The charismatic guy at the top may always get all the credit, but hundreds of other people played a role in Tesla’s success. He wasn’t even a founder of the company. All we can really say is that he bought in at the right time, but we don’t know how much of Tesla’s success was down to his personal decisions. If anything, it seems like Tesla’s decline really started when Musk started using the company more and more for his personal pet projects (Cybertruck, Teslabots etc) rather than the cars that people actually want.