There Is Just One Thing Preventing Elon Musk"s Vision From Coming True: The Laws Of Physics

When Elon Musk stepped on stage at Tesla’s product-launch event earlier this month, he knew the market’s confidence in Tesla’s brand had sunk to an all-time low since he took over the company a decade ago. So, he resorted to a tactic that should be familiar to anybody who has been following the company: Shock and awe.

While the event was ostensibly scheduled to introduce Tesla’s new semi-truck – a model that won’t make it’s market debut for another two years, assuming Tesla sticks to its product-rollout deadline – Musk had a surprise in store: A new model of the Tesla Roadster that, he bragged, would be the fastest production car ever sold.

Musk made similarly lofty claims about the battery life and performance of both vehicles. The Tesla semi-trucks, he said, would be able to travel for 500 miles on a single charge. The roadster could clock a staggering 620 – more than double the closest challenger.

There was just one problem, as Tesla fans would later find out, courtesy of Bloomberg: None of it was true.

In fact, many of the promises defy the capabilities of modern battery technology.

Elon Musk knows how to make promises. Even by his own standards, the promises made last week while introducing two new Tesla vehicles—the heavy-duty Semi Truck and the speedy Roadster—are monuments of envelope pushing.

 

To deliver, according to close observers of battery technology, Tesla would have to far exceed what is currently thought possible.

 

Take the Tesla Semi: Musk vowed it would haul an unprecedented 80,000 pounds for 500 miles on a single charge, then recharge 400 miles of range in 30 minutes. That would require, based on Bloomberg estimates, a charging system that"s 10 times more powerful than one of the fastest battery-charging networks on the road today—Tesla’s own Superchargers.

 

The diminutive Tesla Roadster is promised to be the quickest production car ever built. But that achievement would mean squeezing into its tiny frame a battery twice as powerful as the largest battery currently available in an electric car.

 

These claims are so far beyond current industry standards for electric vehicles that they would require either advances in battery technology or a new understanding of how batteries are put to use, said Sam Jaffe, battery analyst for Cairn Energy Research in Boulder, Colorado. In some cases, experts suspect Tesla might be banking on technological improvements between now and the time when new vehicles are actually ready for delivery.

 

“I don"t think they"re lying,” Jaffe said. “I just think they left something out of the public reveal that would have explained how these numbers work."

While Jaffe seems inclined to give Tesla the benefit of the doubt, there’s little, if anything, in Musk’s recent behavior to justify this level of credulity. In recent months, Musk has repeatedly suffered the humiliation of seeing his lies and half-truths exposed. For example, the self-styled “visionary” claimed during the unveiling of the Model 3 Sedan that he would have 1,500 copies of the new model ready for customers by the end of the third quarter. Instead, the company managed a meager 260 models as factory-line workers at its Fremont, Calif. factory struggled to assemble the vehicles by hand as the Model 3 assembly line hadn’t been completed.

Increasingly agitated customers who placed deposits with Tesla back in March 2016 have begun asking for refunds, only to be chagrined by the company’s sluggish response. While nobody in the mainstream press has (somewhat bafflingly) made the connection, Tesla revealed earlier this month that it burned an unprecedented $1.4 billion of cash during the third quarter - or roughly $16 million per day - despite Elon Musk"s assurance that Tesla had its "all-time best quarter" for Model S and X deliveries.

And let’s not forget the fiasco surrounding Tesla’s autopilot software. Musk has repeatedly exaggerated its performance claims. And customers who paid more than $8,000 for a software upgrade more than a year ago have been repeatedly disappointed by delays and sub-par performance.

Musk’s exaggerations about the Tesla Roadster were particularly egregious.

Tesla claims that its new $200,000 Roadster is the quickest production car ever made, clocking zero to 60 in 1.9 seconds. Even crazier is the car’s unprecedented battery range: some 620 miles on a single charge. That"s a longer range than any battery-powered vehicle on the road—almost twice as long as Tesla"s class-leading Model S and Model X.

 

To achieve such power and range, Musk said the tiny Roadster will need to pack a massive 200-kilowatt-hour battery. That’s twice the size of any battery Tesla currently has on the road. Musk has previously said he won"t be making the packs bigger on the Model S and Model X because of space constraints. So how can he double the pack size in the smaller Roadster?

 

BNEF’s Morsy has a twofold answer. First, he expects Tesla will probably double-stack battery packs, one on top of the other, beneath the Roadster"s floor. That creates some engineering problems for the battery-management system, but those should not be insurmountable. Still, Morsy said, the batteries required would be too large to fit in such a small frame.

 

“I really don’t think the car you saw last week had the full 200 kilowatt hours in it,” Morsy said. “I don’t think it’s physically possible to do that right now."

Is it possible that, thanks to incremental improvements in battery density and cost, Musk somehow manages to hit these lofty targets? Perhaps, though, as Bloomberg points out, the fact that Musk is basing these claims on a set of projections that haven’t yet been realized is hardly confidence inspiring.

To be sure, there’s an important caveat to Musk’s claims. While they may be staggeringly exaggerated, there’s still the possibility that incremental improvements in battery technology will make these targets more feasible by the time the models hit the market.

Again, Musk may be banking on the future. While Tesla began taking deposits on the Roadster immediately—$50,000 for the base model—the first vehicles won"t be delivered until 2020. Meanwhile, battery density has been improving at a rate of 7.5 percent a year, meaning that by the time production starts, packs will be smaller and more powerful, even without a major breakthrough in battery chemistry.

 

“The trend in battery density is, I think, central to any claim Tesla made about both the Roadster and the Semi,” Morsy said. “That’s totally fair. The assumptions on a pack in 2020 shouldn’t be the same ones you use today."

However, in its analysis of the feasibility of Musk’s claims, Bloomberg overlooked one crucial detail: Back in August, the company"s veteran director of battery technology, Kurt Kelty, unexpectedly resigned to "explore new opportunities," abruptly ending a tenure with the company that stretched for more than a decade, and comes at a critical time for Elon Musk.

Kelty’s resignation – part of an exodus of high-level executives that is alarming in and of itself - hardly inspires confidence in Tesla’s ability to innovate. We’ve noticed a trend with Tesla: The more the company underdelivers, the more Musk overpromises.

In our opinion, this is not a sustainable business strategy.  
 

Morgan Stanley: Tesla Will Surge To $400 Before Crashing To $200

When it comes to Wall Street cheerleaders, Tesla has few closer friends than Morgan Stanley"s Adam Jonas (current price target of $379). To be sure, the relationship cuts both ways, with Jonas relentless enthusiasm "for the EV maker granting Morgan Stanley a reserved spot for any future debt, convert and equity underwriting, as well as associated IB fees.  Yet, following the recent volatility in Tesla"s business model, in which the "production hell" that is Model 3 has been quietly relegated to the latest and greatest hype involving the company"s truck (funded in turn by deposits for the new Tesla $250,000 flying roadster) as well as stock price, not even Jonas can pretend that it"s smooth sailing ahead.

And so, in his latest forecast released overnight which has the same interval of confidence as a bitcoin price prediction, Jonas previews the stock performance of Tesla over the coming year, writing that he expects "Tesla shares to be extremely volatile in 2018, divided into two stages: (1) The alleviation of production bottlenecks with strong cash inflow, and (2) mounting concerns over the sustainability of the competitive moat."

His enthusiasm is even more constrained in his thesis:

Our Equal-weight rating on Tesla expresses our view that any number of positive and negative forces influencing the stock are more or less in equilibrium. While our $379 price target offers 20% upside from current levels, we believe such upside is less interesting on a risk-adjusted basis. From a shorter-term trading perspective, we anticipate Tesla’s stock price may  reach highs in the range of $400 or more over the next few months before facing some more serious headwinds later in the year that could take the stock significantly below current levels.

While the upside forecast is hardly new for Jonas, the downside is certainly a headscratcher for the TSLA faithful, because if Musk is suddenly left without his biggest Wall Street fan, who else is left to drum up interest in a business model that would send PT Barnum in an orgasm of shivering delight.

And just in case there is some doubt about Jonas" sincerity, he provides the following five bullets to justify why even he has gotten cold feet:

1. It is our working assumption that Tesla’s battery module production bottlenecks may be resolved in weeks. It is not possible to prove precisely when problems with zone 2 will be overcome, if they ever are at all. There is only evidence that Tesla is throwing its human and financial capital at the problem. Elon Musk stated that it is better to be late and get it right than to be early and get it wrong. We agree. Tesla is trying to make battery packs with extremely high levels of volume and unprecedented automation with bespoke high-speed robotics. In high-volume battery manufacturing, robotics is a core competency and a competitive advantage.


2. We believe that Tesla baked in flexibility to allow for a highly unpredictable production ramp. Tesla’s Model launch timeline was always seen as extremely aggressive. When the July 2017 launch date was originally communicated to the market, we had seen it as a stretch goal and a form of supply chain management to increase the probability of a successful volume ramp in 2018. Given Tesla’s experience with the Model S and X launches and the unprecedented level of vertical integration and automation of the battery assembly, we believe Tesla had negotiated unusual levels of flexibility with its supply base compared to its prior launches and the industry standard.


3. The motivation of the Tier 1 and Tier 2 supplier base to be involved with the Model 3 project is a relevant factor in de-risking the ramp. It is our understanding that the Model 3 has been seen as a ‘trophy contract’ for the supply base. For any Tier 1 supplier wanting to be associated with the cutting edge of automotive technology (electric, autonomous) the Model 3 was a ‘must win.’ Tesla’s early success with Model S had a profound impact on its image in the supplier community. Where suppliers previously viewed Tesla with high degrees of  skepticism/trepidation, many of the same suppliers were willing to prioritize supply of key systems and even to colocate key production facilities near Tesla’s factory. We believe flexibility on working capital during the sensitive early ramp phase could have reasonably been a part of the negotiation process.


4. The Model 3 working capital arrangement may be highly favorable to Tesla, at least in the short term, during the inflection of the ramp… substantially alleviating concerns over near term liquidity. Like many auto OEMs, Tesla pays its suppliers over many weeks (as long as 60 to 90 days depending on the supplier) while it collects from its customers far faster, particularly given Tesla’s ownership of its distribution channel. Tesla’s own financials bear this out as it collects on its receivables 10 to 20x faster than it pays its suppliers. During times of fast production growth (as we’d expect through 1Q/2Q18), this can pull forward significant amounts of cash which can serve to address much of the market’s concerns over near-term liquidity.


5. Following a hypothetical 1H18 pop in the share price, we could see scope for longer-term risks in the story to come to the fore. The key drivers of our downgrade last May are 2-fold: (1) our view that the global addressable market may not be as accessible as the market expects, and (2) increasing encroachment from consumer electrics and mega-tech firms who are planning comprehensive strategies focused on shared, electric and autonomous transport systems in direct competition with Tesla. We expect a steady and increasing amount of evidence to hit the market as 2018 develops that could stunt the enthusiasm of surmounting the Model 3 production hurdles. Admittedly, we cannot be precise with the timing of positive (1H) and negative (2H) catalysts that could move the stock significantly in the quarters ahead, leaving us EW on the stock.

As a result of the above, Jonas now assumes only 1,000 Model 3 deliveries in 4Q, down from 10,000 deliveries previously. That said, he leaves his 2018 forecast of 120,000 Model 3  deliveries unchanged, and some more details: 

We took 2018 GAAP operating profit from ($688) to ($1,001). Our 2018 GAAP EPS (ex stock comp) estimates went from ($3.66) to ($6.17) and our US GAAP EPS estimate went from ($6.58) to ($9.00). From 2018 through 2020, our average GAAP OP forecast moved from positive $280mm to negative $70mm. From 2021 through 2025, our average GAAP OP forecast moved from $4,491 to $4,242…. A 5% cut. The cuts are even smaller in the out-years. Our Tesla Mobility forecasts remain unchanged. We roll forward our DCF start date to December 1st, and our price target remains unchanged at $379

As of this moment, investors appear just as confused about Tesla"s future as its former biggest fanboy, located almost exactly halfway betwen the two stated extremes...

Musk Fires Back: Blasts "Hotbed Of MISinformation" In Racial Discrimination Lawsuit

A couple of days ago we noted a lawsuit filed against Tesla in the Superior Court in Alameda County which, among other things, alleged that his Fremont manufacturing facility was a "hotbed for racist behavior" in which employees and supervisors "regularly use the "N word."" Bloomberg summarized the case as follows:

Tesla Inc.’s production floor is a "hotbed for racist behavior," more than 100 African-American employees claimed in a lawsuit in which they alleged black workers at the electric carmaker suffer severe and pervasive harassment.

 

The employees are seeking permission from a judge to sue as a group and are seeking unspecified general and punitive monetary damages as well as an order for Tesla to implement policies to prevent and correct harassment.

 

"Although Tesla stands out as a groundbreaking company at the forefront of the electric car revolution, its standard operating procedure at the Tesla factory is pre-Civil Rights era race discrimination," the employees said in the complaint, filed Monday in California’s Alameda County Superior Court.

 

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Marcus Vaughn, who worked in the Fremont factory from April 23 to Oct. 31. Vaughn alleged that employees and supervisors regularly used the “N word” around him and other black colleagues. Vaughn said he complained in writing to human resources and Musk and was terminated in late October for "not having a positive attitude."

But, in an angry blog post published on Tesla"s website, the embattled electric car darling has fired back saying that media reports of a "hotbed of racist behavior" at Tesla are nothing more than a "hotbed of misinformation" spread by a trial lawyer who "has a long track record of extorting money for meritless claims and using the threat of media attacks and expensive trial costs to get companies to settle."

There are a number of other false statements in the class action lawsuit alleging a so-called “hotbed of discrimination”:

 

- There is only one actual plaintiff (Marcus Vaughn), not 100. The reference to 100 is a complete fabrication with no basis in fact at all.

 

- The plaintiff was employed by a temp agency, not by Tesla as claimed in the lawsuit.

 

- Marcus was not fired, he was on a six month temp contract that simply ended as contracted.

 

- His email to Elon was about his commute and Tesla’s shuttles, which was addressed as he requested. There was no mention of racial discrimination whatsoever.

 

- The trial lawyer who filed this lawsuit has a long track record of extorting money for meritless claims and using the threat of media attacks and expensive trial costs to get companies to settle. At Tesla, we would rather pay ten times the settlement demand in legal fees and fight to the ends of the Earth than give in to extortion and allow this abuse of the legal system.

Given those silly fiduciary duties he has as a Tesla board member, Elon may not want to openly flaunt his willingness to "pay ten times" more in legal fees just to settle a personal vendetta...just a thought.

Meanwhile, Elon also decided to address a portion of a firm-wide email published by Bloomberg suggesting the Tesla employee who felt discriminated against should have been more "thick-skinned" by publishing the entire email that, in fact, confims that Elon said the guy should be more "thick-skinned."

We would also like to clear up the description of Elon’s prior email to employees. It is dedicated to ensuring that Tesla employees always try to do the right thing, that being a jerk is not allowed, that everyone should be contributing to an atmosphere where people look forward to coming to work in the morning and that no one should feel excluded, uncomfortable, or unfairly treated. As one of many points in that email, Elon also explained that if someone makes an offensive or hurtful statement on a single occasion, but subsequently offers a sincere apology, then we believe that apology should be accepted. The counterpoint would be that a single careless comment should ruin a person’s life and career, even if they truly regret their action and do their best to make amends. That would be a cold world with no forgiveness and no heart.

Of course, somehow we suspect that Tesla shareholders would prefer that Elon focus on learning how to weld rather than spend his time publicly responding to what he clearly views to be a "frivolous" lawsuit.

When Will The Tesla Stock-Promote Finally Fail

Via AdventuresInCapitalism.com,

The history of industry leading consumer tech products has not been kind to investors who overstay their welcome. You need look no further than all the hundreds of notable recent failures, to realize that these companies almost always flame out. The list below (in no particular order) is a nice trip down memory lane of former favorites, that are now either bankrupt or shells of their former selves—often consumed by some other entity that fortunately put them out of their misery. Of course, the list below, is just from the past decade or two;

Palm, Gateway, Research In Motion, GoPro, FitBit, Heelys, Handspring, Compaq, BlueRay, Garmin, Delorean, Casio, Sega, Tamaguchi, TiVo, Betamax, AOL, Walkman (Sony), Set Top Boxes (Scientific American), Kodak, Atari, Napster, Netscape, Polaroid, etc.

Let’s just say, it’s hard at the top. You must guess each change in technology, each generation of improvement and design it for fickle consumers, while constantly outlaying capital for research and development that may never go anywhere. All the time, others are constantly trying to overtake you.

If you look at the lifecycles of these companies, they often follow a similar trajectory from ingenious creation with huge margins, to a few generations of new products with smaller margins, to massive competition as deep pocketed competitors and venture capitalists try and emulate your product, to missing a product cycle, to becoming obsolete. These consumer product companies rarely last more than a decade; often just a few years. In the end, consumer focused tech is vicious and Darwinian, with very few long-term competitive advantages.

Of course, Tesla (TSLA – USA) is something of an anomaly here. While the companies in the above list, all produced prodigious cash while they were industry leaders, Tesla seems to incinerate cash while in the lead—using repeated equity and now debt offerings to plug the hole. While other companies had a huge stash of cash to fall back on when others overtook them, Tesla’s cash balance leaves it only a few quarters from insolvency. Add in a host of questionable related party transactions, convoluted financial statements (what the hell is pro-forma revenue?), the inability to ever hit company guidance, deceptive disclosures and a business that seems to lose more money with each vehicle it produces, is it any wonder that Tesla is one of the most shorted large-cap stocks today? If I had to choose the most obvious pending bankruptcy of a large-cap stock, it is clearly Tesla.

At the same time, I have to give Elon Musk credit. He has created a company that is a rather successful cult, even if it is still a failing auto company. Every time that skeptics ask real questions, he deflects them with futuristic sci-fi pronouncements. What other automobile CEO is obsessed with Mars while his assembly line fumbles along? What other CEO talks of hyperloops, while his main product on auto-pilot will kill you if used as currently designed. This “visionary “status has deferred timelines and made all logical financial metrics meaningless to investors—which may be the point of all his hubristic talk in the first place. Extend, pretend, blatantly mislead investors, raise more capital. It’s the junior mining model—applied to auto production—on a scale that would make anyone in Vancouver blush.

Automobile production is a decidedly unsexy industry, with massive capital outlays, high fixed costs, huge cyclicality and low returns on invested capital throughout the cycle—the technical definition of an awful business. The leading players produce millions of vehicles a year, yet trade at mid-single digit cash flow multiples, due to how awful the industry is. Why is Tesla valued like a high-tech growth stock, where investors ignore accelerating operating losses; if the best-case outcome is that it becomes a cyclical auto manufacturer with depressing returns on capital? A new technology like electronic vehicles (EV) sounds cutting edge, but so was automatic transmission, air conditioning, power steering, fuel injection, etc. All the other auto makers copied these technologies and caught up within a few years—much like what is now happening in EV. So, how has Tesla become such an epic bubble, if it is competing (poorly) in an industry that is notorious for destroying capital? It is clearly the promotional genius of Elon Musk. Naturally, he won’t be the first or last “visionary” to have a comeuppance.

So, going back to my question, which is the genesis of this article; when will the Tesla stock promote finally implode?

Long-time readers of this site know that I no longer short companies. This was a hard-learned lesson from when I was short Research in Motion, about two years too soon and watched as it went up 3-fold on me—before ultimately collapsing as I had predicted. Unfortunately, I was not short much by the time of the collapse as a small position had mushroomed into something pretty large and I was forced to keep covering at accelerating losses—lest I be forced to sell good longs to fund the repeated margin requirements of the short. While my thesis had been right, my timing was wrong. As long as investors believed in Blackberry, it didn’t matter that Apple and Samsung were building competing products that were likely to be better. It didn’t matter that Chinese players were producing low-end models that were likely to be almost as good, but at a fraction of the cost. It didn’t matter that competition from cash rich competitors grabbing for market share would crush margins. No one on Wall Street cared—until the iPhone finally showed up and people realized it was better. Then the Research in Motion collapse began.

For the past year, Tesla was a bet on pending mass production of affordable EV cars. Earlier this summer, we saw the first of the Tesla Model 3s to be produced. Even the normally ebullient journalists struggled to hide their disappointment with the product. This is understandable, dozens of competing EV models are coming, starting as soon as 2018. Will they be better than the Model 3? Based on what we know thus far, they’re unlikely to be worse. As they continue to advance EV technology, auto companies with far greater resources than Tesla, will eventually surpass it—much like with Blackberry. Then again, Research in Motion was coining money while at the top of its game—Tesla consumes money, while racking up debt. This won’t be a game of margins and profits—all the incumbents need to do is show that they can break even producing a comparable vehicle. At that point, the funding for Tesla will subside and its debt will bury it.

I was too early with RIMM and I don’t want to be too early with TSLA. So, I’ve been patient. I’ve been waiting for the competitors to show up. They’re now coming. The Tesla Model 3 is a dud—competing products will begin showing up in 2018 and they look much better. However, I’m not going to short TSLA. I’m going to use long-dated puts—much like I’ve played all subsequent dead-man-walking companies with an uncertain mortality date.

The problem with puts, is that long-dated puts are expensive. Fortunately, there’s a way to offset this cost, the bear put spread. This is the purchase of a put and the sale of a put at a lower price. By doing this, your gains are capped by the price of the put you’ve sold, but since your cost is much lower, you get to play with many more of them. Besides, you don’t need Tesla at zero to win with these, you just need Tesla’s share price to drop materially from here. If my timing is wrong, my losses are small and I can reload when they expire. Besides, I don’t expect TSLA to be a zero immediately. It is much more likely to limp towards zero, as opposed to imploding towards zero—making the bear put spread even more attractive than straight puts. Let’s just say that for the past few months, I’ve been adding to this position. The net cost of the spread is cheap and the timing now seems increasingly pregnant.

When will Tesla’s stock promote finally implode? When people realize that it’s a cash incinerating vanity project for Elon Musk, at a time when new, better products are coming to the market. That point is coming soon. Very soon.

Amid Management Exodus, Tesla Fires Hundreds Of Workers

One month after Tesla lost its head of business development who wished to "spend more time with his family", and just weeks after the EV company"s veteran battery technology director also unexpectedly quit amid a growing senior management exodus (full list at the bottom of this article), Tesla decided to even out the ranks on the bottom as well, and fired "hundreds of workers" this week, including engineers, managers and factory workers even as the company struggles to expand its manufacturing and product line, according to the Mercury News which first reported of the mass layoffs.

Workers estimated between 400 and 700 employees have been fired, although Tesla refused to say how many employees were let go, and added that it expects employee turnover to be similar to last year’s attrition. Tesla employs about 10,000 workers at its Fremont factory; it lost $336 million in the second quarter, and burned through a record $1.16 billion in cash in Q2, or $13 million per day.

In September, Tesla announced it was cutting 63 positions at SolarCity Corp.’s Roseville, California office; the staff was dismissed after Tesla bought the company, which manufacturers and installs rooftop solar panels, for about $2 billion in 2016.  SolarCity had over 12,200 employees as of the end of 2016.

The dismissals come at a critical point for the company, which is scrambling to increase vehicle production five-fold and reach a broader market with its new Model 3 sedan. The electric vehicle maker missed targets for producing the lower-cost sedan, manufacturing only 260 last quarter despite a wait list of more than 450,000 customers. It was later revealed by the WSJ that Tesla"s "dirty secret" for the unexpected production problem is that it was banging out parts of the Model 3 by hand.

According to the Mercury News, this week’s dismissals have not been reported to the state Employment Development Department, a spokeswoman said. The state generally requires companies to report layoffs of more than 50 employees in a 30-day period. Tesla countered that the performance-based departures were not considered layoffs and not subject to state notifications.

In an absurd demonstration of Musk"s bizarre management style, the company said the mass terminations have "generally boosted worker morale", as high-performing employees have been rewarded. it was unclear what the 700 layoffs, pardon, exit events did to worker morale.

While the company said this week’s dismissals were the result of a company-wide annual review, claiming some workers received promotions and bonuses, and expects to hire for the “vast majority” of new vacancies, insisting the mass terminations were not layoffs, some critics have noted that these are layoffs "plain and simple" as a company does not fire 700 people at the same time in the middle of the year due to "performance" issues.

“As with any company, especially one of over 33,000 employees, performance reviews also occasionally result in employee departures,” a spokesman said. “Tesla is continuing to grow and hire new employees around the world.”

Still, validating the argument that these were indeed layoffs, in interviews former and current employees told the Mercury News little or no warning preceded the dismissals. The workers interviewed include trained engineers working on vehicle design and production, a supervisor and factory employees.

"Workers spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared reprisals from the company. Employees said the firings have lowered morale through many departments. Several said Model X, Model S and former SolarCity operations seemed to be targeted."

Among those fired was Juan Maldonado, a production worker, who felt the tap on his shoulder on Thursday. He worked at Tesla for nearly four years, and said he heard about 60 other workers in his section of the factory were dismissed. Maldonado, 48, said he ran late for work twice in recent months, but thought he had straightened things out with his supervisor. Now, he said, “I’m going to try to find a job.”

The dismissals come after Tesla said it built just 260 Model 3 sedans during the third quarter, less than a fifth of its 1,500-unit forecast. The company has offered scant detail about the problems it’s having producing the car, although the previously noted WSJ report suggests that Tesla is having severe manufacturing bottlenecks forcing workers to build parts of the Model 3 by hand. The vehicle’s entry price starts at $35,000, roughly half the cost of Tesla’s least-expensive Model S sedan. When unveiling the Model 3, Musk joked to employees they would be going through “production hell” to meet demand for the new car.  Little did many the employees know that hell would come in the form of a pink slip.

As Bloomberg notes, a delayed ramp-up risks the ire of some of the almost half million reservation holders who started paying $1,000 deposits early last year. On Oct. 12, Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk posted a video on Instagram of what he said was a stamping press producing body panels for the Model 3.

Musk has told investors the company is focused on Model 3 production and expects to eventually build 10,000 cars a week. The manufacturing will become highly automated, but Musk told investors during the early ramp up he expected high overtime costs.

* * *

Meanwhile, Tesla has faced ongoing discontent from some factory workers, who have complained about work conditions and wages below the auto industry average. Tesla has a hearing before the National Labor Relations Board in November for charges that company supervisors and security guards harassed workers distributing union literature. Tesla denied the accusations.

Openly pro-union workers were among those fired this week. Some believe they were targeted, even as the company denied union activities played a role in the dismissals.

Quoted by the Mercury News, Michael Harley, managing editor at Kelley Blue Book and Autotrader, thought the dismissals could be an effort to improve vehicle production. “It’s no secret that Tesla’s Model 3 development and ramp-up for production has been derailed,” Harley said. “A major change in staff – whether dismissal or layoff – is an indication that there is an upper level movement to put the train back on the tracks.”

Whatever the reason behind the "non-layoffs", one thing is clear: Tesla has a management exodus problem as demonstrated by this extensive list of recent senior level departures from the company, including two of the most important, non CEO positions in just the past three months.

Tesla's Dirty Secret: It Was Banging Out Parts Of The Model 3 By Hand

As it turns out, Elon Musk’s warning earlier this year that the Tesla Model 3 roll out would be “production hell” was an understatement.

In a damning – if unsurprising – report, the Wall Street Journal revealed Friday that Tesla managed to produce only a tiny fraction of the 1,500 Model 3 sedans that it promised customers because key parts of the cars are still being assembled by hand, far away from the assembly line at the company’s Fremont factory. As of a few weeks ago, the advanced assembly line that Tesla has long boasted about - and which it had spent billions upon billions in capex to build -  wasn’t ready and the company was working frantically to try and finish it, while keeping the arrangement a secret from purchasers and investors.

More apropos, the report strongly suggests that Tesla’s Monday warning about “production bottlenecks” might not be its last as Elon Musk’s dream of building millions of the "everyman’s electric car" melts before his eyes. 

Unknown to analysts, investors and the hundreds of thousands of customers who signed up to buy it, as recently as early September major portions of the Model 3 were still being banged out by hand, away from the automated production line, according to people familiar with the matter.

While the car’s production began in early July, the advanced assembly line Tesla has boasted of building still wasn’t fully ready as of a few weeks ago, the people said. Tesla’s factory workers had been piecing together parts of the cars in a special area while the company feverishly worked to finish the machinery designed to produce Model 3’s at a rate of thousands a week, the people said.

As one analyst quoted by WSJ snydely pointed out, “that’s not how mass production vehicles are made.”

Automotive experts say it is unusual to be building large parts of a car by hand during production. “That’s not how mass production vehicles are made,” said Dennis Virag, a manufacturing consultant who has worked in the automotive industry for 40 years. “That’s horse-and-carriage type manufacturing. That’s not today’s automotive world.”

When called for comment by WSJ, an angry Tesla spokesperson delivered a statement that could have been taken right out of Trump"s playbook, slamming what Tesla described as a "decade-long campaign of misleading reporting" by the WSJ.

In a statement, a Tesla spokeswoman declined to answer questions for this article and said, “For over a decade, the WSJ has relentlessly attacked Tesla with misleading articles that, with few exceptions, push or exceed the boundaries of journalistic integrity.

While it is possible that this article could be an exception, that is extremely unlikely.” The Journal disagrees with the company’s categorization of its journalism.Musk has staked Tesla’s future (not to mention the company’s massively inflated valuation) on the success of the Model 3, which was intended to be Tesla’s first attempt at building an electric vehicle for “mass market” consumers, priced at a relatively affordable $35,000 a car.

As WSJ pointed out, a memorable statement made by Musk during the July launch event for the Model 3 has proven unusually prophetic. Given Musk’s warnings about “production hell”, it’s surprising that the company’s investors are only now learning about the primitive methods employed by the company.

Tesla introduced the Model 3 at an event outside the company’s factory in July, when Chief Executive Elon Musk drove a shiny red Model 3 onstage as hundreds of his employees cheered the first sedans rolling off the production line.

Within minutes of stepping out of the new vehicle, Tesla’s leader warned his engineers and designers the coming months would be challenging. “Frankly, we’re going to be in production hell. Welcome, welcome!” he said to laughter. Behind the scenes, Tesla had fallen weeks behind in finishing the manufacturing systems to build the vehicle.

Or, as the philosopher said, hell is other people, not other conveyors.

Last Monday, Tesla announced it had produced only 260 of the promised 1,500 sedans, an average of only three cars per day. Musk blamed unspecified “production bottlenecks” for the shortfall. That unconscionably charitable characterization of the company’s production problems has now been exposed as totally misleading.

“Although the vast majority of manufacturing subsystems at...our California car plant...are able to operate at high rate, a handful have taken longer to activate than expected,” the company said at the time.

Then on Friday, Musk came up with another excuse, when in the late afternoon, he tweeted that Tesla was ramping up production of its solar-powered Powerwall home batteries, ostensibly to deliver them to Puerto Ricans in need – which is now the reason for both the Model 3 delay and the delay in the unveiling of the Tesla Semi; furthermore it is also an attempt by Musk to cynically use the tragedy in Puerto Rico as cover for his company"s production failure.

Tesla Semi unveil now Nov 16. Diverting resources to fix Model 3 bottlenecks & increase battery production for Puerto Rico & other affected areas.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 6, 2017

Worse, as the WSJ points out, although Tesla has struggled with production issues in the past – most notably during the rollout of its 2015 sports-utility vehicle – the obstacles facing the Model 3 are far more threatening to the company’s long-term financial health.

Tesla’s rollout of the Model X sport-utility vehicle in 2015 also was plagued by quality and design issues that left suppliers scrambling and hourly workers having to rush to meet lofty goals. And with employees at the company’s Fremont factory telling WSJ that it could be another month before the assembly line is ready, the production problems plaguing the Model 3 could pose a much bigger threat to the company’s long-term financial health.

Painting a comical scene of primitive, ad hoc production methods more appropriate for some Lada factory deep in the bowels of Russia and certainly not the pinnacle of modern production, the WSJ described a factory where workers struggled to perform tasks typically reserved for heavy machinery as they strained to piece the cars together.

One worker who spent time in the Model 3 shop—dubbed by some as Area 51 because of the limited access and secretive nature—described watching young workers in September struggling to move large pieces of steel to weld together instead of using robots as is traditionally the case.

“In place of the robots…you’ve got two associates lining up with a big, old spot welder hanging from the ceiling by a chain, and you’ve got one associate kind of like balancing it and trying to get the welder in position, and you’ve got another welder with his arm guiding it,” this worker recalled seeing. “Sparks go flying.”

It almost makes one wonder where all those billions in capex spending are going?

Finally, the report also contradicts a claim Musk made while speaking to analysts in August that the Model 3s would be “full production cars.”

In August, Mr. Musk told analysts that the Model 3s coming out of the factory were “not engineering validation units.”

“They’re fully certified, fully DOT-approved, EPA-approved production cars,” Mr. Musk said, referring to the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency. “These are not prototypes in any way. They’re not validation anything. They are full production cars.”

The bottom line is that as much as we’re sure Musk would "love" to help the good people of Puerto Rico rebuild their devastated energy grid - especially if it involves billions in US taxpayer subsidies - he’s not the savior that the Isle of Enchantment needs right now. And while we are confident that Tesla shareholders will soon get what they deserve, we look forward to what the next inevitable "mule with a spinning wheel" product will be...

"He's Full Of Crap": GM Exec Slams Musk As Car War Breaks Out

Elon Musk says the upcoming Tesla Model 3 has the hardware to enable full-self driving capability. But GM’s self-driving car czar thinks he’s full of crap.

GM"s director of autonomous vehicle integration Scott Miller told a group of Australian journalists in Detroit on Thursday that Musk was “full of crap”, explaining that a “level 5” – that is, fully autonomous – vehicle would require hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of sensors. Even for a company like Tesla, which investors have practically encouraged to burn through large sums of cash, offering such an advanced vehicle for between $30,000 and $50,000 would be an impossibility.

"I think he"s full of crap," Mr Miller said. "To think you can see everything you need for a level five autonomous car [full self-driving] with cameras and radar, I don"t know how you do that."

Tesla and a handful of other car companies are testing autopilot in Australia, according to the Leader.

The company is planning to price the Model 3, which just started rolling off the production line at Tesla’s California factory, at $50,000 in Australia. The car reportedly incorporates cameras, radar and ultrasonic sensors for self-driving.

However, as the Leader points out, the Model 3 won’t be able to use Tesla’s controversial autopilot feature until the company’s engineers perfect the software. A Tesla driver in Florida became the first person to die in an accident involving Autopilot. Eventually, the NHTSA ruled that Tesla wasn’t at fault in the crash. But since then, other customers have complained that they found the way in which autopilot was marketed to be misleading.

With this in mind, perhaps Musk should consider the consequences before exaggerating the functionality of a feature like autopilot.   

Elon Musk Magically Extends Battery Life Of Teslas Fleeing Irma

In what is either a generous act of charity or an unnerving example of the control Tesla exercises over the vehicles it producers, or perhaps both, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has magically unlocked the batteries of every Tesla in Florida to maximize the distance that people fleeing from Hurricane Irma can travel before stopping to refuel at one of the company’s “superstation” charging centers.

Typically, these types of over-the-air upgrades can cost thousands – if not tens of thousands – of dollars.

But Musk is temporarily offering full battery capacity to all owners of Model S/X 60/60D vehicles with 75 kilo watt battery packs, according to Electrek, a blog that covers electric vehicles.

The upgrade will surely help Floridians who are still rushing to escape as the now category 3 storm makes its second landfall near Naples. The upgrade will last through Saturday.

As a Tesla spokesperson explained to Electrek, the company decided on the mass-unlocking strategy after a customer called and asked if the company could upgrade his battery because he was trying to flee the storm. Tesla’s Supercharger network is fairly extensive in Florida and most owners should be able to get by even with a Model S 60 (the shortest range option).

A Tesla Model S 60 owner in Florida told Electrek that his Tesla was getting 40 more miles without a charge after Tesla had temporarily unlocked the remaining 15 kilo watts of the car’s software-limited battery pack.

“The company says that a Tesla owner in a mandatory evacuation zone required another ~30 more miles of range to optimize his evacuation route in the traffic and they reached out to Tesla who agreed to a temporary access to the full 75 kWh of energy in the battery pack, an upgrade that has cost between $4,500 and $9,000 depending on the model and time of upgrade.”

The company also decided to temporarily unlock other vehicles with the same software-lock battery packs in the region.

Tesla’s supercharger network is fairly extensive in Florida and most owners should be able to get by even with a Model S 60 (the shortest range option), but sometimes that 30 more miles of range can make a big difference.

Most of the supercharger stations in the state are still open:

Though a handful in the affected area have closed...

 

Tesla Ignores Q2 Record Cash Burn And Slashes Its Model X And Model S Prices

So what do you do when you"ve just burned through a record $1.2 billion of cash in one quarter, expect to burn an additional $2 billion in capex in the second half of the year and haven"t a prayer of generating positive earnings at any point in the near future?  Well, you slash your product prices, of course.

Apparently this is exactly the strategy that Elon Musk has decided to pursue with his Model X after quietly slashing its price tag from $82,500 to a far more affordable $79,500 last night.  Tesla explained the price cut via the following statement:

“When we launched Model X 75D, it had a low gross margin. As we’ve achieved efficiencies, we are able to lower the price and pass along more value to our customers.”

But it wasn"t just the base MSRP on the Model X that got a price cut, as electrek points out, Tesla also decided to cut prices on the their Model S and throw in their $5,000 premium package for free.

All dual Motor Model S vehicles also got a slight $1,500 price drop, but the Model S P100D and Model X P100D were the most affected by last night’s changes.

Tesla updated the options of the vehicles to add more premium features as standards.

The “$5,000” Premium Package is now being absorbed into standard features for top versions of Tesla’s vehicles. Here’s the Premium package and the new standard features on a Model S P100D:

Of course, as we recently pointed out in our review of Tesla"s 2Q 2017 earnings, this is probably the exact right move for a company burning through roughly $13 million in cash every single day.  Here are some of the highlights from our recent earnings review:

One month after Tesla stock tumbled when the electric car maker announced that it had missed Wall Street estimates for the second quarter, delivering only 22,000 vehicles instead of the 22,912 expected, moments ago Tesla reported adjusted, non-GAAP Q2 earnings which beat expectations, with an adjusted loss of $1.33, better than the -$1.88 expected, which curiously was identical to the -1.33 loss in Q1.

Tesla continued to burn cash, and in the second quarter it outdid not only itself but Netflix too, with a record cash burn of -$1.16 billion - or roughly $13 million per day - almost double what it burned in Q1. In Q3, Tesla"s CapEx was $959 million, a number which is set to surge as the Model 3 launch continued well into into Q3: Tesla expects it will burn another $2 billion in CapEx in the second half.

Understandably, the cash burning behemoth was proud to announce that it had more than $3 billion in cash on hand at the end of Q2. There is just one problem, and this wasn"t announced in the letter: Tesla also $3.9 billion in accounts payable and accrued liabilities, as the company drains all net working capital sources of cash it can find. Meanwhile, accounts receivable actually declined. This was the first quarter in which paybales and accrued were nearly $1 billion more than cash and equivalents!

All that said, Tesla investors don"t really seem to care about cash burn.  And, since lower prices will undoubtedly result in a couple extra sales throughout the year, albeit at a cash loss, we"re quite certain that investors will applaud this latest move by Musk...genius if we understand it correctly.

Tesla's Veteran Battery Technology Director Unexpectedly Quits

Stormy weather was unleashed in Tesla longsville today when the company"s veteran director of battery technology, Kurt Kelty, unexpectedly resigned to "explore new opportunities", abruptly ending a tenure with the company that stretched for more than a decade, and comes at a critical time for Elon Musk: just as Tesla enters "production hell" after it delivered its first Model 3 electric car to the general public with a dramatic production ramp up expected in the coming weeks. Kelty joined Tesla in 2006 and was one of the longest-serving executives at Tesla after Elon Musk.

Kurt Kelty is seen at the company"s new sales outlet in Osaka, Japan"s in August 2015

“We can confirm that Kurt Kelty has left the company to explore new opportunities and we want to thank him for everything he’s done for Tesla,” the company told Bloomberg in an emailed statement, adding that his responsibilities will be “distributed among Tesla’s existing teams.”

Ominously, Kelty previously worked for 14 years at Panasonic, Tesla’s critical partner on the battery-producing gigafactory in Reno, Nevada. Kelty was the Tesla point man in negotiations with Panasonic on the plant, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Tesla remains so reliant on its battery technology, or lack thereof, that last month when Tesla failed to meet expected Q2 deliveries of its Model S and Model X cars, it blamed a "temporary shortage of 100 kWh battery packs."

Tesla and Kelty’s previous employer Panasonic have had a close partnership, with the two in a supply agreement for 1.8 billion battery cells through 2017 for the Model S and Model X. For the Model 3, the companies jointly developed new, slightly larger cylindrical battery cells than those used in Tesla’s existing models.

Adding to Tesla"s headache, Tesla hopes to make 20,000 Model 3 cars per month by December, a ramp-up phase that Musk described to employees as “production hell.”

Kelty is the latest in a long-list of Tesla executives to have departed the company, with at least 20 names counted in just the past 12 months in the following list of TSLA executive departures compiled by @WallStCynic. While the real reason for Kelty"s departure remains unknown, judging by the list below, shortsville may just end up having the final laugh.

Tesla reports Q2 earnings tomorrow after the bell: the circumstances around Kelty"s departure will be one of the key questions asked.

Elon Musk Unveils The First Production Model 3

On Saturday evening, Elon Musk teased the Tesla faithful tweeting that "Production unit 1 of Model 3 is now built and going through final checkout. Pics soon." Four hours later Musk kept his promise when he tweeted the first picture of what he said was the first production model of the the Tesla Model 3.

First Production Model 3 pic.twitter.com/TCa2NSUNI3

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 9, 2017

pic.twitter.com/is6Hthjjoj

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 9, 2017

While Musk has yet to deliver any additional details, not much appears to have been altered in the Model 3"s appearance since the concept was revealed in early 2016.

Last week, in which the stock of Tesla briefly tumbled into a bear market after the company announced several disappointing delivery data points, including what appeared to be a ceiling in Model X sales...

... a weaker than expected sell-through of Model S and Model X, and a downgrade by Goldman Sachs which claimed that Tesla may be reaching a demand "plateau" due to the "discontinued order rate metrics, the company’s 2H17 guidance (Model S and Model X deliveries to likely exceed) in combination with the past four quarters of delivery"... 

...Musk tried to salvage some of the hype by claiming that there will be an official “handover party” for 30 customers on July 28, followed by around 100 Model 3 deliveries in August, and around 1,500 more deliveries in September, with hopes of reaching 20,000 deliveries of the car “per month” starting in December.

Tesla has not updated information on the number of current Model 3 reservations according to Jalopnik, but the last figure made available was around 370,000. With demand still high, options on early orders may be limited to wheel and paint color specification, and new Model 3 orders aren’t expected to be delivered until 2018 or later.

While Tesla announced a target price for the lowest Model 3 trim at $35,000, it is not yet clear how expensive the car can be fully-optioned or what specific features and trims will be made available to existing and future orders. Tesla has confirmed that every Model 3 will get at least 215 miles of range with acceleration pegged at 0 to 60 in 5.6 seconds. Adding to the cost, those excited about Tesla"s semi-autonomous driving will have to pay to use it as an option upon ordering, or pay to install it via an update later. Tesla has claimed its new hardware, which will be installed on all Teslas going forward, "should be capable of Level 5 autonomous driving by the end of this year."

Jalopnik also notes Tesla’s pull-back on its previously-free access to its national (and international) Supercharger network. Vehicles ordered after January 1, 2017 will receive 400 kWh of charging credit, which is approximately 1,000 miles of driving. At the time, it was previewed that charging pricing would fluctuate.

Still, one of the most teased elements of the Model 3 is its simplistic "and possibly even sparse" interior design, with Musk confirming that there would be no traditional speedometer, but that buyers “won’t care.” The concept model revealed features a large, landscape-oriented touchscreen in the center of the dashboard, and as Jalopnik notes "it will be interesting to see how, exactly, Tesla has made that work in the production car."

In all, the announcement of the first Model 3 production unit for a company that has been notorious late in delivering on its expectations is seen by some as an achievement:

Considering Tesla’s past of delaying new models, it’s a tremendous achievement for the Model 3 to reach production on schedule, as promised. Here’s hoping the thing is really the revolutionary electric car for the masses, or whatever.

On the other hand, some wonder if Tesla has not missed (terminally, perhaps, in light of the recent collapse in California Tesla registrations) the delivery window for the "revolutionary" car, which comes at a time when Tesla"s coolness factory appears to be sliding. As tongue-in-cheek confirmation of this, the most upvoted comment on Jalopnik"s article discussing the Model 3 arrival is the following: "Am I weird for being more excited for the next gen Accord’s reveal next week than I am about this?"

Here's The Real Reason Tesla Makes No Money

Elon Musk bills Tesla as the pinnacle of "lean" manufacturing.  Just search for pictures of Tesla"s manufacturing plant and you"ll undoubtedly be served up futuristic looking images, like the one below, depicting 100"s of red robots building vehicles without a single employee in sight.

But, if Tesla is truly the lean manufacturing powerhouse that it purports itself to be then we do wonder why it continues to burn through ~$600 million of cash every single quarter, or roughly $30,000 for every car that it sells?

Perhaps this "anomaly" has something to do with the fact that, as Automotive News points out, Tesla"s real "capacity problem" has nothing to do with the size of their manufacturing facility but rather the staggering number of people they"re using to build their cars.

The 5.3 million square feet of manufacturing space that Tesla now occupies started off as a joint operation between General Motors and Toyota which began in 1984 and was intended to help the Japanese automaker learn about doing business in America and teach GM the principles of lean manufacturing.  20 years ago the plant pumped out over 350,000 new cars each year or roughly 74 vehicles per worker. 

Meanwhile, Tesla, the "pinnacle" of lean manufacturing with a 20-year technology advantage, somehow only manages to build somewhere between 8-14 cars per employee.  

It"s because in this temple of lean manufacturing, Tesla uses far more workers than NUMMI employed to build far fewer cars. In 1985, its first full year of production, NUMMI had 2,470 employees and produced 64,764 vehicles — about 26 vehicles per worker per year. By 1997, it had 4,844 ? workers and produced 357,809 vehicles — about 74 vehicles per worker per year.

Tesla, on the other hand, had between 6,000 and 10,000 workers in 2016 and manufactured 83,922 vehicles. That puts its vehicle-per-worker number between 8 and 14, about one-seventh the efficiency of NUMMI at its peak.

"The number of people Musk"s got in there has a great deal to do with why he doesn"t make money building vehicles," said automotive manufacturing consultant Michael Tracy of Agile Group in Howell, Mich. "Toyota"s numbers reflect the number of people you expect to have if you were going to efficiently build vehicles for a profit."

Of course, given that Musk intends to go from manufacturing 100,000 cars a year to 500,000 with the launch of the Model 3, one has to wonder whether or not that is actually possible.

The Fremont factory assembles the Model S sedan, Model X crossover and the soon-to-launch Model 3. Musk said the upcoming Model Y will be built in a separate factory.

In Tesla"s fourth-quarter earnings call in February, Musk said that once the Model 3 launches, he plans to begin producing 5,000 vehicles per week in the fourth quarter, and ramp up to 10,000 vehicles per week by 2018.

"Going from 100,000 to 500,000 units is a huge leap for any company," said Sam Fiorani, vice president of global vehicle forecasting at AutoForecast Solutions. "For them to build a half a million units next year, it would be an amazing ramp-up for what is still a startup company. There"s all kinds of red flags."

But, as we pointed out earlier this month when Tesla"s market cap surpassed that of BMW, Ford and GM, the market doesn"t seem to care much about Tesla"s manufacturing inefficiencies and will undoubtedly underwrite however many billions of dollars are needed to build additional manufacturing capacity.

And, given that the investors seem to think Tesla is worth about $800,000 per vehicle it cranks out, we see no reason why the company shouldn"t be worth $400 billion within a year or so when they start pumping out 500,000 cars per year.

Finally, for all the Tesla investors looking to retire off their stock gains, we have some beautiful ocean front property in Oklahoma that we think might be just perfect for you.

Tesla Admits It Still Hasn't Completed A Model 3 Beta Prototype

With Tesla stock price down 15% in the last few weeks, amid a roaring market, it appears doubts about Elon Musk"s omnipotence are creeping in once again... and rightly so. Despite the hype surrounding hundreds of thousands of pre-orders due to start production in H2 2017, buried deep within the company"s most recent 10-K filing is an admission that there is still no Model 3 beta prototype.

The fanfare surrounding the pre-order-fest for the Tesla Model 3 continues to support the stock in many analyst"s (and investor"s minds). However, with production due to begin in H2 2017 (just 4 months away) and delivery in 2018, doubts are starting to appear, judging by the stock"s demise since earnings...

And Car and Driver"s Anton Wahlman - who appears to be one of the few who actualy read Tesla"s 10-K filing - may have found the reason for the doubts...

From the filing:

“We expect that the next performance milestone to be achieved will be the successful completion of the Model 3 Beta Prototype, which would be achieved upon the determination by our Board of Directors that an eligible prototype has been completed. Candidates for such prototype are among the vehicles that we are currently building as part of our ongoing testing of our Model 3 vehicle design and manufacturing processes.”

In other words, Wahlman points out, Tesla has not “completed” a Model 3 “beta prototype” as of, well, either of these two dates: December 31, 2016 (the period that the SEC filing covers), or March 1, 2017 (the date on which the document was filed). Pick your poison.

We know that around mid-February 2017, Tesla is said to have started building the next stage of Model 3 prototypes. It is from this batch that they appear to be creating the first “beta prototype.”

What does this mean for production? In theory, there is nothing that prevents Tesla from delivering what a normal car company would call a prototype test vehicle of some sort and simply declare victory on its original timeline. This is what Tesla did for the Model S in June 2012 and for the Model X in September 2015. After those events, it took at least another approximately three months—arguably a fair bit more—for proper volume production to take root.

That is to say that, no matter how immature, Tesla could indeed deliver a Model 3 in July 2017 and declare victory. However, that is not to be confused with what a normal car company would call its start of sales to the general public.

Basically, Car and Driver"s Wahlman says, it comes down this:

If it’s prudent to start production of an all-new car three to six months after the advent of a “beta prototype,” then why don’t all automakers do this? Why do they take approximately two years for the preproduction testing stages, if only three to six months are necessary?

We will find out in the second half of this year.

More smoke and solar panel mirrors?

Still withcash burn at a billion dollars, there"s probably nothing to worry about...