Don't see how it can be a bad sample when there are cryingly obvious design issues, besides poor assembly.

IMO if their seeming inability to ramp production in any meaningful way doesn't kill them in the next 18 months to 2 years, lawsuits almost certainly will. Can't believe this thing is even road legal ... and maybe it won't be in the EU.

Their market capitalisation is at least 10x what it should be. Even then, that's quite generous.

Because I'm not a raving fanboy and it has serious safety issues. It looks to me as if engineers have been totally sidelined by clueless 'tech evangelists', and in their rush to get anything to market as they blow through money, they failed to heed warnings about the potential ramifications.

Most of the gushing eulogies being written or filmed are completely lacking any critical review and are totally subjective. Almost none of them even touch on major design problems. They're just scrambling for views.

You don't address any of the points made.

As to the appalling tolerances and build quality ... if lemons that bad are going out when production is so low, imagine what QC is going to be like if they manage to build 100* that number (supposedly what they hope to do in 2ish years).

Their prior products have been less than perfect, but that their 4th product is so regressive and flawed in so many potentially fatal ways should set alarm bells ringing.

I'll take the reasoned verdict of a senior engineer with decades of experience, whose job it now is to evaluate the ergonomics, safety, performance and quality of non-affiliated automotive products, over vapid bloggers, any day.

You clearly haven't even watched the video, or if you have, are choosing to completely ignore the content. Several issues were raised *specifically* about its safety in crash situations ... not only for those inside (more than likely trapped due to design) but for emergency workers trying to free or treat them.

But there are other incumbents in this industry who are far bigger, produce far less flawed products, have much better infrastructure, can scale far harder, and have way better engineers.

Amazon were already the elephant in the room 20 years ago, let alone 15.

No-one else is blowing through money as quickly as Tesla, granted, but they have very little to show for it so far.

They still haven't exceeded their annualised (to the month of) production numbers that they set 18 months ago. That despite constant talk of ramping production, cash burn accelerating, and a new 'high volume' product launch.

They were the dominant e-tailer, and growing faster and wider than anyone else. If you failed to see it, more the fool you.

Tesla continue to be an absolute joke. It categorically isn't working.

I find it curious that you mention Bolt sales figures as some kind of victory for Tesla. 23,000 Bolts were sold last year. Far more than the mean monthly production of Model 3s so far x12. That's just one of the competing cars, from one competitor. It's also not sold at a massive loss.

They've now had stagnant production figures for 6 (6!!!) consecutive quarters. Wake up.

fffff (resized).PNG

After wading through that, I can only figure that you're either completely delusional, or so invested in their product / stock that you're terrified of acknowledging failure.

Pretty sure they'll need another bail out sooner rather than later.

The new Jaguar and Porsche electric cars are going to be cheaper and marginally more expensive than competing Teslas, respectively. Who's going to buy a Tesla in that company? They already have a deservedly appalling reputation for quality control and reliability. Porsche, and the Jaguar of today are at the polar opposite end of that spectrum. It'll just get worse as more cars launch in the high margin, high price space, and within a year or two, far higher volume lower margin, lower price cars.

The stock price assumes exponential growth of the electric car market, year on year, immediately, and Tesla maintaining a virtual monopoly. The former will eventually happen, but not in the next year to 18 months, as supply of suitable batteries simply isn't good enough or cheap enough. In 2 years it will be. But Tesla's cash burn is epic. 2 years is a long time. The latter - maintaining or growing a monopoly in the space - categorically will not happen. Their market share will get smaller and smaller.

Probably their worst decision has been to burden themselves with huge costs. Wholly owned dealerships and charging station networks etc. The more they expand the worse the cash burn gets.

They are a huge and unnecessary overhead in a company with unsustainable cash burn. That does not sound like an asset to me.

There's absolutely no way they survive another 9 months without either taking on a LOT more debt, or selling more shares.

Latest news reeks of insolvency. Musk's increasingly desperate and irrational behaviour tends to suggest that he's now very much cognisant of this too.

The hedge funds absolutely love these kind of imagination-land articles. It encourages naive small (and some big) investors to keep buying Tesla stock - hence part of why every day there isn't terrible news published (or Musk doesn't open his mouth), the stock goes up.

There'll be a reckoning soon enough where the stock is likely to plummet. They continue to lose money hand over fist, cut the corners off the corners that they've already cut, and look set to engage in some extremely creative accounting and sales for their Q3 report, if their recent production declarations are anything to go by. This while serious car companies are launching and set to launch superior, cheaper competing vehicles.

The incredible reduction in estimated waiting list times (despite only moderate production increases), and the company being extremely vague about who gets order priority (it appears older orders are not first in line) tends to suggest that they're stuck in a position where they struggle to sell the 3s they make, and can barely afford to make them (hence giving new money a chance to jump the line).

But having made all sorts of promises to Wall St. and institutional investors they nevertheless must increase production quickly, and at far higher cost than a gradual ramp would entail, or the stock will plunge and they won't be able to issue more bonds or take on more loans, and selling more stock would just crash the price further ... and they're going to need to raise more cash if they're to remain solvent.

This is looking dangerously like Enron / Lehman.

The fact that they seem to want their product to sit in scrap yards or go to landfill tends to suggest most of the bluster about the environment is pretty hollow.

Shares are now suspended. This is a clear case of market manipulation, whether he has anything to back it up or not. The company itself would have had to make an official filing expressing what he did, before he did. It didn't.

He should be prosecuted to the full extent that the law allows.

That aside, I'm sure taking it private would be his wet dream. They wouldn't have to worry about what Wall St thought, as they continued to lose money hand over fist, margins looked awful, and competition intensified. They could instead keep information to an absolute minimum (as being a private entity in the US would allow),throw accounting and securities rulebooks out of the window, and court evangelical investors.

Lol.

I've seen a few posts about it, and I share the suspicion that this was a deliberate attempt to pump up the share price - and keep it there - so that the company can avoid a disastrous situation with a convertible bond (of ~$1Bn) maturing at the end of the year. If the share price isn't above a certain threshold (IIRC ~$380), then the holder of those bonds can ask for it all in cash.

The board have not totally distanced themselves from Musk's posts, but judging by what they have stated, there absolutely is not a funding package to take the company private.

SEC apparently already investigating.

Probably the only way it could happen is if Asian / ME companies or sovereign wealth funds fronted the money. Not because they have any belief in Tesla ... but because Musk, despite everything else, has been an exceedingly successful government lobbyist in the US. His companies have received billions in breaks, without which they wouldn't have had any chance of remaining extant. They may hope to leverage him in that context.

I still think it doubtful you'd find enough of them, willing to put up enough capital to go private, who think he'd be THAT useful.

If the rumoured stake being taken by Saudi's PIF is true, I'd argue that's almost certainly their angle ... getting a bigger voice and better relations in Washington.

Nah, more bullshit, and he's likely to be in serious trouble. He's dug the company's biggest hole yet, and certainly his own personal one. The guy's a loose cannon and the company won't survive with him around. Pay particular attention to the starred bits.

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From an NYT article:

Since early 2017, the fund “has approached me multiple times about taking Tesla private,” Mr. Musk wrote. Two weeks ago, he added, the fund’s managing director “strongly expressed his support for funding a going-private transaction.”

“I understood from him that no other decision makers were needed and that they were eager to proceed,” he added.

****But three people familiar with the workings of the Saudi fund cast doubt on his account. They said the fund had taken none of the steps that such an ambitious transaction would entail, like preparing a term sheet or hiring a financial adviser to work on the deal.****

****And even if the fund were ready to move forward with such an agreement, it would invite review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, the government body that reviews the national-security implications of such transactions.****

A spokesman for the Saudi investment fund declined to comment.

In his blog post Monday, Mr. Musk portrayed his Twitter musings last week as part of a deliberate effort to be “completely forthcoming” with shareholders about his desire to take the company private.

But the episode appears to have been much more extemporaneous.

****The tweet did not disclose the sum he had supposedly secured, its source, or any terms of the plan — the kind of transaction that would typically be detailed in documents of 200 pages or more.****

****Two people familiar with the chain of events said that in a conversation with an informal adviser about the mess he had gotten himself into, Mr. Musk said he had taken to Twitter impulsively. He said he had done so because he was not the kind of person who could hold things in, and was angry at the company’s critics.****

****A person with direct knowledge of the Tesla board’s thinking said some members of the board had been totally blindsided by Mr. Musk’s decision to air his plan on Twitter.****

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FT and WSJ have published similar accounts.

Never going to happen re: supplying power to Europe.

Much more likely though re: North Africa. Particularly Morocco / Algeria.

Not really. There's only basic infrastructure planning so far, and almost no financing in place yet. Morocco is furthest ahead ... but for all the talk, 20% of their domestic power consumption is from Spain, via undersea cable.

There's talk, but nothing firm, about a huge farm in the Sub Saharan area, and high capacity links to Portugal & then Spain, but I don't see Morocco being a net exporter of electricity to the EU any time that soon ... especially as the government are concentrating more and more on oil and gas - particularly shale - drilling.

It's some way off, and then that assumes they don't lose interest and drill, drill, drill, drill.

Musk (and others at Tesla) have now been subpoenaed by the SEC.

Is this when the whole house of cards falls?

VW Group are the largest car / automotive company in the world, and have assets of about €400Bn. Also, were it not for the settlements and fines associated with the emissions scandals, their net income would have been measured in 10s of billions for the last few years ... per quarter, that is.

Tesla have very few assets (anything tangible they could leverage further anyway), are losing a lot of money (and it's accelerating), and they're almost as indebted as they can afford to be.

VW spent $12Bn on R&D last year. They have $40Bn ear-marked to spend on electric car R&D before 2022 alone. A figure that's likely to rise.

Tesla spent $1.4Bn on R&D last year.

Pretty bad publicity if the CEO / President (why is he both?), founder, one of the largest shareholders, and most public figure is found to have knowingly made materially false and misleading statements (he absolutely did), and worse which he knew would lead to a rise in the share price and buying.

The penalty would typically be being banned from ownership of, holding directorial positions or serving on the board of any public companies for a number of years, and being fined heavily ....

The case is open and shut. It's just a question of whether the SEC go through with it. Tesla / Musk will plead privately (maybe publicly given his record) that it will bring the company down. It probably won't, it'll be restructured without him, hopefully into a viable concern. But the valuation the stock currently enjoys won't be seen again soon or ever.

It would very definitely be sitting on the board. There'd be no way they or anyone else would front that kind of cash without a *majority* on the board.

Um ... if you'd even watched the video, let alone bothered to read the description, you'd know from the audio that it was using a V8. As the video's description confirms, it's literally just a shell. It's RWD and using an 800bhp V8, and no electric motors or batteries.

Anyway, drag racing is boring and pretty pointless in terms of advancing automotive technology.

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This on the other hand is pretty impressive. The VW I.D. R smashing the Pikes Peak absolute and electric records.

I think in most other cases, the board would have already dismissed the CEO / President and locked them out of the offices.

I don't think it was an error at all. He lied, fabricating something that didn't exist. The reasons seem fairly obvious.

About as obvious as what should be the repercussions .... his 'error' is that he seems to think he can get away with murder and do whatever he wants, when he wants, with no consequences, and that everyone will just fall in line. Classic narcissism.

The supreme irony is that he delivered a huge win for the big hedge funds and megabucks bears that are shorting Tesla. Both for their shorts, they'll have stuck with them after the spike ... then fall as the lies became clear, and gifting a potentially hugely lucrative lawsuit to them. He's not as bright as he likes to think he is.

He will have cost a lot of smaller investors a lot of money with his lies, though, in triggering their stop-loss. This is why, despite Tesla being massively over-valued, in difficulty financially, and Musk being a slow motion car crash, I have not shorted them. He can't be relied on to make truthful or representative statements ... and that's very risky if you have to deal with mandatory stop-losses (they tend to be mandatory unless you have huge collateral).

The share price isn't plummeting because he smoked weed. It's plummeting because two more senior executives have left ... and meanwhile Musk's drinking whiskey, smoking weed, and talking bro-science with Mr. Bro Science himself, Joe Rogan.

The execs who are departing are just the latest, and a number have deserted the sinking ship already. They won't be the last.

He has 2-3 months to cook up another pack of lies to pump up the share price before the company likely faces restructuring and his departure.

If that $1Bn bond matures with the share price at current levels, they'll need to pay it in cash.

If the share price isn't in the ~$400 region, then their cost of borrowing given the debt burden, cash burn, and Musk's tenuous grip on reality will be so high it's either not an option or will quickly bankrupt the company.

Selling more shares if it's not ~$400 will drop the share price further, worsening their problems .....

He better come up with something quick, if the board / shareholders / SEC don't boot him out first.

IMO it still has a long way to fall.

If the impact on the first quarter results by the reduced tax credit are anything to go by, second quarter will be as bad if not worse, and 3rd and 4th quarters will be an absolute massacre as it drops to $1,875 and then stops entirely at the end of the year. That whilst competing models simultaneously continue to enter the market, all of which apart from GM's will still qualify for the full subsidy for quite some time.

Panasonic's obvious uneasiness about the weak demand (and probably Tesla's financials too), and then Musk compounding it by publicly blaming them tells a story IMO. Looks like they now want to spend money on battery facilities in Japan rather than the JV with Tesla.

This ace in the hole of a fully autonomous taxi fleet that Musk is harping on about now would either come way too late, or end the company entirely if it's pushed out too early and regulators actually allowed it. The technology isn't good enough yet, and the repercussions would be fatal. Pretty sure he knows that, but he needs to give investors hope.

This is just your imagination. I don't think anything could be further from the truth given how poor Tesla's showing in reliability surveys has been, and how many corners have been cut wrt quality, safeguards and production methods.

News is bad because Musk continues to make patently false, knowingly misleading statements, and the company continues to lose money hand over fist. He was spinning some fantasy that they'd be printing money in 2019, as little as 3 months ago, sales would increase, and they'd never have to raise capital again. Now, there is little reason to think their losses won't accelerate, or that they'd be able to break even for even 1 quarter in 2019.

If the SEC and investors hadn't been so toothless and had seen to it that he was fully removed from the running and governance of the company, and realists took his positions, they probably could have refinanced and built a sustainable future for the company. As it stands, they're hugely over valued, set to lose a lot of money, and probably a very large chunk of their market share in the US in the next 12-18 months. How and how much capital they will be able to raise, to continue operating, is unclear, against this background.

It's astonishing that people actually believe this.

How would that make it any more true? The statement is total fantasy.

He didn't try to take it private. He tried to fix the share price ... somewhat successfully in the few hours it took before it came out that he'd lied about everything.