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As much as I'd like the company to succeed, it seems frivolous to dismiss the concerns as short sellers' PR projects and media's desire to drive traffic through

As much as I'd like the company to succeed, it seems frivolous to dismiss the concerns as short sellers' PR projects and media's desire to drive traffic through clickbait. Bond markets are largely dominated by institutional players who've seen every PR trick in the book, pay astute attention to fundamentals in hopes of finding a minuscule mispricing opportunity, and even they are not treating TSLA positively https://money.cnn.com/2018/09/10/technology/business/tesla-stock-bonds-elon-musk/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2018/09/10/technology/business/tesla-s...

Fuckyourself 8y ago
No one is dismissing concerns, this article was simply made to point out that there has been a never ending cascade of negative stories about tesla and a lot of people want it to fail.
jsight 8y ago
OTOH, some of those same investors know that not all tricks are aimed at them, and some tricks are effective. In this very thread, we have people who are hesitant to buy the car due to solvency concerns: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18222268 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18222268 Car companies and rumors of solvency issues can often turn into real solvency issues due to the nature of the automotive business and the impact of rumors on sales.
AtlasBarfed 8y ago
Does that show the debt servicing costs vs the expected profitability of the current production pace? The August/September production numbers were pretty robust, and given the profit margin on the current models I could see the debt being serviced. The tweets and executives leaving are just drama. Tesla will make or break on the production rate and the profitability per car, both of which seemed on target, but I haven't seen definitive numbers.
- threeseed 8y ago
  > Tesla will make or break on the production rate and the profitability per car Sure. For now. But every car company is releasing electric cars over the next few years. Many of which look like serious threats against Tesla's more profitable models. Electric as a differentiator will disappear and all that will be left is (a) brand, (b) design, (c) quality, (d) service. None of which Tesla is better than its competitors at. And you need executives around to be able to resolve this.
  - reissbaker 8y ago
    You need a charging network to fix range anxiety, and infrastructure to make batteries at scale. Charging network the major brands don't really have an answer for yet. And as for batteries, the major brands are still stuck at the small batch, high end segment of the market, because no one makes enough batteries to tackle the lower ends of the market except Tesla — everyone else just buys their batteries from Asia. BMW is trying to reopen their old, shuttered plants, but still are only aiming to be able to support 20-25% of their cars being electric by 2025, despite claiming that a fraction of that by 2020 constitutes "mass production." [1] That's a long "for now." [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaclyntrop/2018/07/01/bmw-is-gearing-up-to-mass-produce-batteries-in-house-for-2020 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaclyntrop/2018/07/01/bmw-is-ge...
    - gamblor956 8y ago
      BMW sold nearly 600k each of the last few years, so even if "only" a quarter of their sales are EV, that's still almost as many cars as Tesla sells each year. And that's just one competitor out of a dozen, all of whom have significantly more marketing muscle and better supply chain and maintenance networks than Tesla.
      - Latteland 8y ago
        bmw should theoretically be able to make good electric vehicles, but jaguar and porsche aren't making evs at scale. The new ipace will be a 20k car, the porsche was about 20k/year, and audi's etron something will not be available except for special order. I think they are being dragged into making evs, but there is a shortage of batteries at least at the current time. Of course these companies can make great cars, but it goes against their expertise in gasoline drive trains, and their dealers will be significantly impacted by less maintenance on evs.

Fuckyourself 8y ago

No one is dismissing concerns, this article was simply made to point out that there has been a never ending cascade of negative stories about tesla and a lot of people want it to fail.

jsight 8y ago

OTOH, some of those same investors know that not all tricks are aimed at them, and some tricks are effective. In this very thread, we have people who are hesitant to buy the car due to solvency concerns: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18222268 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18222268 Car companies and rumors of solvency issues can often turn into real solvency issues due to the nature of the automotive business and the impact of rumors on sales.

AtlasBarfed 8y ago

Does that show the debt servicing costs vs the expected profitability of the current production pace? The August/September production numbers were pretty robust, and given the profit margin on the current models I could see the debt being serviced. The tweets and executives leaving are just drama. Tesla will make or break on the production rate and the profitability per car, both of which seemed on target, but I haven't seen definitive numbers.

threeseed 8y ago
> Tesla will make or break on the production rate and the profitability per car Sure. For now. But every car company is releasing electric cars over the next few years. Many of which look like serious threats against Tesla's more profitable models. Electric as a differentiator will disappear and all that will be left is (a) brand, (b) design, (c) quality, (d) service. None of which Tesla is better than its competitors at. And you need executives around to be able to resolve this.
- reissbaker 8y ago
  You need a charging network to fix range anxiety, and infrastructure to make batteries at scale. Charging network the major brands don't really have an answer for yet. And as for batteries, the major brands are still stuck at the small batch, high end segment of the market, because no one makes enough batteries to tackle the lower ends of the market except Tesla — everyone else just buys their batteries from Asia. BMW is trying to reopen their old, shuttered plants, but still are only aiming to be able to support 20-25% of their cars being electric by 2025, despite claiming that a fraction of that by 2020 constitutes "mass production." [1] That's a long "for now." [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaclyntrop/2018/07/01/bmw-is-gearing-up-to-mass-produce-batteries-in-house-for-2020 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaclyntrop/2018/07/01/bmw-is-ge...
  - gamblor956 8y ago
    BMW sold nearly 600k each of the last few years, so even if "only" a quarter of their sales are EV, that's still almost as many cars as Tesla sells each year. And that's just one competitor out of a dozen, all of whom have significantly more marketing muscle and better supply chain and maintenance networks than Tesla.
    - Latteland 8y ago
      bmw should theoretically be able to make good electric vehicles, but jaguar and porsche aren't making evs at scale. The new ipace will be a 20k car, the porsche was about 20k/year, and audi's etron something will not be available except for special order. I think they are being dragged into making evs, but there is a shortage of batteries at least at the current time. Of course these companies can make great cars, but it goes against their expertise in gasoline drive trains, and their dealers will be significantly impacted by less maintenance on evs.