exactly what you expect from a cult leader

Are you serious? I am not sure who wouldn't call what they've done so far a success story. Whether or not they'll make it is debatable but claiming that they haven't been successful at what they've set out to accomplish is bull****.

Name one person that doesn't think of Tesla when you mention electric cars.

Name one person that didn't think of energy and utilities back in 2000 when you mentioned Enron.

You can count the Tesla's on the street, you know that, right?

I see way more Volts and Leafs on the road than Teslas.

Spurious, the problem is TSLA can't fail. AAPL can fail, like, 100x and still wouldn't blink. It looks, currently, like it's an innocuous partnership for in-house transpo and not some reinvigoration of Project Titan. Another problem is that is best case scenario for TSLA. It can only be worse any other avenue of fate.

And obviously TSLA can't be called a success story until it demonstrates staying power. As of right now, it's a company that just had a meteoric rise, but a massive cloud of uncertainy in its future and a buzzsaw of debt and competition looming. They could be Enron or they could float with the majors for a century. It's TBD...

In early 2015 Theranos was a multibillion success story by your standards too.

do you realize how many failed car companies there are? many of them were actually profitable at one point or another. everyone knows what myspace is. we could play this game forever.

tesla has managed to borrow an amazing amount of money in order to bring its product and brand mainstream. thats an impressive accomplishment that the company and musk deserve a ton of credit for. that is totally separate from the fact they have never been profitable, burnt through billions, and have a tough road ahead in order to make this work. if it doesn't work, then the accomplishment of bringing the product mainstream then turns in to the nightmare of burning billions of dollars from investors that bought an unrealistic hype story

Enron had $64 billion in real assets - in 2001 money - when they went bankrupt, far more than Tesla and far larger than even Tesla's market cap. They were a powerhouse producing a lot of goods with millions of customers and actually had key markets cornered. The problem was, they weren't profitable. Elon uses prediction fraud to keep the stock afloat amidst massive losses with no end in sight, Enron used accounting fraud.

I think enrons peak market cap was in the mid 60s, so almost the same as teslas peak market cap not counting inflation.

What is the point of this? There are hard facts, you don't need to revert to your car counting skills.

Not all competition is relevant. Apple has shown to be a non-competitor. They can't compete in any of the relevant car fields. TS has called TSLA doomed, because Apple entered the field before. It's not going to be a problem for TSLA.

Can you elaborate where they had a working product?

Do you realize how many failed car companies there are that have sold more than 100'000 units? 200'000 units? Do you know who of the major car companies did not have problems similar to TSLA at some point in their history?

MySpace is still relevant, they were a successful social network that a ton of people used. What are you trying to imply here?

How could you not argue the same thing for GM before they went bankrupt?

You can repeat the word fraud as often as you want, it doesn't make it applicable. It's laughable that you are trying to link TSLA to Enron. TSLA's product is a lot more visible, traceable and it's physical. People have a lot more information on TSLA and the world is different today than it was almost 20 years ago.

There is a reason your calls on TSLA have been a disaster and I'll predict they stay that way. TSLA will go down in value in the short-term (<2 years), but will survive and strive as a business afterwards.

Spurious: are you actually long TSLA?

You’re the one who brought it up, FFS.

No, I am not and wouldn't advise anyone at the moment.

I was referring to Enron and what happened there.

do YOU realize how many failed car companies there are that sold more than 100.000 units? there are tens and might even be hundreds who had their brand bought up by another company for pennies on the dollar.

show me the ones with ten concecutive years of negative cashflow.

a decade of negative cash flow is the responsibility of the bondholders and stockholders, not really of management. Most young companies would love to have that luxury.

There of course are examples but you have to adjust for market growth in these kind of examples as well.
Addressable market 10, 20, 30... years ago was on a totally different level.

Just one example:

If you look at TSLA's cash flow statements it's pretty clear Elon has been walking a razor's edge of generating basically zero (it's barely negative every time) operating cash flow and using the financing to finance investing activities.

That probably means Musk can make TSLA FCF (probably profits too) positive but only at the great expense of growth rates and TSLA stock.

Huge market sell-off, Tesla rallies

Who the hell is buying this stock?

Tesla on auto pilot crashes into cop car.

Must not have read the manual.

The LA Times has an actual picture - above linked msn article has a photo from a different crash.

They were using autopilot on a highway (laguna canyon rd is technically a highway but not much of one) without a center divider, just painted lines.

Didn't read the manual. No sympathy.

Right, because you all read the manual before you turn the car on for the first time...C'mon man

I have never read the manual for any car I've ever bought. Nobody does. Not even when I went from ICE to hybrid. You guys all do?

I'm pretty sure they are just make a joke about the absurdity of Tesla's autopilot being called autopilot and all the restrictions listed in the manual that make it pretty useless.