Investor's Corner
The Elon Musk moonshot approach – missed deadlines are a good thing
Tesla skeptics never tire of pointing out the company’s history of missing target dates for vehicle deliveries and other milestones. They do have a point. The most egregious example is of course Model X, which Tesla began delivering many months after the originally announced date. The latest offender is Model 3 – the company did technically deliver it on time, but so far production numbers are running far short of predictions, and the majority of buyers who signed up for the promised $35,000 EV are likely to be waiting until well into 2018. The development of Autopilot 2 also seems to be behind schedule – it looks like the promised driverless run from New York to LA will be pushed into next year.
However, the naysayers are dead wrong when they say Elon Musk hasn’t fulfilled his promises. Except for a few things, most of which nobody really wanted (battery swapping, a rollercoaster to get around the Tesla campus), the Iron Man has delivered in a big way. He promised a compelling electric sedan, an SUV with towing capability and eye-catching Falcon Wing doors, a reusable rocket that can land on a barge at sea (!), and other achievements straight out of the science fiction books, and all of these are now reality. Nevada Gigafactory? Open and producing batteries. Solar roof tiles? Rolling off the line in Buffalo. World’s largest battery array? Check (and this one was on time).
Considering Tesla’s stock market performance and the company’s legions of adoring fans, it’s clear that most people value accomplishment over punctuality. As Trent Eady, writing on Seeking Alpha, put it, “If Musk promises you the moon in six months and delivers it in three years, keep things in perspective: you’ve got the moon.”
What if Musk and company’s habit of missing self-announced deadlines is not a bug but a feature? Tesla Motors Club member Patrick C argues in a recent blog post that the “dream big and deliver late” strategy is actually the key to Tesla’s (and SpaceX’s) success.
Above: Check out the historic landing of a Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral with Elon Musk and the SpaceX team (Youtube: National Geographic)
Those of us who’ve been watching this show for a while have learned not to trust Musk’s predicted timelines. So why do his words still carry so much weight? Because we believe in what he’s doing, and we can see how hard he personally is working towards these goals, moving his “desk” to wherever the latest bottleneck is, and camping on the roof of the Gigafactory. “If Musk [were] viewed as just a wild dreamer, he would not have the following that he does,” writes Patrick C. “Musk is trying to do something that is important, something that’s never been done before, and that many people would like to see succeed. When this is the case, many are likely to give you some slack on the schedule, as long as you are working hard and showing progress.”
The most consistent carping about missed timelines comes from stock market analysts, because they focus on meeting quarterly forecasts. This obsession with short-term results is a major failing of today’s corporate world – as Patrick points out, it leads executives to think small, concentrating on things that can be done in three months. But Musk does not think small. He thinks in terms of “moonshots,” or “big hairy audacious goals,” which aren’t guaranteed to succeed, and can’t be done on a firm quarterly schedule. “To accomplish something of magnitude, you have to be willing to fail and you have to be willing to disappoint the Street,” says Patrick.
But if Musk and those around him know all this, why make over-optimistic predictions? Why not just say, “Here’s what we mean to accomplish, and it’ll be done when it’s done?”
Popular economist Danny Kahneman offered an answer in a recent episode of Freakonomics Radio: “If you realistically present to people what can be achieved to solve a problem, they will find that uninteresting. You have to overpromise in order to get anything done. When you look at big successes, the people that carried out those big successes were unrealistically optimistic. This may be necessary to get the initial resources and it may be necessary to get the enthusiasm that is needed to achieve anything at all, because there is so much inertia that realistic promises are at a major disadvantage.”
 |
Above: Patience… the Model 3’s are coming — a look at Tesla prepping for Model 3 Christmas deliveries (Reddit: tesla99)
Another pertinent quote comes from Mikhail Bakunin: “By striving to do the impossible, man has always achieved what is possible.”
As Patrick puts it, “If you want to move people off the status quo, you have to present them with something exciting. A promise of something 10 years from now will be discounted to the point of insignificance and ignored by most.”
A case in point: the timid promises made by major automakers, who announce plans to launch new lines of electric vehicles by 2025, or by politicians, who pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by such-and-such an amount by 2050. These goals may be better than nothing, but they don’t excite anybody, because we all know that the people who set them will be on the golf course (or maybe we’ll all be underwater) by the time set for their completion.
In contrast, when Musk makes a promise, we know he stands behind it. The timeline may be shaky, but the goal is never in doubt. And the goals are important ones, innovations that can improve all of our lives and lead to a more sustainable society. In a world where politicians constantly harp on things we can’t afford, and problems that we can’t hope to solve, while the corporate world focuses on trivia like how to design a better razor or a quicker way to share videos of our cats, Musk is one of very few leaders who inspire people with a hopeful vision of the future. Humans can still accomplish great things, but only if we’re patient, and are willing to accept some failures and missed deadlines along the way.
===
Note: Article originally published on evannex.com, by Charles Morris
Investor's Corner
Tesla gets tip of the hat from major Wall Street firm on self-driving prowess
“Tesla is at the forefront of autonomous driving, supported by a camera-only approach that is technically harder but much cheaper than the multi-sensor systems widely used in the industry. This strategy should allow Tesla to scale more profitably compared to Robotaxi competitors, helped by a growing data engine from its existing fleet,” BoA wrote.
Tesla received a tip of the hat from major Wall Street firm Bank of America on Wednesday, as it reinitiated coverage on Tesla shares with a bullish stance that comes with a ‘Buy’ rating and a $460 price target.
In a new note that marks a sharp reversal from its neutral position earlier in 2025, the bank declared Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology the “leading consumer autonomy solution.”
Analysts highlighted Tesla’s camera-only architecture, known as Tesla Vision, as a strategic masterstroke. While technically more challenging than the multi-sensor setups favored by rivals, the vision-based approach is dramatically cheaper to produce and maintain.
This cost edge, combined with Tesla’s rapidly expanding real-world data engine, positions the company to scale robotaxis far more profitably than competitors, BofA argues in the new note:
“Tesla is at the forefront of autonomous driving, supported by a camera-only approach that is technically harder but much cheaper than the multi-sensor systems widely used in the industry. This strategy should allow Tesla to scale more profitably compared to Robotaxi competitors, helped by a growing data engine from its existing fleet.”
The bank now attributes roughly 52% of Tesla’s total valuation to its Robotaxi ambitions. It also flagged meaningful upside from the Optimus humanoid robot program and the fast-growing energy storage business, suggesting the auto segment’s recent headwinds, including expired incentives, are being eclipsed by these higher-margin opportunities.
Tesla’s own data underscores exactly why Wall Street is waking up to FSD’s potential. According to Tesla’s official safety reporting page, the FSD Supervised fleet has now surpassed 8.4 billion cumulative miles driven.
Tesla FSD (Supervised) fleet passes 8.4 billion cumulative miles
That total ballooned from just 6 million miles in 2021 to 80 million in 2022, 670 million in 2023, 2.25 billion in 2024, and a staggering 4.25 billion in 2025 alone. In the first 50 days of 2026, owners added another 1 billion miles — averaging more than 20 million miles per day.
This avalanche of real-world, camera-captured footage, much of it on complex city streets, gives Tesla an unmatched training dataset. Every mile feeds its neural networks, accelerating improvement cycles that lidar-dependent rivals simply cannot match at scale.
Tesla owners themselves will tell you the suite gets better with every release, bringing new features and improvements to its self-driving project.
The $460 target implies roughly 15 percent upside from recent trading levels around $400. While regulatory and safety hurdles remain, BofA’s endorsement signals growing institutional conviction that Tesla’s data advantage is not hype; it’s a tangible moat already delivering billions of miles of proof.
Elon Musk
SpaceX IPO could push Elon Musk’s net worth past $1 trillion: Polymarket
The estimates were shared by the official Polymarket Money account on social media platform X.
Recent projections have outlined how a potential $1.75 trillion SpaceX IPO could generate historic returns for early investors. The projections suggest the offering would not only become the largest IPO in history but could also result in unprecedented windfalls for some of the company’s key investors.
The estimates were shared by the official Polymarket Money account on social media platform X.
As noted in a Polymarket Money analysis, Elon Musk invested $100 million into SpaceX in 2002 and currently owns approximately 42% of the company. At a $1.75 trillion valuation following SpaceX’s potential $1.75 trillion IPO, that stake would be worth roughly $735 billion.
Such a figure would dramatically expand Musk’s net worth. When combined with his holdings in Tesla Inc. and other ventures, a public debut at that level could position him as the world’s first trillionaire, depending on market conditions at the time of listing.
The Bloomberg Billionaires Index currently lists Elon Musk with a net worth of $666 billion, though a notable portion of this is tied to his TSLA stock. Tesla currently holds a market cap of $1.51 trillion, and Elon Musk’s currently holds about 13% to 15% of the company’s outstanding common stock.
Founders Fund, co-founded by Peter Thiel, invested $20 million in SpaceX in 2008. Polymarket Money estimates the firm owns between 1.5% and 3% of the private space company. At a $1.75 trillion valuation, that range would translate to approximately $26.25 billion to $52.5 billion in value.
That return would represent one of the most significant venture capital outcomes in modern Silicon Valley history, with a growth of 131,150% to 262,400%.
Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, invested $900 million into SpaceX in 2015 and is estimated to hold between 6% and 7% of the private space firm. At the projected IPO valuation, that stake could be worth between $105 billion and $122.5 billion. That’s a growth of 11,566% to 14,455%.
Other major backers highlighted in the post include Fidelity Investments, Baillie Gifford, Valor Equity Partners, Bank of America, and Andreessen Horowitz, each potentially sitting on multibillion-dollar gains.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk hints Tesla investors will be rewarded heavily
“Hold onto your Tesla stock. It’s going to be worth a lot, I think. That’s my bet,” Musk said.
Elon Musk recently hinted that he believes Tesla investors will be rewarded heavily if they continue to hold onto their shares, and he reiterated that in a new interview that the company released on its social accounts this week.
Musk is one of the most successful CEOs in the modern era and has mammothed competitors on the Forbes Net Worth List over the past year as his holdings in his various companies have continued to swell.
Tesla investors, especially those who have been holding shares for several years, have also felt substantial gains in their portfolios. Over the past five years, the stock is up over 78 percent. Since February 2019, nearly seven years ago to the day, the stock is up over 1,800 percent.
Musk said in the interview:
“Hold onto your Tesla stock. It’s going to be worth a lot, I think. That’s my bet.”
Elon Musk in new interview: “Hold on to your $TSLA stock. It’s going to be worth a lot, I think. That’s my bet.” pic.twitter.com/cucirBuhq0
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) February 26, 2026
It’s no secret Musk has been extremely bullish on his own companies, but Tesla in particular, because it is publicly traded.
However, the company has so many amazing projects that have an opportunity to revolutionize their respective industries. There is certainly a path to major growth on Wall Street for Tesla through its various future projects, including Optimus, Cybercab, Semi, and Unsupervised FSD.
- Optimus (Tesla’s humanoid robot): Musk has discussed its potential for tasks like childcare, walking dogs, or assisting elderly parents, positioning it as a massive long-term driver of company value.
- Cybercab (Tesla’s robotaxi/autonomous ride-hailing vehicle): a fully autonomous vehicle geared specifically for Tesla’s ride-sharing ambitions.
- Semi (Tesla’s electric truck, with mentions of expansion, like in Europe): brings Tesla into the commercial logistics sector.
- Unsupervised FSD (Full Self-Driving software achieving full autonomy without human supervision): turns every Tesla owner’s vehicle into a fully-autonomous vehicle upon release
These projects specifically are some of the highest-growth pillars Tesla has ever attempted to develop, especially in Musk’s eyes, as he has said Optimus will be the best-selling product of all-time.
Many analysts agree, but the bullish ones, like Cathie Wood of ARK Invest, are perhaps the one who believes Tesla has incredible potential on Wall Street, predicting a $2,600 price target for 2030, but this is not even including Optimus.
She told Bloomberg last March that she believes that the project will present a potential additive if Tesla can scale faster than anticipated.
Tesla gathers Cybercab fleet in Gigafactory Texas
Elon Musk’s xAI, creator of Grok and Grokipedia, celebrates its third birthday
