I understand people WANT to defend Tesla here, but there are some really rubbish arguments people are trying to push and especially some that border on conspira

I understand people WANT to defend Tesla here, but there are some really rubbish arguments people are trying to push and especially some that border on conspiracy theories. Tesla has real problems: The first is that it's failing to meet production targets. There's no way around this, the company is on rocky times and while I'm sure that given unlimited time and resources they could get to the production targets we don't live in a world with infinite time and money. Other players in this market are moving quickly, if you want to see a compelling example of electric technology the Hybrids from Toyota are great, and they're producing 10 million cars a year. So it's not a sure thing that Tesla ever becomes a leading car manufacturer (and therefore pays off its debt and shareholders). Even then, there are serious questions about the full automation of their production line - what is that point of a robot doing everything if you're paying more to run the robot than a human would cost to do the same thing? Industry analysts aren't idiots, and neither are the other car manufacturers. Even if the Tesla factory goes fully automatic years before other car companies you might find it's actually not economically beneficial. So all these problems they've imposed on themselves may not even provide benefits. The second is that their self-driving program is hitting similar bumps to the automation. They've rolled out something early and they've opened themselves up to huge liabilities. There's good reason other car manufacturers are being very careful with the roll out- liability from accidents could bankrupt your company. The final thing is that Tesla's accounts as a standalone company don't look stellar. They have a lot of short term debt and they need to roll that over at a time where they're missing targets and killing customers. That's a huge economic problem. The result will be either they fix problems 1 & 2 or Musk will have to issue stock at the risk of losing some control, or pump more of his own money in. One final point I'd like to make about this: Elon Musk wanted Tesla to move everyone to electric cars. For him, Toyota or Ford selling electric cars would be a victory. For Tesla and it's shareholders that's not true. So whilst Musk may succeed, it's not necessarily going to happen through Tesla. He's done a great job of scaring other companies into Electric and autonomous vehicles. That does not mean Tesla will ever pay off to shareholders.