It’s late January 2021 and Tesla CEO Elon Musk is even more bullish than usual. The fourth-quarter earnings call to analysts and investors affords him the chance to announce the company’s first ever full-year profit.

But he goes well beyond that, firing off obscure facts and figures, boasting that the forthcoming Model S Plaid will be the fastest-accelerating road car in history, talking up enormous future growth (50 per cent more cars every year “over a multi-year horizon”), dissing hydrogen competitors (hydrogen is “a big pain in the arse, really”), insisting full self-driving technology really is just around the corner, and suggesting that a fleet of Tesla robo-taxis could “potentially justify” his company’s sky-high valuation.