Tesla doesn’t care about making money on its cars, and its shareholders need to live with that

Tesla shares have been on an impressive run since the company’s IPO, up over 1,000% and topping out in September of last year near $300. The biggest Tesla bulls on Wall Street think that the automaker could go to $450.

But the bears see the stock tanking. Some analysts have put the bottom in the mid-two digits, while others figure a plunge to the $150 ballpark is possible.

In fact, Tesla sees its stock price as at best a nice piece of leverage for raising capital, as it did earlier this year, and at worst as a huge distraction from its actual mission. That mission — to accelerate humanity’s departure from the fossil-fuels era — is the signal. The stock price is noise. And even the very sexy cars are really just a means to an end.

Musk knows that you don’t get a second chance to do something truly transformational, so he’s put Tesla on an absurdly ambitious path. This is baffling to skeptics, who think that Tesla should at least pretend to care about making money. But Tesla is focused on being a bigger and better car company — and on alleviating global warming.

If it succeeds, that will be worth much more to shareholders than making a few thousand bucks per car in the next year or two.

BI