Didn't he lose the EV race to China despite having a years' long head start
I personally believe that Elon knew this was coming and he somehow deliberately went for it.
Tesla Changed the world right ... I mean they did breakthroughs in the vehicle market and introduced EVs as a daily driver for regular people for a affordable price right ... For the first time in history TESLA pioneered and introduced that technology globally right ;
Tesla decided to go for full scale off-shore manufacturing during 2019 and and it worked right ; opened their manufacturing pipeline through Giga Factory in china ... & They ruled the world 2020-2025
I believed considering the trajectory china was following ( in the other manufacturing domains ) Elon musk have known this was coming, and his plans must have greater apart from owning the EV market share.
So eventually China caught up ; It was known and just was a matter of when.
Elon allocated that harvest yeilded by Tesla to acquire X ; OpenAI development & mainly for SpaceX.
I personally believes Tesla was just a side hustle for the greater goals of him. However more than 50% of the US domestic EV market still owns by Tesla right
& He became the Ultimate Capitalist the world has ever produced recently right.
So that's why
I don't see Tesla as a failure but important milestone in Elon's journey.
( Ofc I didn't knew about these car facts - I googled them

but had the initial insight of how to answer to this )