Tesla (TSLA) can never build a car for regular people, they said.

"Just because Tesla has succeeded in making an expensive electric sports car does not mean that it will be able to make a moderately priced five-seat sedan," New York Times columnist Joe Nocera wrote in 2008.

Tesla will go broke, they said.

"Unless some kind of miracle occurs, bankruptcy is inevitable," a Seeking Alpha writer wrote in 2016.

Tesla won’t live to see 2019, they said.

"The company, folks, is going out of business," former General Motors vice chairman Bob Lutz told CNBC in 2017.

Tesla will never make money, they said.

"They will never make money on the Model 3," Lutz said in 2018, calling Tesla "an automobile company that is headed for the graveyard."

Tesla has nothing special, they said.

"No tech advantage, no software advantage, no battery advantage. No advantages whatsoever," Lutz said.

Big automakers getting into EVs will crush TSLA, they said.

"To date, Tesla has ruled the roads for electric car buyers. Those days are over," Bloomberg wrote in 2018.

Robotaxi is a joke, they said.

A Jefferies analyst wrote in 2024: "TSLA's toothless taxi is a best-case outcome for UBER."

Tesla's brand is finished, they said.

"This is a full blown crisis," Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in 2025, as protesters burned Teslas.

We’ve all seen how this story ends…

Tesla built that car for sports enthusiasts and everyday people alike.

Its Model Y was Earth's best-selling car in 2023.

Tesla makes money.

It earned $721 million in 2020, its first profitable year.

The Cybercab carries paying riders in Austin today.

And in September, Model Y outsold every other car in Germany, France and China, and across Europe.

Naysayers have stopped saying Tesla will fail.

Now they say it is overhyped and overvalued.

At LikeFolio, we see something even more groundbreaking at play than simply selling cars and rising capex.

We see the next iPhone, and a corresponding shift in vehicle ownership at large.

Here's what we mean…

Your carrier used to pick your phone

Before 2007, Americans chose a service provider first. That carrier chose (and partially designed) their phone options.

Walk into a carrier store in 2006 and you picked from whatever it stocked: a Motorola Razr, a Samsung or LG flip, a Nokia, a BlackBerry if your job paid for one. Motorola, Samsung, LG, Nokia and Sanyo sold 81% of America's phones in early 2007. Kyocera, Sony Ericsson, BlackBerry, Palm, HTC, UTStarcom, Helio, T-Mobile's Sidekick and a long tail of smaller brands split what was left, 19%. They may or may not exist today.

Phones were cheap giveaways to lock you into a two-year contract.

Steve Jobs was not about to let a group of suits tell him how to design his phone, Wired reported.

After a year and a half of secret talks, Cingular, now AT&T, gave Apple (AAPL) full control over how iPhone was designed, made and marketed. No carrier had given a phone maker that much control. Verizon had said no.

AT&T took a shot and won.

About 40% of early iPhone buyers were new to AT&T, and iPhones tripled AT&T's data traffic in New York and San Francisco. Shoppers picked a phone first and took whatever network came with it.

Rival carriers caught on fast. By November 2007, even Verizon, the carrier that turned Jobs down, said any compatible phone could join its network.

Then America's crowded phone shelf emptied.

Palm, BlackBerry, Nokia, Motorola and LG sold or shut down their phone businesses.

In early 2026, iPhones made up 75% of phones sold at America's three biggest carriers.

Whoever owns people's choice wins their business.

Car buyers stand where phone buyers stood in 2006

Americans bought just over 12 million new vehicles from January through September 2026, from more than 30 brands that work alike.

Now we’re on the verge of a major narrowing.

Cars without self-driving software may not pass consumers' next big step up.

Tesla buyers shop for software first.

They walk into Tesla's American showrooms asking for it by name.

"They're not asking for 3Y or Cybertruck. They're saying, 'Can we get an FSD drive?'" Tesla finance chief Vaibhav Taneja said on Tesla's October 21 earnings call.

Every new Tesla comes with a free month of FSD.

Last quarter, more than 3 in 4 North American buyers signed up to pay for it on delivery day. "If you do it, you won't be able to go back to driving any other car," Taneja said.

Musk, on that same call: "There's really no competitor for FSD in any car that you can buy."

Tesla's FSD buyers are early adopters, as early iPhone buyers were for AT&T. Everyone else followed them.

We expect everyone else to follow again.

And more shoppers are coming.

We count people who visit Tesla online, where buyers order their cars. That number runs 32% above a year ago.

We also track what people post about Tesla on X. Purchase intent is up 17% from a year ago in the four weeks through October 24.

It’s not just prospective car buyers looking at what Tesla has built.

Insurers are pricing in FSD.

Lemonade (LMND) charges Tesla owners as little as half its usual per-mile rate for miles that FSD drives, in Arizona, Colorado and Tennessee.

Its co-founder said Tesla's data and Lemonade's own showed FSD made driving about twice as safe.

A car that drives itself costs less to own.

Buyers on both sides of politics choose Tesla's Model Y despite what headlines tell you

Tesla has taken fire from both ends of American politics.

In 2012, Mitt Romney attacked Obama's green-energy loans at a presidential debate. He listed Tesla beside two companies that had gone bankrupt and said: "You pick the losers."

In 2025, the attacks came from the other side. As Musk worked in Washington, people set Teslas on fire. In Las Vegas, someone shot at cars at a Tesla service center and lit them with Molotov cocktails. FBI Director Kash Patel called it "domestic terrorism."

Tesla's German sales fell 62% in the first three months of 2025.

But by this September, the Model Y beat the Volkswagen Golf as Germany's best-selling car. The Golf had been Germany's top seller every year since 1981.

In 2025, a study ranked Tesla's reputation last among 30 major companies in Germany, below Temu and Shein.

Germans told pollsters what they think of Musk.

Then they bought his car.

The pattern holds in deep-blue California, where the Model Y is the best-selling vehicle so far in 2026, ahead of the Toyota Camry and Honda Civic.

It holds in China, where Tesla sells against the country's own champions. In September, Chinese shoppers bought 50,359 Model Ys. Model Y outsold BYD's best seller nearly two to one.

Tesla is beating BYD in BYD's own backyard.

Across Europe in September, Tesla held the top two spots: Model Y first, Model 3 second.

At the end of the day, people buy the best car.

Tesla wants your parked car earning money

Soon, the best car will be the one that pays you back.

Think about what your car does all day. It sits. The average American car is parked about 95% of each day, according to Department of Energy data. You pay for it, insure it and park it, and most hours it earns nothing.

I drive a Ford Bronco and love it. But it gets harder to justify that Bronco gathering dust in a company parking spot all day while pretty soon, Andy's Tesla will be out earning money for him.

Tesla is about to make that pitch to every owner.

"We suspect somewhere around Q2 next year is when we can turn on some of the first customer vehicles to be part of the Robotaxi fleet," Tesla AI chief Ashok Elluswamy said on Tesla's October call.

Your Tesla drops you at work, picks up paying riders until you need it back, then drives you home. A car that costs you money every month starts paying some of it back.

Once this goes mainstream, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the haters shift their argument again, claiming Cybercab ownership and/or autonomous transportation is a human right.

People who skip owning a car win, too

Here’s where the major model shift comes into play.

Plenty of people will skip owning a car altogether. Tesla wants them as riders.

Tesla's Cybercab, with two seats, no steering wheel and no pedals, carries paying riders in Austin today.

Many users have shown Tesla ride costs about half as much as an Uber. Tesla's total driverless miles grew eightfold last quarter, and its robotaxi service reaches Dallas next month.

Uber is lobbying lawmakers to slow driverless cars down.

Car ownership splits in two. Own a Tesla that earns money while you work, or skip the car and ride for half the price of an Uber.

Either way, the money goes to Tesla (and to believers).

We bought Tesla when naysayers were loudest

We added Tesla to our Infinite Hold list in April 2018, months before Lutz said Tesla was headed for a graveyard. Tesla shares are up more than 1,800% since.

Our LikeFolio Score, a 0 to 100 blend of consumer demand and market sentiment, reads 77 for Tesla.

Elon Musk is no stranger to doubters.

We think Musk and his doubters are talking past each other now. Doubters argue about cars.

Tesla is selling software, rides and a car that earns money, among a slew of other paradigm-shifting ideas. (We’ll save Optimus and SpaceX implications for another day.)

The iPhone didn’t always dominate US consumer pockets, but a superior product squeezed the competition and changed the dynamics of “cell phones” at large.

There’s a good chance this happens again, this time for cars.

Tesla stays in our Infinite Hold.

If it is possible, we are more bullish on Tesla today than ever.