The thing is, the product is not good, yet. They've yet to ship a $35,000 car, they've yet to hit their production goals, they've yet to justify their sky-high valuation, and their current build quality is below what one would expect for a $50,000 car.

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.

That sounds like what they need is someone like Tim Cook: someone with a background in operations management.

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.

Which is why Jerome Guillen was promoted to President of Automotive [+] weeks ago.

"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."

[+] https://www.tesla.com/blog/company-update

I've owned two Model 3s, and while this is anecdotal at best, I've found the build quality to be excellent in both of them. I have coworkers that drive BMWs and Audis that have ridden in my Model 3 and commented that the car feels very solid.

I would argue that a lot of those things are true for current BMWs as well. They've fallen below the quality targets that I expect for their price and their base prices are too high.

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.