To be fair, basic arithmetic is pretty boring.

Seems like Musk was never good at math.  

Tesla made 0 cars in 2011, but will make around 500k in 2019

Elon Musk  (@elonmusk) February 20, 2019

Tesla was still making the original Roadster in 2011 too.

You need at least 3 (sometimes 4) assembly lines to build 1M cars per year. Tesla has 1 that doesn’t work very well and a bunch of tents.

It’s like Tesla is ignoring everything Henry Ford came up with.

Elon Musk is just lying.  He knows that Tesla's not going to make 500k cars this year, and that Tesla's won't have 1M robotaxis in service next year.

Eventually he'll get tired of getting caught lying, and he'll move on from Tesla.  That's his personality type.

Well it looks like the SEC and Musk have reached an agreement.  No punishment for Musk.  
Musk will need approval from Tesla's legal counsel for public statements, including tweets, about the company's finances, projected performance and other topics.  
Musk can continue to call people pedophiles and boneheads.  
https://www.reuters.com/article/tesla-musk-sec/teslas-elon-musk-reaches-deal-with-sec-over-twitter-use-idUSL1N2281L4

That sounds a lot like the last "settlement".  What happens when he violates this one as well?

Apparently not even a slap on the wrist so not really any incentive to stop lying. Investors beware, the SEC is as lawless as the rest of the Government.

Seems a Chinese ride hailing service is demanding a refund from Tesla for 20% if it's fleet experiencing mechanical failure of some sort.

Link

"The Chinese ride-hailing company Shenma Zhuanche said it took inspiration from the Oscar-winning film "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" to air its grievances against Tesla.

The company said it took out three advertisements outside Reuters' Times Square headquarters to demand Tesla provide compensation and better customer service after more than 20% of the 278 cars it purchased experienced "electro-mechanical failures." "

Betting the consequences of building vehicles in a tent are beginning to manifest.

That makes so much more sense.  I've always thought fuel cells were the holy grail as a power source for vehicles (and many other things). Generating the energy closest to where it's needed is still ultimately going to be the most efficient use of that energy.

Insiders describe a world of chaos and waste at Panasonic's massive battery-making operation for Tesla

Gee I wonder why they've been catching fire

Seems Tesla didn't report the 200 million it received in selling regulatory credits and instead buried it in their report to the government.

Article

"Tesla’s financial results released last week didn’t mention that the automaker’s revenue included $200 million collected from regulatory credits. When Chief Executive Elon Musk answered questions from analysts, he didn’t point that out, either.

The number was buried in the official government filing known as Form 10-Q that Tesla filed Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Without the revenue spike – which is unlikely to be repeated, analysts say – the company’s first-quarter loss would have been much deeper than the $702 million that Tesla reported. Gross margins on Tesla’s cars, a key measure of manufacturing profitability and efficiency, would have taken a significant hit."

Those "regulatory credits" are essentially a $200M government subsidy.

How do you not get your dick slapped for that? Okay, let me rephrase - how does a regular company not get their dick slapped? We know the SEC and others treat Musk with kid gloves

The 10Q is what matters.  It's what Elon and his CFO sign, and claim is factual.  The investor letter has virtually no legal weight to it, and the conference call only slightly more than that.  You can omit material things in those and get away with it, but the 10Q better be thorough and factual.  And really, in the grand scheme of Elon Musk's business dealings, a little $200,000,000 deception is small potatoes compared to some of the frauds he's engaged in.

Tesla isn't profitable with government cash, so they're borrowing more money and selling more stock.

The electric-car maker filed Thursday to sell $1.35 billion in notes and about $650 million in shares. Musk, Tesla's chief executive officer, will participate in the offering by buying as much as $10 million in stock.  
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-02/tesla-files-to-offer-2-72m-shares-1-35b-in-notes

SpaceX is great. Keep it going.

Tesla is not. Let it go. (and NO subsidies for electric cars. Let the free market do its thing)

Hey the same guys that built my line built Musks....

Least I got that going for me.

Fidelity, T Rowe Price, and Vanguard are bailing out of Tesla stock.  
https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-share-stake-cut-by-fidelity-2019-5

What have I been saying for two years in this thread?  That their most vulnerable moment will come in fall of 2019 when more big debts are coming due.  This $2b is just a pre-refinancing of the coming debt repayments.  Very little of it will be available to help the company grow out of its problems, especially after the underwriting fees.

Conservatively they need something more like $6-$10b to escape their liquidity crisis, deal with their negative working capital, and start growing again.

Hear me out...  What if I told you, and stay with me for a minute here, that SpaceX isn't really doing so great and is just at the point in its hype cycle that Tesla was at six years ago?

I ran across this today, I'm kind of surprised it hasn't been posted yet.  https://www.topgear.com/car-news/electric/todays-new-tesla-model-3-has-erm-93-miles-range

"Raising capital" sounds so much better than "raising cash".  This will work out to around $6,000 for every Tesla car made this year.

If a person engages in shady business in one area, I can never trust him to be honest in another area.

I'd run from SpaceX as quickly as I would Tesla.

But I am a former broker.  I watched the darling "World-com" destroy countless fortunes.  I watched the golden child "Enron" destroy many more.  I watched the dot-com bubble trade at hundreds of times its earnings on the promise of future profits-- and I watched shares once at 100's of dollars a share go to single digits.

You can trade on hype.  You can't invest on it.

Tesla has GM management syndrome but to the extreme i think

The SEC decided to adopt the maxim “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake”.   .

It’s actually pretty smart for a government agency.

When you owe the bank $507K, that's your problem.  
When you owe the bank $507M, that's the bank's problem.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Tesla Inc Chief Executive Elon Musk personally owes $507 million to Wall Street banks involved in Tesla's stock and debt sale, backed by his stake in the electric car maker, a company filing showed on Thursday.
The lending was disclosed in Tesla's prospectus on Thursday to raise up to $2.3 billion with new shares and convertible debt, and it was $117 million less than the personal loans to Musk disclosed in Tesla's previous prospectus in 2017.
Still, Tesla said that if the price of its stock falls and the banks force Musk to sell some of his shares, that could create additional pressure on the stock.

Tesla jumped over 4% after Tesla disclosed capital raising plans, which soothed investors' recent concerns about the Palo Alto, California company and pulled its stock up from two-year lows.
Musk, who owns 20% of Tesla, has taken personal loans from Wall Street banks for years. A Tesla 2017 prospectus showed $624 million in loans to Musk.

The filing on Thursday showed Musk owed money to three banks working on the capital increase.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc has $213 million in loans outstanding to Musk, while he owes Morgan Stanley $209 million, and another $85 million to Bank of America Corp . Goldman was not mentioned as a personal lender to Musk in the 2017 filing.
Those loans are backed by Musk's shares in Tesla, currently worth a total of around $8 billion. If Tesla's stock declines, then Musk could be forced to sell some of those shares under terms of the loan, according to the Tesla filing.
This is particularly true in the case of Tesla where you have an aggressive and vocal CEO who is prone to pushing the legal limits and gain terms that might run counter to Goldman's conflict of interest policies," Williams said.

Goldman and Citigroup Inc, the top-line book runners in Thursday's capital raise, both have "sell" ratings on Tesla's stock, which is unusual but not exceptional on Wall Street.
At the end of 2018, Musk and his trust had 13.4 million Tesla shares pledged as collateral for personal debts, according to another filing. That is down from 13.8 million shares at the end of 2017.
Tesla, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs declined to talk about the loans. Tesla has a policy that caps executives' borrowings at a quarter of the value of the shares pledged as collateral.
With Tesla repeatedly pushing back forecasts for turning a profit, its stock has dropped 27% year to date.
Musk plans to buy another $10 million worth of shares as part of the sale announced on Thursday.

I wonder what the threshold is before the government bails him out? That may be the long play for Musk.

I'd say they already have. Tesla's pulled billions in subsidies, there's no doubt they would have gone bankrupt already without them.

As for an explicit packaged bailout, his factories aren't union so the Dems won't and I don't see any reason Trump would.

All this bad news across the board and fanbois keep propping the stock up and buying.  Oh wait, that explains it.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/tesla-stock-price-millennials-buying-disastrous-q1-2019-5-1028163296

Hopes and dreams and whatnot.

They are, it sucks for the mid level people and service guys, senior guys will be OK.

The ship has sailed I think in Japan, things could turn around but I am seeing a lot 1 to 2 year old cars on the road and honestly they look like shit, I am not sure if its the paint or body work but they age horribly in our really bad weather. All cars do but especially the reds and blues, maybe thats just my jaded perception.

When the stock drops, the milennials and Tesla fan boys think they're getting this amazing stock at a discount. They believe this company will be bigger than Amazon, Google, and Apple COMBINED. Sometimes I venture over to electrek to read the comments and the derp level there is truly astonishing.

I said it before, but it bears repeating.

It is the exact same sentiment seen with cryptos during winter 2017. All "belief", no understanding or analysis.

Even with the recent plunge the forward P/E ratio is still around 35. Solidly in extreme bubble territory. Ford, GM, Toyota, BMW, and VW are all under 8.

Musk says that Tesla's self-driving cars will make Tesla stock value rise more than 1000%.  
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/02/elon-musk-on-investor-call-autonomy-will-make-tesla-a-500b-company.html

Must has never fully accepted that Tesla is an automobile manufacturer, not a tech company. He thinks he can treat it like a tech company, which is simply untrue. The guy needs to get with reality.

That is very likely. It is also very likely that the Chinese govt. in is league with this ride sharing company to weaken Tesla sales in China in an effort to prop-up their own EV sales.

You can invest on it, but it is a bad idea to do so.

The same demographic owns a shit ton of Aurora Cannabis stock. See the connection?

The difference is Musk and the Tesla fan club still think Tesla is a tech company, not an automobile company. That's how he gets away with all his bullshit and high P/Es.

How on earth are Tesla continuing to defy financial gravity? I don't understand it. The wheels have to come off soon, surely?

Because Tesla are the poster child for the green movement, there's a lot of denial to go around, but reality has to catch up soon, and I think it will be in the form of big auto finally waking up and stomping on Tesla's market.

U.S. trade officials rejected Tesla's bid for relief from 25% tariffs on the Chinese-made Autopilot "brain" of its Model 3 and other electric vehicles.

Made in China 2025, a program aimed at growing China's prowess in 10 strategic industries dominated by the United States, is at the heart of trade negotiations and U.S. demands for sweeping changes to China's policies.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china-tesla/u-s-rejects-tesla-bid-for-tariff-exemption-for-autopilot-brain-idUSKCN1S91ZX

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This doesn't exactly seem like a good time for American companies to be expanding their manufacturing operations in China.  

Tesla stock is down to 225 today.  It dropped more than ten percent in the last week, and hasn't been this low in two years.  
There's a lot of speculation in the stock boards about Elon Musk being hit with a margin call, if the stock price drops to around $200-210.

I know a few current and former Tesla production line folks. They said line fuck ups were pretty common along with accidents. High turn over due to shitty conditions and management were a common theme when talking about it.

Elon personally took over the autonomous driving division last week because no one can get it done like he can.  I would expect another mass exodus of engineering talent in short order

He’s going to brute force the wrong hardware to work with the right software and make level 2 automation become level 5 via software patch.