See I don't believe that per se, he could have had both; were he to stop putting all R&D into infeasible money sinks like autopilot (which he had promised / upsold people to, so scrapping it would've led to multi billion lawsuits) and meme / prestige projects like Cybertruck and instead pushed more into making electric cars affordable, AND if tesla expanded and opened up / expanded the supercharger + solar panel + battery network, it would've been a fine multi billion dollar company with longevity - especially the infrastructure stuff would be long term revenue.
SpaceX is narrow; specialized, high revenue per launch, but not that many launches (although they're doing more than any other company), whereas tesla is broad, no longer unique but potentially big volume of car sales and recurring revenue from infrastructure and maintenance, could have been a competitor to GE and the like.