> Elon's probably betting on how much other people would pay for access to APIs and thus user data, and gain income on top of simply profit margin on the vehicle itself.
Tesla doesn't expect end users to use this API. This is meant for fleets (like rental companies).
I feel like you are trying to say that you believe this comment to mean that they might try to sell access to the user data acquired from API usage, but I'm pretty sure the connection "and thus" is equating the APIs with user data, as companies paying for access to these APIs is--similar to having access to Facebook's APIs--giving them access to the user data that is accessible via those APIs.
What I'm trying to say is that this is unrelated to regular folks' cars. For this you need to manually authorize access to your car, and then they can do things like unlock the doors[1]. It's meant for rental agencies and such. Not to scrap data of any Tesla owner (like Twitter Firehose)
Tesla doesn't expect end users to use this API. This is meant for fleets (like rental companies).