China is smart. They don't fuck around with tax incentives and other silly market manipulators. They use central policy planning to drive forward renewables and battery electric vehicles at nation state scale, and it's a damn shame the United States and other first world countries don't have the same fortitude; yet, our markets will rail against someone who has bet his personal fortune to accomplish these goals.
You're imagining some future where because of shorts we don't put enough money into TSLA and never have electric cars. That's not how this works.
With shorts (if the short sellers are right) TSLA is full of it, and capital is much better allocated at BMW, Toyota, or some other car startup, and the sooner everyone finds that out and moves their money over or stops inflating TSLA the better.
I follow the company closely, and have definitely seen some questionable behavior that seemed to be aimed at trying to create the negative news cycle for the business. Things like promoted reddit articles and a horde of bogus NHTSA complaints can be very damaging to the business' fundamentals.
But maybe there is more investigation into these things than I realize, and certainly the need to investigate this material doesn't negate the need to investigate Musk's own questionable conduct as well.
Both parties have an interest in the stock going one way or the other. Regulators need to get involved when something like insider manipulation of the stock happens, say when the CEO uses Twitter the way Elon Musk does.
They regulate things like people talking shit in public on Twitter while having access to insider information. There's no evidence that any of these people talking shit about TSLA because they hold shorts have access to information not available through the usual market disclosure mechanisms.
Capital allocates to what is best for the markets, not what is best for the world. I can't breath shareholder returns. We can't wait for BMW and Toyota to cannibalize their internal combustion product lines with EVs because it's not financially convenient for them (runaway climate change, all that jazz [1]). Traditional manufacturers have no incentive to disrupt the status quo and instead, continue to churn out internal combustion vehicles.
“Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.” [2]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/26/global-w... ("World 'nowhere near on track' to avoid warming beyond 1.5C target")
Frankly, Q3 2018 was shaping up to be a big moment where M3 cars were mass produced and selling well. If Mr. Musk just shut up for the past 6 months and never tweeted anything, then Tesla would be in a far stronger position.
Today: Musk has to deal with the pedophile slander lawsuit, the SEC investigation, and now the DoJ investigation. The shorts did NONE of this, it was all Mr. Musk's mistake. If Mr. Musk sat tight, released the (what seem to be) good Q3 2018 numbers, then the shorts would have been busted naturally.
That's how you "beat the shorts". Have a strong quarter, have a strong year, and push the stock price up. Short sellers lose money every time the stock rises.
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And I'm sure people out there will complain about the 2-billion convertible loan due 2019, and how short-sellers are destroying the $360 price point.
Guess what? The CEO's job is to secure funding. It was Mr. Musk who signed Tesla to that deal. If you think the loan was idiotic, then it was Mr. Musk's fault for signing the loan back in 2014.
That's Musk's decision however. He's had 5 years to make a profit on a 5-year loan with 0.25% coupon (!!!) and that's his own darn fault for not keeping track of it and turning a profit in time.
(Frankly: 0.25% loan for 5-years are stupendous terms. I do think it was good way to raise money)
Details on the loan due March 2019: http://finra-markets.morningstar.com/BondCenter/BondDetail.j...
The terms of this loan are: $360 call option or cash back on March 2019. Which means bondholders can buy the stock at $360 (no matter what price TSLA is at), OR can demand cash back instead. Given the current price of TSLA, it seems like the bondholders will ask for Cash.
But Musk clearly though, way back in 2014 when he signed this deal, that he would raise the stock price to $360 to avoid paying back the loan. OR he was fine with a 0.25% coupon (!!) on a 5-year rate. Anyone who follows finances knows that this bond was an incredible deal to the advantage of Tesla, and no one should be touting this loan as a disadvantage.
Both in number of vehicles sold[1] and in distance driven[2] Tesla vehicles are handily beat by the likes of the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf. Those are the sorts of vehicles that are going to change the game and make a dent in climate change, not luxury cars.
1. https://insideevs.com/plug-in-electric-car-sales-ranked-by-o...
2. https://insideevs.com/us-crosses-10-billion-e-miles-driven-f...
I know we've talked about this before. But +100MW-hrs here and there is nothing. Yeah, 300MW in Australia is impressive for Lithium Ion. But...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/07/24/business/ener...
This singular $3 Billion project will give 2GW of power. If the lake holds 8-hours of water, that'd be 16-GW-hrs of energy in a single project.
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If energy storage is to be figured out in the USA, we need to be calculating GW-hr scale projects, not MW-hr scale projects like Mr. Musk.
Lithium Ion's main benefit was to Tesla, as Tesla would have a 2nd place to sell their Lithium Ion batteries. Its great for Tesla, but its way too small of a scale for me to consider it as a major solution to the USA's energy problem.
Utility scale battery storage will lead the day. Raw materials go into your factory, out come battteries good for at least a decade, that can perform energy arbitrage and frequency response for grid services. And every year it keeps getting cheaper to build. Hydro storage construction is always going to be geoconstrained, time consuming to construct, and expensive.
Just my two cents.
We (as a society and a country) need Tesla to succeed.
Tesla can't succeed with Elon Musk as CEO at this point.
So Elon should be removed.
Tesla's value is Musk's determination. Still, he needs to choose his actions more wisely, clearly.
If only all of the TSLA fanboys posted how much money they have on the line. After reading this, all the rest of your comments suddenly make sense.
Pro Tip: Don't get emotional over your investments or you are gonna lose the ability to think rationally and get burned.
If being a fanboy of a company working towards positive change in the world (which is so very often rare, unfortunately) is wrong, I don't want to be right. Everyone finds meaning in different ways. This is my small contribution.
Maybe. The main question is whether it will happen before or after bankruptcy (chapter 11 reorganization).
Though internet companies aren't the best at cash flow management either, it is more about getting the market / customers then the profit. I think innovation is excusable for revenue/profits for some time.
Starting an electric car ONLY car company is even harder than having it as part of an existing car company like Mercedes is doing well with.
The shorts are mainly trying to kill Tesla and coming from the oil, gas, other auto companies most of all. Lots of games are played with car companies (see VW short squeeze a historically big one) because they can't react as fast as it is hard work. I think the shorts have been not just focused on profitability but to drive out the competitive threat, the shorts have also been attacking Elon Musk non-stop.
What makes Tesla unique in this respect, and Musk so essential to the operations?
I'd argue nothing at all, other than his image. Hire some experts from the other companies, people with a few decades of experience, and let them turn it around. Maybe start with why you're hand-assembling and gluing things together in tents, rather than using the high efficiency production lines everyone else is using.
Elon is also an engineer first, that is needed at innovative companies, not some metric focused MBA C-level executive just looking to cash out. Musk actually cares about what he is building and has done a smashing job considering the pressure in my opinion. Tesla is made with love, a car/product people want, not just for the short term numbers.
Your comments regarding being "made with love" doesn't square with all the other articles I've read recently regarding the poor fit and finish of new Teslas. They are having problems scaling up, and it looks like quality took a hit as a result.
Running a large scale industrial manufacturing operation means extensive delegation. Those "metric-focussed" executives actually have an important role to play at this scale. Product design and engineering happen well before scaling up for production. The production side is all about supply chains, efficient assembly and QA. No one should be changing the design at that point; however talented Musk might be as an engineer, I can't see him specifically having much to bring to the table for sorting out manufacturing issues. (I have worked doing QA in an industrial setting. ISO 9001, six-sigma and all the rest do start to have a point when you are working at scale and want to guarantee quality, throughput, efficiency, customer deadlines etc.) Tesla is bringing nothing new to the table on these fronts that I have seen.
You do need a focused innovative leader to run innovative companies that are competing with big players, if you get a metrics guy as the CEO or one calling the shots they will fade away.
Taking away the founder/creator is like how Python is without Guido and Linux kernel without Linus, they will eventually run out of momentum and get convoluted with many directions trying to take the lead for short term needs, similar to how node went for a long time or Microsoft under Ballmer or Apple under John Sculley (they thought an exec guy from Pepsi could run a technology company).
The typical process only focused metric MBA guys should come in when the innovating is done and it is time to focus on short term revenues over product, which eventually runs out everytime as it is milked and research and development is killed.
There is a reason Amazon is so successful still, Bezos is an engineer/product guy first that is laser focused on taking profits and putting them back into R&D, hard to beat that as you can see.
This has little to do with producing cars, and more to do with (financial) management. (Also, most major european car makers survived the great recession just fine).
Most of the European (Mercedes/BMW) engineering and product people have power. Even Honda for a long time engineers/product people drove most of the decisions and power structures. American car companies not so much, most MBA / bizdev lead over engineering and product people. Germany is unique in that engineering and the product quality is highly respected over short term gains only.
Additionally, BMW/Mercedes/etc cars also target the upper classes that weren't as affected by the Great Recession so they didn't have the pressures as much as the US car companies that needed bailouts. American industries targeting consumers in upper class and wealth didn't suffer as much.
That's pretty much any company (with certain variations for different industries).
What about when Elon was spreading rumours that the Saudi's wanted to take Tesla private?
Sure it can. Tesla has done basically nothing for self-driving cars, it's technology is glorified lane-keeping. As to electric cars, the Model S is the third best-selling electric car ever, after the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt. Both of those cars were introduced before the Model S. Electric cars are not yet mainstream, but when the become mainstream, they're going to look a lot more like a Chevy Volt than a Model S or Model 3. (The sport-sedan market Tesla is targeting is a niche, even if a very lucrative one. What people really want is a $25,000-35,000 small cross-over SUV or pickup truck.)
The frank truth is that both the better design and range of Tesla vehicles set the stage for electric cars to be adopted by everyone rather than just special interest groups.
You can be assured that every manufacturer in the world, such as BMW, is building up electric manufacturing capability due to the success of Tesla, and not Nissan.
As to other manufacturers, they were “building up electric manufacturing capability” before Tesla. Toyota was selling thr first RAV 4 EV before Tesla was even founded. Tesla didn’t have the first EV. It may have the best EV now, but that hardly says anything—it’s much easier to make a $50-100,000 EV than on at a mainstream price point. The remaining question is who is on track to create products in the form factors people care about (not sports sedans) at prices they can afford? At this rate, that’s not Tesla either.
Regarding the Roadster being "niche", it still looked like a normal car at least, unlike the EV 1, and any other electric car at the time. Furthermore, they had a roadmap to more affordable cars that still fit the moniker "normal". Other car companies were just running their EV projects as experiments, or as a way to appease California legislators to meet quotas, or simply retrofitting a non electric frame with batteries in a way that left much to be desired.
No one was trying to make a non-toy full electric car until Tesla.
> No one was trying to make a non-toy full electric car until Tesla.
The Roadster was a toy, costing over $100,000 and selling approximately 2,500 vehicles, in the same ballpark as the EV1. The idea that it spurred GM and Nissan to build completely different EVs for the opposite end of the market is delusional. The timing also doesn’t work. It took Tesla several years to bring the Roadster to the prototype stage. Counting back a similar length of time from when the Volt was unveiled as a concept car, that means GM would’ve been working on it since 2004 or so, years before the Roadster came out.
Is your argument based on the form factor? Tesla's EV value proposition is based on the range of the battery pack, which blows the Leaf out of the water (the Volt is a hybrid). Switching to a smaller form factor (hatchback) would increase Tesla's range advantage.
How is putting an electric motor in a slightly different shape of car a more important accomplishment than making it run for 300 miles on a charge? The end-game car might look like a Chevy Volt on the outside, but under the hood it'll look more like a Tesla. Also, the cross-over SUV only replaced the station wagon as a way to exploit emissions regulations, which will no longer be relevant for EVs; see:
https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1107161_are-you-driving...
Also, as 'colordrops noted, the Roadster predates the Leaf and the Volt, and may have inspired automakers to compete with Tesla.
The Model 3 has more range because it has a much bigger and more expensive battery pack, and accordingly a much higher price tag (starting at $30,000 versus starting at $50,000). There is nothing to suggest that Tesla is going to be able to scale down to a mainstream price faster than Nissan, Chevy, etc., improve the performance of their offerings which sre already much closer to a mainstream price point. Tesla’s persistent inability to sell the promised base Model 3 suggests the opposite.
What if Tesla's progress wasn't because of Musk, but in spite of Musk? He's chased away dozens of key people and his intolerance for criticism is well known. Apart from attracting cash, do you really think his contribution to the operation was that significant?
> I find it curious that an innovative American company pushing to help our carbon problem by going electric is so lambasted, shorted, constantly under attack.
Working towards a worthwhile cause does not mean nobody can call you out on bullshit. And he bullshits a lot.
No way that's true. No way. If you believe that then you must also believe SpaceX and him leading the company to create re-usable rockets was also just a fluke.
So Musk somehow just stumbled upon a highly successful, innovative, and cost-effective private rocket company, while also stumbling upon the first new American company to survive (for now, and as long as it has) in the car market in 100 years and also one that happens to build EVs from scratch.
Musk must have one hell of a luck to keep stumbling upon these sort of companies that "could have succeeded even without him."
My opinion is that this success has clouded his judgment.
"Everybody told me SpaceX can't work, and I made it work. Everybody is telling me $THING at Tesla can't work, therefore I know I'll make it work, and everybody else must be wrong".
SpaceX was a novel endeavor. Building a car production plant is not.
This doesn't mean that failing to fix those problems will kill Tesla. It may, however, cause a large drop in stock price, massive losses for shareholders at large, and E.M. in particular, restructuring of their debt, and possibly acquisition for pennies on the dollar by another auto manufacturer.
Like, when I step back and look at Tesla's current challenges, they have two big ones: delivered products to meet demand and improving their driver assistance/autonomous driving offerings.
"Jerome Guillen has been promoted to President, Automotive, reporting directly to me. In his new role, Jerome will oversee all automotive operations and program management, as well as coordinate our extensive automotive supply chain. Jerome has made major contributions and acquired deep knowledge of Tesla’s operations over the past eight years at our company, from being the first Model S Program Manager to managing all vehicle programs, then all vehicle engineering and worldwide sales & service. Recently, Jerome played a critical role in ramping Model 3 production, leading what almost all thought was impossible: creation of an entire high-volume General Assembly line for Model 3 in a matter of weeks. Before coming to Tesla, Jerome was responsible for creating and running the most successful semi truck program in history at Daimler’s Freightliner division."
I'm not sure that the summation of that would be that the "product is not good", though. It just means that some aspects of it are disappointing.
For that matter, he'd be better served if he didn't libelously call people pedophiles, try to start a war with the media, subject his factory workers to unsafe working conditions, and engage in union busting. Ultimately, these are all going to bite him in the ass, and he will have brought it all on himself.
The impact would be reduced now that the big guys are finally starting to take full electric seriously, but the impact would still be there. Without Tesla’s constant pressure I could see full BEV adoption being delayed by 5 years or more.
She's running SpaceX. They're already doing it there.
You make Musk the product lead or equivalent, chief visionary. The CEO is a specialist focused on operations, manufacturing. You don't need the CEO to be the chief visionary so long as you have Musk in the company. There's no good reason he needs to be overseeing every detail of manufacturing, there are people far better at that than he is.
And the cool thing? Elon Musk could join a competitor, grow them over 6 years, and leverage their sales to regain control of the business. That last bit is mostly joking, but good on you if you get history that it references.
As of now, it looks very likely that Tesla can produce the Model 3 at scale. The current drought in production appears to be due to a shortage:
https://moneymaven.io/mishtalk/economics/force-manure-tesla-...
That's bad news for Tesla's fiscal situation, but a shortage of semiconductor wafers isn't indicative of some major flaw in the actual manufacturing process. Also, Tesla currently dominates the market for these wafers:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-infineon-technol-results-... https://semiengineering.com/sic-chip-demand-surges/
which suggests that any potential competitors will face the same limitations, because SiC inverters dramatically improve the performance of electric motors:
https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1330491
The global supply chain has to adapt to high demand for high-powered electric motors.
Anyway, once Tesla has successfully produced and sold a mass-market car, the need for a mythical figure at the top fades away. Since it looks like they're close to doing that, they're also close to doing away with Elon.
But supposing I did agree -
> I find it curious that an innovative American company pushing to help our carbon problem by going electric is so lambasted, shorted, constantly under attack. It cannot be argued that Tesla pushed forward both electric cars and self-driving vehicles as a major force (original self-driving push was a DoD X-Prize)
It can't be argued. But their CEO is a self-aggrandizing buffoon who is hurting himself and the company, and now, because the board couldn't or wouldn't stop him, the SEC will. I don't like it, either. I really honestly want Tesla to succeed.
Elon is preventing them from doing that now. If there's any hope for them to survive, in my opinion, it is without him. Even if that's riskier.
Edit: Accidentally killed Bill Gates :(. Sorry Bill!
I think most people believe Ballmer did a terrible job as CEO – Microsoft's stock was basically flat for the 12 years after Gates left, and only really started to climb again after Nadella took over. That seems to be some evidence for key men.
On a more serious note, they left after significant pass over and forsight that they were stepping down. They were both profitable, and they were not forced to step down. When Steve Jobs left the first time he was forced to, Apple almost went out of business.
You're not the only one who smells something funny.
I'm not sure if you're being tongue in cheek, but that is precisely why he's being attacked.
I find it curious that an innovative American company pushing to help our carbon problem by going electric is so lambasted, shorted, constantly under attack. It cannot be argued that Tesla pushed forward both electric cars and self-driving vehicles as a major force (original self-driving push was a DoD X-Prize)
Personally I like when American companies succeed and push innovation forward. I would have zero hope of that happening if they bring in some generic C level executive like back in the day at Apple when they ousted Steve Jobs and brought in John Sculley.