EViF white paper: Tesla's auto business is worth more than many think

US EV pure play Tesla will not, as Elon Musk continues to suggest might be achievable if hard, sell 20mn vehicles in 2030. It wil lnot even sell the 5-7mn cars that some analysts expect.

Rather, by the dawn of the new decade, Tesla will be shifting just shy of 4.4mn units, according to bottom-up EV inFocus analysis.

But this does not translate into a bearish outlook for the firm's core automotive business, and the requirement to put more faith in Musk and his team cracking future challenges around Level 4 and above autonomous driving or robotics.

On the contrary, in the second part of our three-chapter series on how to look at the Tesla value proposition, we reject either that making cars is a slimmer margin, even throwaway, part of the business that Tesla might deprioritise in favour of third-party hardware and software sales, or a growth story that will be largely done and dusted by decade-end.

Instead, we foresee the slower ramp-up in Tesla sales meaning that its advantaged position within the pivot to electrification actually has a longer runway.

And the firm can use its brand advantages, its track record of innovation and its manufacturing efficiency focus to remain a "special automaker" — as laid out in part one of the series — for as long as the e-mobility revolution plays out, justifying industry-leading multiples for the firm even as it becomes ever more a mass-market OEM.

You can now download the second part of the series, and see if you agree with the next iteration of our hypothesis.