Thought I would open up this thread to give you my perspective on Tesla and TSLA. For Tesla, I am currently completing my third purchase. For TSLA, I was a fairly early (but not that early) investor also Hope this will give some insight into what I believe the company is really doing.
I started in 2009 when we decided to put solar panels on our roof. We went to Solar City to do the job. They were not part of Tesla at the time, but had a connection - Elon Musk was the chair of their board and their top executives were Elon's cousins. The salesperson told us, you know Elon Musk - he was one of the founders of Paypal! I'm not sure whether I knew the name. We ordered a system with a few more panels than we really needed, with the distant thought that maybe we would get an electric car or maybe more hifi equipment. We bought the system for cash and within six years, our energy savings had paid for the cost of the system. We continue to save $4-5K a year in our electricity bill.
The second connection came in 2013 when we took delivery of our Tesla Model S. We had ordered it in June of 2012 and were told to expect delivery in about 12 months. It came four months early, in February, so we have had it for 7 and 1/2 years. It was number 4360, so we were pretty early adopters.
The third connection is happening now. We have ordered 3 Tesla Powerwalls for our home. We are in process, waiting for our building permit to be approved by the city. The Powerwalls will serve two functions. Its primary function will be to store excess solar energy and as needed energy generated from the grid at night when the grid has excess capacity and energy prices are the lowest. We then can use the stored power primarily in the late afternoon and early evening when the power demand (and costs) are highest. It saves us significant money and takes the burden off the grid (fewer powerplants needed) at peak usage times. The second function is to provide backup power for our home for the increasingly common power outages as climate change has been wreaking havoc on our fire season. The powerwalls have enough storage to get us through two days and nights of outages and in the daytime, if there is sunlight, they will recharge to provide additional backup power, so hopefully that would get us through an additional day or two.
Parallel to the second connection, in 2013 I started looking at TSLA as a possible investment opportunity. I didn't jump right away, but later in the year I made the big leap, putting in half of my Roth IRA (which represented my pre tax savings from my career of work which I converted to a Roth the year before). Roths have a double advantage of growing completely tax free for as long as you live and 10 years after, and also do not require any RMD at age 72. I did not buy at the $35-$40 stock price when we got our Tesla, but at a much higher $130 in November of 2013. After 2 and a 1/2 years with the other half of my Roth floundering, I sunk that into TSLA also, at a much higher $190. Even at those levels, the airways and internet were constantly providing barrage of negative opinions about TSLA. Being in my Roth shielded me from any serious thought about selling.
Don't know what the future will bring. We definitely have been conservative investors just about all our lives. My wife's Roth which started at 2.5 times mine has been invested in index funds. It has grown nicely in the past 6.5 years (since my initial TSLA investment) following the standard long time average of the market - compounding about 8 percent per year. My Roth is now just about three times hers.
Tesla is a complex, highly vertically integrated company which is not that easy to understand. It may be worth your while to dig in a bit. A couple places to start. Tesla is selling an $8000 optional software package with their cars which will allow you to implement the self driving feature. About 25% of the purchasers buy that option. Tesla has around 3 Billion miles of data from its cars for its neural net. The closest competitor has about 1/1000 as much mileage data. I don't think any other car manufacturer has a option that can add 20% to the gross margin of a car without adding any manufacturing cost. Tesla is starting a car insurance company for owners of their cars. With the data they collect, they can set the premiums based on each individual driver, and even adjust premiums if you are starting to drag race with your car.
Larry