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Tesla’s 2020 Aftermath: A look at the shorts who said 500k was ‘absurd’
Tesla’s 2020 showing has created an aftermath of reflection from bulls and bears alike. Despite the company coming off of a record year with a massive 500,000 vehicle delivery and production rate, which was considered “absurd” by some short-sellers in years past, Tesla proved the doubters wrong once again.
Everyone knows that the stock market is really an unpredictable and unfathomably tough thing to read. Some of the world’s best analysts can misread even the slightest bit of data and be miles off of what a particular stock accomplishes. Tesla, which is one of the more polarizing stocks despite its 700% climb in 2020, has had doubters since day 1. The difference between doubters of Tesla and doubters of other companies is that Tesla shorts and bears are some of the most vocal on Wall Street because the company’s momentum and hype have been talked about for nearly a decade.
2020 was easily the toughest year for the U.S. automotive market since the Great Recession of 2008. Tesla was one of the few companies that accomplished the feat of sustaining growth through the year of the COVID-19 pandemic, which crippled many industries, not just the automotive one, for most of the year. However, doubts on Tesla set in way back when the company started in 2008. Six years after Tesla built the original Roadster, analysts were still curious about the automaker’s capabilities moving forward and doubted that it would be able to scale its production to half-a-million cars by 2020. The old saying goes, “hindsight is 2020,” and as Tesla reached its goal for the year, it is easy to sit back and judge those who were wrong. However, their reasoning for not reaching 500,000 vehicles was completely flawed, and everything Tesla said it would do years ago has been accomplished.
Mark Spiegel called 500,000 cars in 2020 “absurd”
Mark Spiegel is a notable Tesla short-seller and has been bearish on the automaker’s stock for years. In 2014, Spiegel posted an article to Seeking Alpha, titled, “Why Projections For Tesla To Sell 500,000 Cars In 2020 Are Absurd.”
Spiegel used data like the compound annual growth rate to support his evidence, stating, “If Tesla sells 35,000 cars this year, 500,000 sales in 2020 would imply a six-year CAGR of 56%.” Additionally, Spiegel did not believe that Tesla could scale growth at that rate in six years because “no complex product manufacturer has ever grown that quickly from a revenue base of $3 billion or more.” But hey, there is a first time for everything.
Microsoft was able to scale its CAGR by 32.1% from 1993 to 1999, which is a six-year time span and was identical to Tesla’s outlook that was challenged in the 2014 article. While Microsoft managed a remarkable 32.1% CAGR because of the evergrowing popularity of the computer and other technology, Tesla’s overwhelming growth throughout the same timespan was due to tech developments, industry influence, proving affordability of electric cars, and a consistent growth rate that proved the company was here to stay.
Spiegel’s outlook for 2020 was 186,000 cars sold by Tesla, but the company managed to nearly accomplish this figure in Q4 alone, as it delivered 180,570 cars in the final three months of the year. Spiegel was way off in his predictions, and Tesla’s domination in 2020 was just one of many examples of analysts getting it completely wrong.
Tesla wasn’t a prime candidate for scaling its products, according to Thomas Bartman
In an April 2015 article in the Harvard Business Review, Thomas Bartman wrote an opinionated piece called, “Why Tesla Won’t Be Able to Scale.” Bartman claimed that Tesla’s EVs were “not actually disruptive, which will likely cause it to struggle to scale.” Bartman didn’t have the Model 3 to use as a benchmark at the time, but he doubted that Tesla would be able to sell a vehicle for $35,000, which it did.
“Tesla plans to launch a ‘mainstream’ luxury car, the Model 3,” Bartman wrote, “which it estimates will cost $35,000, although analysts have begun to question the feasibility of reaching that price point.” Tesla did discontinue this variant in late 2020, but the Standard Range Model 3 was available for over three years. The Standard Range+ was only $2,770 more and was more popular because of the range. Also, the SR was not listed on Tesla’s website and had to be ordered in a showroom or over the phone.
Bartman believed that Tesla had launched two good vehicles in the Model S and Model X, but legacy auto would quickly catch up after a few years. However, this has been proven wrong repeatedly, as companies like Mercedes-Benz and Audi have failed to launch effective and competitive EVs that are comparable to Tesla’s models globally. The Model 3 continues to dominate in China and the U.S., and the Model Y is gaining plenty of momentum as it nears the one-year mark since its first deliveries.
Tesla China Model Y attracts flocks of customers in local showrooms
“As Tesla attempts to scale, it’s likely to discover that its internal impediments, combined with competitor responses, make it much harder than anticipated,” Bartman said. “The symptoms of these problems will manifest as product launch delays, cost overruns, and higher than expected prices.”
The only issue is that Tesla was able to internally combat production issues, even though Elon Musk has admitted many times that Model 3 manufacturing was “production hell.” The company has effectively beaten all of its competitors to launching an effective and cost-worthy electric car by launching four of them.
Hindsight is 2020
With 2020 over (thank God), Tesla and analysts are already looking forward to the new year. 2021 has plenty in store for Tesla: Two production facilities in the U.S. and Europe are set to begin manufacturing efforts, the launch of the Cybertruck at the tail-end of the year, and a possible refresh of the Model S and Model X. Moving forward, Tesla shorts may be more cautious, especially considering their traumatic $38 billion loss this year.
Tesla made a dramatic change to the Online Design Studio to show its plans for Full Self-Driving, a major part of the company’s plans moving forward, as CEO Elon Musk has been extremely clear on the direction moving forward.
With Tesla taking a stand and removing the ability to purchase Full Self-Driving outright next month, it is already taking steps to initiate that with owners and potential buyers.
On Thursday night, the company updated its Online Design Studio to reflect that in a new move that now lists the three purchase options that are currently available: Monthly Subscription, One-Time Purchase, or Add Later:
🚨 Check out the change Tesla made to its Online Design Studio:
It now lists the Monthly Subscription as an option for Full Self-Driving
It also shows the outright purchase option as expiring on February 14 pic.twitter.com/pM6Svmyy8d
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) January 23, 2026
This change replaces the former option for purchasing Full Self-Driving at the time of purchase, which was a simple and single box to purchase the suite outright. Subscriptions were activated through the vehicle exclusively.
However, with Musk announcing that Tesla would soon remove the outright purchase option, it is clearer than ever that the Subscription plan is where the company is headed.
The removal of the outright purchase option has been a polarizing topic among the Tesla community, especially considering that there are many people who are concerned about potential price increases or have been saving to purchase it for $8,000.
This would bring an end to the ability to pay for it once and never have to pay for it again. With the Subscription strategy, things are definitely going to change, and if people are paying for their cars monthly, it will essentially add $100 per month to their payment, pricing some people out. The price will increase as well, as Musk said on Thursday, as it improves in functionality.
I should also mention that the $99/month for supervised FSD will rise as FSD’s capabilities improve.
The massive value jump is when you can be on your phone or sleeping for the entire ride (unsupervised FSD). https://t.co/YDKhXN3aaG
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 23, 2026
Those skeptics have grown concerned that this will actually lower the take rate of Full Self-Driving. While it is understandable that FSD would increase in price as the capabilities improve, there are arguments for a tiered system that would allow owners to pay for features that they appreciate and can afford, which would help with data accumulation for the company.
Musk’s new compensation package also would require Tesla to have 10 million active FSD subscriptions, but people are not sure if this will move the needle in the correct direction. If Tesla can potentially offer a cheaper alternative that is not quite unsupervised, things could improve in terms of the number of owners who pay for it.
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Tesla Model S completes first ever FSD Cannonball Run with zero interventions
The coast-to-coast drive marked the first time Tesla’s FSD system completed the iconic, 3,000-mile route end to end with no interventions.
A Tesla Model S has completed the first-ever full Cannonball Run using Full Self-Driving (FSD), traveling from Los Angeles to New York with zero interventions. The coast-to-coast drive marked the first time Tesla’s FSD system completed the iconic, 3,000-mile route end to end, fulfilling a long-discussed benchmark for autonomy.
A full FSD Cannonball Run
As per a report from The Drive, a 2024 Tesla Model S with AI4 and FSD v14.2.2.3 completed the 3,081-mile trip from Redondo Beach in Los Angeles to midtown Manhattan in New York City. The drive was completed by Alex Roy, a former automotive journalist and investor, along with a small team of autonomy experts.
Roy said FSD handled all driving tasks for the entirety of the route, including highway cruising, lane changes, navigation, and adverse weather conditions. The trip took a total of 58 hours and 22 minutes at an average speed of 64 mph, and about 10 hours were spent charging the vehicle. In later comments, Roy noted that he and his team cleaned out the Model S’ cameras during their stops to keep FSD’s performance optimal.
History made
The historic trip was quite impressive, considering that the journey was in the middle of winter. This meant that FSD didn’t just deal with other cars on the road. The vehicle also had to handle extreme cold, snow, ice, slush, and rain.
As per Roy in a post on X, FSD performed so well during the trip that the journey would have been completed faster if the Model S did not have people onboard. “Elon Musk was right. Once an autonomous vehicle is mature, most human input is error. A comedy of human errors added hours and hundreds of miles, but FSD stunned us with its consistent and comfortable behavior,” Roy wrote in a post on X.
Roy’s comments are quite notable as he has previously attempted Cannonball Runs using FSD on December 2024 and February 2025. Neither were zero intervention drives.
Elon Musk
Tesla removes Autopilot as standard, receives criticism online
The move leaves only Traffic Aware Cruise Control as standard equipment on new Tesla orders.
Tesla removed its basic Autopilot package as a standard feature in the United States. The move leaves only Traffic Aware Cruise Control as standard equipment on new Tesla orders, and shifts the company’s strategy towards paid Full Self-Driving subscriptions.
Tesla removes Autopilot
As per observations from the electric vehicle community on social media, Tesla no longer lists Autopilot as standard in its vehicles in the U.S. This suggests that features such as lane-centering and Autosteer have been removed as standard equipment. Previously, most Tesla vehicles came with Autopilot by default, which offers Traffic-Aware Cruise Control and Autosteer.
The change resulted in backlash from some Tesla owners and EV observers, particularly as competing automakers, including mainstream players like Toyota, offer features like lane-centering as standard on many models, including budget vehicles.
That being said, the removal of Autopilot suggests that Tesla is concentrating its autonomy roadmap around FSD subscriptions rather than bundled driver-assistance features. It would be interesting to see how Tesla manages its vehicles’ standard safety features, as it seems out of character for Tesla to make its cars less safe over time.
Musk announces FSD price increases
Following the Autopilot changes, Elon Musk stated on X that Tesla is planning to raise subscription prices for FSD as its capabilities improve. In a post on X, Musk stated that the current $99-per-month price for supervised FSD would increase over time, especially as the system itself becomes more robust.
“I should also mention that the $99/month for supervised FSD will rise as FSD’s capabilities improve. The massive value jump is when you can be on your phone or sleeping for the entire ride (Unsupervised FSD),” Musk wrote.
At the time of his recent post, Tesla still offers FSD as a one-time purchase for $8,000, but Elon Musk has confirmed that this option will be discontinued on February 14, leaving subscriptions as the only way to access the system.
Tesla makes dramatic change to Online Design Studio to show FSD plans
Tesla Model S completes first ever FSD Cannonball Run with zero interventions
