a business into the ground. You can make your own conclusions starting from there.

Also, Tesla is not alone: Volvo, Waymo, Daimler, GM, Ford, Mercedes, BMW, and chinese makers have all promised Level 4 self-driving around 2021-2022.

I appreciate your effort to reconcile me with the current world. I know I’m probably missing something when seemingly half of the world is loosing its mind. Maybe I am loosing my mind. But I can’t help getting infuriated with pseudo science commercial bullshit that turns out praised and making trillions of dollars. Hearing that other automakers are claiming the same 1 year ahead full self driving makes me wonder if they feel like they have to make the same bullshit claims to survive the next decade. Would Tesla have succeeded if they were marketing as electric cars with the usual driving assistances? I think the false claims of fully autonomous driving thanks to Super intelligent AI together with Elon cult of personality played a big role in Tesla success.