Good question, I'd assume they've known this in advance and given the nature of it, most likely quite early.

They expected upgrades along the way, I assume.

See, that's fraud, literally that is what fraud is

i dunno man, from their most recent 10 k

Not sure what the previous year's report said but it probably had similar caveats?

edit: confirmed, a brief perusal of the previous year's 10 k shows many similar caveats.

Why is it fraud? You don't need to announce an upgrade to your facilities beforehand. This is absurd. A publicly listed company has the right to remain secretive (really not the right word/implication here) of events following their normal way of conducting business.

Where is the fraud with this?

Because a “planned” outage would contradict all of their production estimates. Either they didn’t know or they didn’t want us to know.

You're presenting a false dichotomy of it's either a totally unplanned outage or it is fraud. There's a ton of middle ground. Musk said he made a big mistake putting in too much automation. So obviously there's a bunch of work that needs to be done in fixing that mistake, and of course that requires downtime. It's obvious that the line didn't work as they hoped it might, but they didn't rigorously test it beforehand to identify problems. So that approach implies that they expected that this sort of downtime could be necessary, although they wouldn't know exactly the nature of the downtime (or that it would be necessary at all) since they didn't know in advance what sort of problems they might encounter.

Tesla's biggest and most influential bull analyst weighs in this morning.

Merely symbolic price target trim but the real shocker here is that he thinks that Tesla won't hit 5K/week until the end of the year. That's a year late and 8 billion bucks short.

When the biggest bull calls Musk a liar to his face, that's not great.

Does anyone seriously still think that Musk is a manufacturing genius who can outdo the majors? On what evidence? Rockets are many many times less difficult and less complex than automobile mass manufacturing. A disordered psychologically damaged billionaire could certainly genius his way into rockets, but cars require actual flawless execution to survive, let alone turn a profit. The process is bureaucratic - methodical, delegated, parallel, tediously and flawlessly error controlled and anticipated - rather than crazy fits of inspiration and micromanagement. The latter is actually a huge negative in car manufacturing.

In hindsight (in my case, foresight), it's obvious that Musk is incompetent at these tasks. Expensive low volume prototype-like manufacturing of a high end high profit margin subsidized monopoly item can absorb this incompetence; high volume low margin low error tolerance mass manufacturing cannot. And that's what you're seeing here.

In which sense? Those 5k/week run rates were always goals for end of quarter stuff. This was never the average. They had total production numbers (not sure when they've published the last one) but those can obviously include a few days of downtime. People are really overdramatic when they yell fraud at this. Maybe it's time to follow some other real world companies to get this fantasy out of your head that you have to present your plan in its entirety to the public.

Yeah I'm not buying the fraud thing on this issue. It's dishonest but not fraud.

Your position that the 2017 5000/week projections weren't fraud is ridiculous, however, and shows you haven't the faintest clue about anything. They were prominently stated and doubled down on and reasonably relied upon while known to management to be completely impossible. That's illegal for a CEO and actionable. This isn't even up for debate; you're a ****ing idiot if you disagree. The standard disclaimer language that SenorKeeed cites doesn't protect companies from making prominent knowing deliberate misrepresentations to their stockholders.

lol I know you struggle with reading comprehension and basic logic, but this is absurd. He didn't call Musk a liar, not even anything remotely like that. Thinking a company is not going to be able to meet a target is not the same thing as lying, and a missed target doesn't even begin to hint at fraud.

The CEO (with the most information) just put out an email saying 6000/week in June. The biggest bull comes out 12 hours later and said they won't hit 5000 that until the end of the year.

That is precisely what I figuratively described: it's a slap-in-the-face vote of no confidence in Musk's projections. Musk is either utterly incompetent/stupid or a liar; and given that people think he's a genius...

No, he didn't literally say "you are a liar", but non-******s infer the meaning from the context. Nor did he say it to his face! Amazing gotcha there, idiot.

lol I know you struggle with reading comprehension and basic logic (not to mention any kind of legal knowledge), but no one suggested that:

The underlined is of course missed by the mouth breathers who love Tesla, but that is the key point. THAT is what makes it fraud - that they knew or ought reasonably to have known that their projections were completely impossible. Just missing projections isn't actionable. Giving projections you know or ought reasonably to know are impossible is fraud. As is leaving out important known material facts that would let investors come to the same conclusion. The filing spells it out perfectly. Again, this isn't debatable. Any disagreement with the facts above just shows what utter morons you are. So please keep doubling down on this claim, the actual professionals here are laughing at you. You can't read and you can't understand basic nuance.

You have absolutely no idea what management knew to be impossible or possible. None.

Nobody is a mind-reader, but it is pretty obvious there is deception at play here. At worst, it's fraud. At best, it's a remarkable display of incompetence.

The mental gymnastics you and Spurious seem to partake in sounds less like reasonable doubt and more like wishful thinking each passing day.

Have you actually read the complaint? It's laid out in detail with 11 witnesses, including high level employees. This is straight up stock fraud. No, we can't peer inside their heads. You can't peer inside any criminal's heads, which is why inference given the facts is the standard used.

The standard here is "know or out reasonably to have known". There's no one with a legal background who reads this document and thinks the above standard isn't amply met...and this isn't a case of just getting over the bar for this standard, it's left the stratosphere and heading for Mars kind of over the bar. The evidence in this document proves knowing stock fraud beyond any doubt. As do Musk's admissions on the January 2018 conference call which I quoted some pages back. They knew their battery lines were ****ed and would need an entire designed rework "usually taking 18 months" but in this case taking "6 to 9 months" to complete according to Musk, and that mass production was absolutely impossible during that period. This is just one of many items that was never disclosed and made their 5000/week by the end of 2017 absolutely impossible (in fact, it made even 2000/week impossible). They knew this and did not disclose it while doubling down on the 5000/week by the end of 2017.

https://www.scribd.com/document/376359070/Tesla-Lawsuit

There's no debate here. You and Spurious are dead wrong. Multiple people signed off on knowing stock fraud, including Musk. And the standard disclaimers are insufficient to cover it - the document explains why in detail.

TS,

1) this isn't fraud.
2) this is not even illegal.
3) non-decision makers would have deemed projections to be impossible that then actually happened.
4) read the ****ing document and then you can discuss with TeflonDawg what wishful thinking is.

Spurious,
You are legit insane. This has been kindly documented above by yourself with your options comments, which had most of this forum laughing their ass off.

Thank you for further documenting it with your comments above. Actual US attorneys, including people in this thread, think the evidence in that document is an open and shut case of securities fraud.

Your insane cult-level shtick seems to be "throw shade on anything or anyone who criticizes Tesla or Elon Musk", if you can't win on reason just plain make **** up (including conspiracy theories) and state it authoritatively.

A lawyer is not a judge - this is one of the most prevalent misconception of regular people. You will see how far this "accusation" will go.

Have you not followed a single story about the Waymo vs. Uber case?

News breaking that OSHA opened an inspection yesterday of Tesla Fremont plant



Man, that sure makes it seem like shutting down the plant wasn't exactly voluntary

OSHA would have to have a court order to shut down a job site.

Didn't know that

Timing seems very interesting given the timing of the deranged musk email

If your goal is to keep the stock price up at any cost - a reasonable goal since a secondary will be necessary given that they're going to be $8 billion behind on projected revenue yet have to pay all those parts suppliers and Panasonic many billions this year in contractual obligations regardless of production - then it seemed like a very sane email. No disclosure requirements (since it was "leaked"), favorable headlines to stop a stock slide on your chaotic sudden shutdown, anti bureaucratic management comments to get headlines (who doesn't want to leave a meeting when it's bull****? Musk the hero) and make him seem like the action man coming in to "fix things up" and get everything on track.

Email is well crafted PR and disclosure avoidance while getting favorable (fake news) 6000/week production in June! headlines (the number 6000 and June was chosen because the previous was 5000, and casual readers of headlines will think Tesla is ramping up faster than predicted). Seems like a high end con job to me, rather than deranged.

No I get the planned goals, but there is so much unnecessary babble in it that it reads like a deranged lunatic wrote it.


I am not in agreement that musk or Trump are super calculated in all their moves. If they were it wouldn't always look like knee jerk reactions to current issues that don't fool anyone intelligent.


With that said, it does seem like both understand what works for them and either don't care or don't know that the majority of the intelligent people paying attention think they are pathological liars and buffoons.


Fwiw I agree with Trump on the trade war stuff, but that's for another thread

Being a lunatic and being a PR genius aren't contradictory. You can be crazy but subconsciously calculating in whatever you do. The best at what they do often are.

I think people who live within defined intellectual structures and who act rationally underestimate how smart and skilled these guys are. Like good salesmen or conmen - there's a hard-won deeply interwoven high level skill in what they do.
Firstly, it's not the majority, it's a tiny minority who pays close enough attention. Ask most people about Musk and they get their view from the fake news media. Only people who either hate you or like you are involved in things you do (trading Tesla, politics) know the details or care. For the rest, the fake news media is all that matters. And you saw fake news being made by that email - headlines of "Tesla targeting 6000/month production in June", a false statement as it's understood without the details. Everyone from Bloomberg to CBS ran that fake news, morons bought today...the stock was saved from a decline and shutdown headlines/speculations. It works like a charm. Musk has done that 50 times over the last few years, and combined with a big tech bull has kept the shorts squeezed.

There is nothing that blows back on them from acting like this, as long as they eventually win.

Credibility from rocket launches, popular delusions ("rocket science is the hardest thing in the world") and the hero achetype are powerful things. It's like Trump says..you can do anything...grab them by the pussy...you can do anything. Musk has Spurious and Keed and heltok and a million other people firmly by the pussy. They'll only feel violated once the house of cards comes crumbling down.

This is correct. However, if they thought there were unsafe conditions at a work site they could ask for work to be halted. No one ever says no to such a request.

I have no reason to think that's what happened in this case though. It's more likely an investigation opened in response to worker complaints, which isn't great either.

It's probably the stuff in the news, sprains/strains not being reported, stuff like that. If workers complain to OSHA that recordable injuries are systematically not being reported then OSHA could very well come do an investigation. No way in hell they would close the plant down for something like that, or even ask that the plant be shut down.