No they succeeded because of carbon credits. To this day, 42% of Tesla's revenue is just carbon credits.

That means that everyone who is buying a gas guzzler is helping fund Tesla. Tesla was one of the first to have an EV-only lineup which means they could sell 100% of their carbon credits. Every company that wants to sell a gas guzzler has to pay Tesla for carbon credits in order to do so

Also the massive government bailouts and subsidies helped ofc https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/tesla-inc