Over the long run, would you rather have been a car company or an energy company ( oil company )?
Turning their potentially short term dominance in EV market share into long term dominance in charging seems brilliant to me. This is especially true if you expect Chinese and Indian EV makers to commoditize the market.
Running a charger network is not the same thing as being an energy company like Shell or Exxon Mobil. Tesla has to pay peak electricity rates for their superchargers to the local utility provider. So it’s not a high margin business.
Turning their potentially short term dominance in EV market share into long term dominance in charging seems brilliant to me. This is especially true if you expect Chinese and Indian EV makers to commoditize the market.