Amazon had approximately zero net profits for 20 years or so. It was a meme not too long ago--how much longer will investors keep pouring money into Amazon before either they stop or Amazon starts reaping a bounty they had been sowing for decades.

But everybody seemed to believe Amazon was building an insurmountable, monopoly-like position. That never happened. Then AWS came out of nowhere and that's when their profits finally took off, and investors won their bet, but in an unpredicted way.

The problem with the car industry is that, excepting Tesla for 5-10 years, nobody believes there are outsized profits to be made, and other than Musk (once upon a time), nobody with the personality to convince them otherwise. Though Amazon didn't need a personality; everyone just sort of assumed Bezos was an evil business genius biding time.