https://www.tesla.com/blog/what-we-k...weeks-accident

Check out this report, apparently the owner of the Model X who died complained "7-10 times the car would swivel toward that same exact barrier during auto-pilot. Walter took it into dealership addressing the issue, but they couldn't duplicate it there."

I'm no genius by any stretch of the imagination, but if he knew the car was having this difficulty with this specific area shouldn't he have been driving the car himself? Sad story all the way around.

I for one can't understand this fascination with self driving vehicles. Driving my car is about the most free I feel in my life anymore!

http://abc7news.com/automotive/i-tea...pilot/3275600/

About time this stock gets a reality check

So Tesla in are in a frantic panic at the moment to artificially create a 2500/week run rate for a couple of days.
Let's just stop and consider how weird this is.

Firstly, they've clearly failed to reach anywhere near even their (twice badly delayed) prediction, and are now trying to cook the books by hand juicing the lines. They've probably stacked up inventory for the end of quarter run.

Secondly, how bizarre is this behavior for a billion dollar company? Rather than doing what makes sense - incrementally improving production, clearing bottlenecks, focusing on the long term and long run production - they are frantically trying to squeeze out a momentary production spike so they can lie to their investors and distract them from their actual, current, steady state run rate.

Thirdly, this is the second time they've done this. At the end of 2018 they frantically rushed to artificially create a 1000/week run rate for a few days that they could extrapolate out to a week and claim a round number milestone. Production then dropped well below that, which is kind of the opposite of the "exponential" the nutty bulls in this thread were repeating like cult utterances.

If you ever doubted that Musk is a carnival barker and a fraud rather than a serious or competent businessman, proof is in the above.

And by the way, do the bulls in this thread (who are invested in Tesla, not the unhinged fanboys) actually realize that Musk's talk of "exponential" and "machine that builds the machine" are deliberate lies he told you to get you to hold the stock at $380 and $350 rather than sell it and take your profit? They're the nerd-Trump version of "Mexico will pay", a nice little nugget of PR that fans take in and get conned by.

Do you realize that you being a gullible idiot and believing this (and repeating it - heltok I'm looking at you) is Musk directly ****ing with your mind to get what he wants? He knew for a fact at the time he was talking about exponential that exponentials were impossible for at least 6-9 months. He never told you this, instead lying to you so you would keep the stock inflated and lose your money when it eventually crashed.

The end of this process is just happening now according to reports (the new lines are being installed and will start producing soon). So Musk was deliberately lying to you, which has caused you to not sell (awaiting the exponential) and lose 30% of your money that you had in Tesla at $350.

Hahahahahaha

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj...sue-1522361482

Also likely intentionally leak it thinking it is somehow a good thing

I'm going to go read some electrek now to see how they compliment tesla on their commitment to safety

Was just about to post that.
When it rains, it ****ing pours!

This is looking more and more like fraud, especially the way Musk is hyping all of his other projects while the company faces these very significant issues. They will have to raise money soon, if the demand doesn't show up... watch the stock crater. The way this recall is coming out preceding a holiday weekend after the market closes is a pretty scummy move as well.

Pwc needs to be super cautious on the q1 numbers, they gave Tesla favorable going concern language, that might be a big problem should reckoning day come before the end of the year

atleast the timing is smart, long weekend and production numbers are due next week; which by all indication will be abysmal, again.
so better to get it all out at once.

then they spend the next few months shooting cars into space, presenting new products that might never be released or do whatever else they come up with before they raise capital, again.

after following this thread, i have no doubt (retail) investors will keep throwing their money at them.

It kind of depends on what you mean by abysmal. Model 3 production has been growing at roughly 10-20% per week depending on what endpoints you use to calculate and all indications are Tesla is still on that track. If they're really at 1400+ a week already they are arguably slightly ahead of expectations growing at about 12% per week this year. That's really not bad at all.

just look at their own (most recent) projections and by how much they miss, like you would do with... well... any company?

I actually think the production numbers are pretty irrelevant at this point, quality control is the true looming disaster. Every time they recall product, it destroys their "profitability." They are recalling more Model Ss than the entire company made in vehicles for last year, even a minor repair is hundreds of millions out the door. The model 3 better hold up well over time, reports suggest the build quality leaves a lot to be desired.

Yeah service centers are already backlogged for weeks - even on the high triage of fixing major Model 3 issues for those just delivered - and that's with a 500/week delivery rate. Add in a recall - which I don't think is that big a deal since it's voluntary and takes an hour to fix and only affects cold weather cars and winter is ending - and you've got a disaster in the making. It seems that many and varied components are failing in M3s at high rates. How are they going to handle 2500/week going out if service centers are already backed right up with near zero M3 volume so far?

https://www.greencarreports.com/news...tter-to-buyers

There is a reason Tesla has been a case study in MVP concept applied to manufacturing.

The question for me is, what are we finding out that we didn't already know? We have a lot car manufacturers on the planet who have sold a lot of vehicles. I have no position in TSLA. I find this thread pretty interesting though. TSLA bears are more convincing at this point to me.

Those snapshots into the Tesla mindset from early on are very interesting to see MyrnaFTW - the vision (hype?) they paint here is so strong ...


And then it was super interesting to see that they've been promising lower costs, higher production, and profitability ... for 9 years


Haven't really read too much about Tesla, but saw a 'Master Plan' that Elon drafted in 2006 (https://www.tesla.com/en_CA/blog/sec...me?redirect=no), and it didn't have anything in it about autonomous driving. He drafted an update with the autonomous driving added in 2016, and claimed that society needed it asap because they believed it to be "significantly safer" than human driving (https://www.tesla.com/en_CA/blog/master-plan-part-deux)

Tesla getting into autonomous driving before they've even become profitable reminds me of this term they use on the news channels sometimes ...

At the risk of sounding like Lisa Simpson, it makes me super nervous to see that the two companies who are racing to develop autonomous driving, Uber and Tesla, aren't profitable - and so they may not have the funds to develop these systems with the care they deserve. Like in an ideal world, wouldn't it be better to build a closed track with robots designed to do all the things that people out in the real world might do, like watch Harry Potter videos when they're supposed to be watching the road, or cross highways in the middle of the night and not watch out for oncoming traffic, etc - except they don't have the money to do that, because they're both deep in the red?

Can't help but compare Elon Musk with Jeff Bezos - Jeff Bezos isn't really seen as much of a visionary, but he's done many of the same things Elon Musk has ... he's dabbled in autonomous shopping, he's building rockets ... was he also the first one to really successfully market cloud services to big business? And Amazon also turns a profit most of the time, and isn't in debt. Guess the only big mistake Jeff Bezos has made was to talk smack about Donald Trump when he thought Hillary Clinton had the election in the bag - and now Amazon's in his cross-hairs


Am starting to ramble - will have to try to find a way to tie things back to the share price Really hope TSLA isn't putting concerns about share price above safety - but have a sinking feeling that they could very well be. Which is an accident waiting to happen - literally! Maybe if Tesla's greatest asset is Elon Musk hype, their greatest vulnerability may be bad publicity?

Thanks for sharing those shareholder letters Myrna - they were cool to see!

Have been trying to stick with stocks like AMZN that can be bought and held into perpetuity (although maybe not anymore if they have anti-trust problems?) - and tried shorting SHLD for the first time this year, because it looks like an imminent bankruptcy may be unavoidable? And then have been trying to avoid stocks like TSLA, where things look quite bearish, although there's a chance things in the short-term could go the other way - at a time when the market looks quite bearish, although there's a chance and things seem like they could go either way, in a market that looks quite bearish although there's a chance things in the short-term could go the other way.

Still, sometimes still find myself having trouble with exits when stuff sometimes starts feel like they're maybe getting a bit more grey? Like with solidfirstpost's TSLA put - guess you would have held it and only covered upon actual news of improved production? What if it appears the market is moving up merely based on hype or other news - would it still be considered a hold? If it were a bull market, would you set a limit buy somewhere?

Pick the clear spots. I haven't traded Tesla for size in over a year, and it was my bread and butter for about 3 years with lots of trades on either side and more profit than any other stock. Circumstances determine when you should enter.

I like to think of myself as a moron at trading who's only capable of being +EV when picking up absolutely free money requiring no thought. You should think of yourself that way as well. It's not a bad approximation. Amazing opportunities come that even a real idiot could make money from; you wait for them. That's profitable trading in a nutshell. If you're umming and ahhing, let it go.

Selling is a trickier beast, although it a piece of cake if you're doing the above. Best advice there is to have a thesis and stick to it. Why did you buy it? Has new information substantially changed your thesis for the worse? If not, then stick with it.

That's good stuff - it helps a lot, thanks TS

I think there is one thing we can all agree, the market EVENTUALLY figures it out. Price is all that matters, they will either be able to raise money or they won't. When the overall market turns, who will want to own this balance sheet? SolarCity is still a thing right? I said pages back Musk in untouchable & maybe I should have added he's untouchable for those that believe in him (which is still a very large contingent). The model 3 has a mixed reception so far, that's sort of odd when you'd expect the first models to be flawless and hype to be astronomical from its most dedicated employees and buyers.

Yes - will have to give this a try. Thanks TS!

PS. Hi ASAP! Am seeing a lot of people from the contest thread in this thread as well Will have to put together a little summary for March over the weekend ...

The scumbag pieces of a **** at Tesla had their autopilot fail badly (confirmed today), and are trying to blame the driver:

Someone, please defend this. Their autopilot was engaged for an extended period before crashing into the concrete divider. It failed to avoid a gigantic concrete barrier with lots of warning/lead time in good conditions. Tesla spends the majority of their PR blaming the driver, throwing out red herrings ("warnings earlier in the drive") to avoid taking responsibility for the basic fact that their "autopilot" cannot reliably avoid slamming into giant concrete dividers in good conditions.

Let's not forget that 15 months ago, Musk promised "Fully Self Driving" coming online in "3 to 6 months". 15 months later their software is so incompetent it crashes into static concrete dividers in good conditions with long visibility. And this is not an isolated incident. I posted a year ago about "truck lust" and "concrete divider affinity", from multiple posts by Tesla drivers, who call this tendency scary. Like I said, Tesla has been lucky that its customer base is full of wealthy, intelligent early adopters - doctors and lawyers and business owners - rather than the general public it will soon be targeting with its Model 3.

Multiple lead engineers have actually left Tesla because of Musk's reckless incompetence, warning that autopilot isn't ready for prime time and Musk is being extremely reckless and putting customer lives at risk by releasing it.

When are people going to realize that Musk is a fraud and cowboy, who is far behind on autonomous driving?