I can't even respond

Tesla M3 production line shut down for 5 days, employees on sudden unpaid leave, not two weeks after claiming sustainable 2000/week production. Company claims it's standard in production ramps but auto industry veterans say it's unheard of.

Musk's own claim that Tesla's edge would be in the "air friction aware" "productized" "machine that builds the machine" robotics refuted by Musk's own claim that he made a mistake trying to use too much automation which he is now having to unwind. Anyone who isn't a drooling idiot would have realized, as I said a year ago, that there is going be zero fat or room for improvement in a $2 trillion/year global industry, hence why Tesla is dead. Cucks believed in ElonMagic, not realizing that you can't improve a complex process that has been heavily optimized away by the smartest minds in the world, and that rockets - a small, flabby, fledging pork barrel industry - are both way easier to make and a world apart from a mature trillion dollar industry with decades of knowhow.

But cucks gonna cuck.

Meanwhile, in SEC land...

CUCKS!

35,000+ annoying, no-substance posts is actually kind of impressive

Tooth, you’ve sold me on it’s eventual demise. Is it time to get short again?

It's just not true ANY SEC investigation prevents debt/equity raises.

I'd be surprised if ANY company in the S&P 500 isn't under some kind of SEC investigation/monitoring. Reporting compliance is half of what the legal departments (some have separate departments) of publicly traded companies do and every big transactional law firm has lawyers dedicated to just SEC compliance... and they are all very busy.

Also how in the world is a shutdown on an auto production line "unheard of"? I'm sure there are yearly maintenance shutdowns even on mature lines, and of course if Tesla wants to make significant improvements on its line it is going to have to shut down to do that work.

It's in every operations management textbook how early "kaizen" factories shut down the entire line as soon as they find a process issue and basically everyone huddles to fix the problem.

Some factories still do it.

Tesla got production and quality issues. We all know that and that every new piece of information suggesting they are having problems confirms the problem.

But c'mon, here is the bottom line:

They've managed to consistently increase production at about 10~15% per WEEK and that MOST customers (although not everyone, and almost certainly lower % than is typical of modern car buyers) are very happy with their new cars.

Are they doing enough to justify TSLA's valuation? probably not. We're more or less on an expected path and Tesla needs years of staying on the path (really hard, involving a lot of capital raises and some good luck) for another 5 (at least) or 10 (I think more likely) years. The expectations are so high there just isn't a lot of room to surpass expectations without some black swan event (like the sudden invention of high density low cost battery or a Manhattan Project like effort to replace gas stations with electrical charging stations).

Source?

You're asking me to prove a negative. SEC has mechanisms to actually bar firms from issuing securities and it's a tool they threaten to use to secure cooperation in investigations but investigations themselves don't prevent the issuance of securities.

Tesla can't raise unless they disclose everything. And are on the hook for any lies - they can't get away with the 2017 lies where they knowingly gave impossible Model 3 projections.

It's hard to understand why Musk, knowing cash would become tight as meaningful production was shut down for 9 months while they fixed the battery productions issues at the "Giga" (Duo?) factory, didn't raise some cash to guarantee survival and avoid a ratings downgrade. Only reason I can see is disclosure issues.

Of course lines get shut down, but not at this point in production. Tesla PR is claiming it's normal, and auto industry experts are claiming that a 5 day shutdown never happens at this stage in the cycle.

Prototype
Beta Test
Design Lines
Rigorously test Lines at low volume
Start production

By the time you're at "start production", there aren't surprises left. You certainly shouldn't be surprising employees with a 5 day unpaid shutdown. That's 1980s ****show manufacturing. Morish gets it said:

The point here is that Musk is an incompetent loser. He has no idea what he's doing. Everything was botched here - the battery packs which flat out didn't work and they were "complacent" about (Musk's word), the lack of beta testing, poor delegation, excessive automation, poorly planned incoming parts ramp.

The entire stated bull case for Tesla is that they could out-manufacture the majors. Out-autonomy the majors. The reality is that they can't do jack **** as well as even the worst major. They are dead last at manufacturing competence. Dead last at profitability. Dead last at autonomous driving research with no viable path to level 4. What do they have? An incompetent CEO with a fawning fanbase who's good at PR and designs popular car prototypes. That doesn't save you from bankruptcy.

Given that Tesla's plan was to ramp up production gradually, they obviously aren't following that plan. And since they aren't following that plan, then of course they will need to shut down to make improvements in order to ramp up production. How could they make substantial improvements without shutting down?

also, lol at Musk being an incompetent loser. Dude is worth like 20 billion.

What?
I mean an incompetent loser at making cars and at high level management/CEO roles. He doesn't have the cognitive capacity and management skills for roles at that level of skill and difficulty.

He's talented as a software engineer, procurement specialist, product prototyping, CEO of a small startup, general businessman, PR tactician, etc.

Speaking of PR, with the stock going down today in a very strong tech market, he had the PR genius/conman's instinct to send this email, knowing it'd be leaked to the media:
Fabulous work. He owns the comical surprise shutdown/sending employees home without pay. And headlines like: "6000/week in June", "Model 3 ramping faster than expected" are coming thick and fast. Further:
Even though there's nothing new in this email, and it's basically an admission they're well behind and won't hit 6K/week until October at least, the $6K/week "burst" + June combination does the PR trick perfectly. If bull****ting was an Olympic sport...

That email is definitely hilarious and an unofficial delay in the 5k wk until September

I joined the tesla motor club forum, those people are unreal losers, it's actually kind of sad

Uh, you said that car makers follow these steps:

Prototype
Beta Test
Design Lines
Rigorously test Lines at low volume
Start production

Which implies they start production on a basically optimized line. Given that Tesla started production low with the aim to incrementally improve their production rate, it's clear that they weren't planning on following these steps. And since they were planning on making improvements in the line as they went, of course they would have to periodically shut down the line to implement those improvements.

I was saying "what" to the "their plan was to ramp production gradually". That was never their plan. Nothing here is going according to their plan.

Their plan was always to start production low and ramp up to their target. They obviously did not plan on following the steps you laid out, which means that of course they are going to have to shut down to do work on their line as they optimize it. Your interpretation of this 5 day shutdown is nonsense. How could they increase the production rate from a few hundred a week to 5k a week without major improvements in the line? How could they make major improvements in the line without shutting down?

The best thing is how it breeds favorable yet completely false headlines. Tesla is 3% off lows on this "leaked" email. It's a PR masterclass. For example, this is the typical headline coming out:
The headline is fake. The actual email:
"Tesla build rate further delayed; internal emails show targeting 6K/week in October now" is the correct takeaway

People are going to enthusiastically buy up on their belief that the news says that Tesla is ahead of schedule going to be making 6K cars/week in June.

Musk did the same thing with:

"Air friction limited robots"
"Productizing the factory"
"The machine that builds the machine"
"The Alien Dreadnought"
"Fully Self Driving coming online in 3 to 6 months [January 2017]"
"Design for manufacturability"
"5000/week by the end of 2017"
"Profitable in 2012"
"Profitable in 2013"
"Profitable in 2014"
"Profitable in 2015"
"Profitable in 2016"
"Profitable in 2017"
"Profitable by the first quarter of 2018"
"Never need another capital raise"
"Won't need an equity raise for the Model 3 [in late 2016; early 2017 = capital raise]

To name just a few. All successfully.

So that "leaked" email references profitability but his answer is that the finance guys are going through every expense with a fine tooth comb. Ummm yea Tesla road to profitability now involves cutting back on Donut Tuesday and Joe Blow Manager's expenses. I guess one could imply it was a free for all before this new mandate to watch costs??

You should never listen to him on this subject. It's actually quite normal that this happens - even at long existing factories of the well established car companies. Don't listen to any of his stupidity.

TSLA has underestimated the configuration and installation of the production line but shutting down for 3 to 5 days is certainly not unheard of.

Especially in the car industry, where you do a lot of just in time delivery of parts and if one piece is unavailable, the entire production slows down/shuts down.

I'm not asking him to listen to me. I have no idea. Neither do you (you're hilariously wrong where not outright deranged about every single thing you talk about, as has been amply demonstrated above). Tesla lied and claimed that such shutdowns are "normal during production ramps". Every single expert consulted disagreed. Examples just from one Bloomberg article:

Tesla's lie:
Reality:
Cue Spurious conspiracy theory that they were paid by GM to say this and make Tesla look bad.

You might have a brief shutdown for a few hours to tweak a line. But a sudden five day shutdown just as they're claiming 2000/week, plus sending all their workers home suddenly without pay, is hilariously incompetent.

They are not fixing bottlenecks they are doing comprehensive upgrades. Is this your reading comprehension at work again?

You guys are missing the point. Yes shutdowns are common, but unplanned shutdowns are not. Normally you have 6 months to a year to plan and line up contractors/equipment/parts for a shutdown. How effective are they going to be with this shutdown? Musk is already complaining about contractors in his emails. Either this shutdown is going to be ineffective which doesn’t bode well for tesla’s Ability to understand manufacturing or they’ve planned it since Feb/March because they knew then their line was in need of change to hit production goals which means Musk is deceptive. Pick your poison.

Unpaid leave for low income hourly personnel isn’t a morale booster either.

Upgrades they just learned they needed? Or upgrades they knew they would need when they said 5k a wk by dec/mar?