Leech is an overstatement and an understatement. SpaceX survives on grant money. Tesla may or may not be illegally getting money for ZEV credits. And SolarCity was under investigation by the federal govt for solar panel installation fraud.

They all rely on gubmint money. And for substantial parts of revenue. I would not say they are all leeches.

Tho I'd love to see what happens when Musk's roadmap to cost cutting via outsourcing critical components without testing when human lives are on the line. Hopefully they yank his grant money, or maybe he retools his production process before killing people.

Ok, ok, people! I admit it, even after this many posts, I'm still confused by the level of confidence ITT (and the even more extreme consensus on SeekingAlpha) that Tesla is a guaranteed bankruptcy.

But I'm content to let history show me the details of your critiques in real time. I'm done thinking about Tesla.

However, I will now learn more about the US auto industry and reply to your post ToothSayer if I find anything interesting. Thanks for all the discussion though, was fun.

Easy with the strawmen. You sound like a total crazy person. (Much like TS et al sound in the Uber thread.) You should have a realistic view of what Tesla does well and what the challenges exist. You say things that don't represent reality. You also don't address any of the obfuscation that exists within Tesla.

Instead you resort to strawmen and idiocy.

You are totally a smart guy, but you seriously have issues with analyzing Elon Musk. You seem more into his religion than anything else.

Cruise Control maintains a steady state. If it suddenly sped up the car and ran into something that would be analogous.

http://files.shareholder.com/downloa...der_Letter.pdf

Hope you guys didn't short too much this time...

What is the theoretical roadmap to cashflow positive by Q1?

Stop capital expenditure? Come up with a creative way to report "cash"?

I never short TSLA earnings, Musk is almost as skilled as the Valeant CEO or Donald Trump at dishonest self promotion.

This news is terrible, and only Musk's talent at spinning and creative non-GAAP accounting saved. They missed even non-GAAP (bombed massively on GAAP), similar with earnings. They missed on their projections for deliveries this year, hitting the low end. All their future promises are pure fluff.

Just proves what a moron Musk is. This situation never needed to happen. He tried to cleverly create some extra special seats which a) aren't any different from regular seats in any meaningful way and b) don't fold down - a horrible design feature considering this is an SUV and c) have held up the entire production line, if he is to be believed. This kind of stupidity would get someone fired at a real car company.

I mean, what engineer designs worthless custom seats that destroy the cars cargo space, and hold up the whole production line at a struggling company up to its eyeballs in debt? It was a very foolish thing to do. Similarly, Musk also mentioned that he'll be changing the autopilot very soon so that it only engages under a much smaller set of conditions. It's been pure luck that someone hasn't been killed.

These kind of pointlessly reckless and stupid design decisions will happen again, no doubt.
This is hilarious. They're producing the SHELLS of the "PowerWall". This is just a farce.
Well, by that criteria, the Tesla-destroying Mission E has already been "revealed". It takes 6 months and some millions of dollars to put out a "reveal" or "concept car". It means absolutely nothing.

This is another farce. Production for the Model 3 will begin for delivery in 2018 (Musk has already been dishonestly shifting the language for the date of delivery, as he did for production this year at 55,000 - which became 50,000 - 55,000, which became 50,000 - 52,000).

The news was disasterous. Zerohedge shows quite convincingly why. Have a look at the graphs.

Musk's talent at spinning is the company's best asset. He's even got morons like Mikhel believing they're a "battery company, not a car company", when they haven't made a single battery yet and are likely to never make money out of it.

He also dismissed GM's claims about rapidly improving battery pricing, saying Tesla will have a large competitive advantage. How? They spend nothing on battery R&D compared to say LG Chem, and don't own the Gigafactory.

Good to see you posting again! Whats the common denominator of all their products? What are their largest capital expenditures? (Lets ignore the EV component requiring a battery in every vehicle.)

I'm sorry you can't understand the basic business model. Though I find your posting about how you were an LP at a16z pretty entertaining. Or maybe you secretly own a large chunk of google. As if that would help you understand the basics of any company being discussed (aside from private information rights).

Truly amazing how Musk talking and promising things can make this stock jump, even after lackluster data.

Ive made money buying low and selling high three times now, but i think im done.

ZeroHedge has never been convincing about anything.

1. They copied this Reuters article: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/...0QE0DC20150810

2. Tesla's cash on hand when up last quarter, and they were almost breakeven on a cash basis before investment.

Why would you try to separate out investment? Apparently they can't even manage to outsource parts correctly so this investment is necessary to sustaining even their current level of production, let alone a rapid expansion.

Lets look at the facts:
1) Extremely small cash cushion.
2) Not gonna be cash flow positive for a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time. (Unless we assume they are gonna scrap the Gigafactory and new car models and any plans to increase production).

Note that this is an equally valid criticism of Uber that you have casually brushed off multiple times.

Cite please.

Can people please stop engaging mikel?
He makes claims, proceeds to post google search links that prove the complete opposite and still thinks he is right.

I mean the guy thinks Uber is a logistics company because they changed their tagline from Your personal driver to something different.

There is zero substance.

That is quite a bit of straw manning.

To keep this Tesla focused, you argued that battery production doesn't harm the environment, but didn't dispute the PowerWall was essentially useless in almost all the actual use cases?

You also don't seem to understand the basics of how batteries are produced. Or the environmental costs of this.

This may be due to your limitation in English or just some sort of understanding I can clear up. Let me know if you have specific questions and I'll be happy to address this for you.

NB: Changing the overall branding of your company is generally indicative of a major change in strategy. But I guess you could also point out the city to city functionality they've released, the multitude of logistic products, or any of the other common-****ing-sense strategic decisions they've made.

I didn't argue that it doesn't harm the environment. I asked you to give me a source for your claims. You proceeded to post a link to several sources claiming the complete opposite.

My English skills are in no way hindering me from understanding anything you are saying. You claim something and have nothing to back it up. You are like a terrible version of Thremp.

As a investor I think this was the most important exchange of the earnings call:

So your position is that I need to provide sources that show lithium ion battery production is harmful for the environment, aside from source materials being so heavily damaging that China is curtailing their production?

I'm honestly not sure what your troll is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphi...2C_and_milling

But does this work for you? I guess I can help you construct a basic argument against lithium ion battery production being "green". I hope you atleast understand how graphite is used in the production of batteries. But you seem to struggle to understand English. We can go through the link you think "debunks" my claims if you want, but like most things where you disagree with me, you're almost assuredly wrong.

So your source is Wikipedia which again fails to mention the relative environmental impact of it. Sure there are implications for the environment but none of this is an unsolvable issue.

Your link as well as your link to Google search noted that recycling is key.

You can't explain to me in plain English how batteries are bad for the environment. Your China claim comes yet again with no source.

If we agree that they don't have a practical use case (which you have conceded), it is immaterial if they have any "relative" impact (which is a kinda equivocating position you're taking). Instead we need to look at if they cause an absolute impact, which they obviously do and a sizable one at that.

I'm not really sure I understand your thoughts on this subject. I'm simply stating the the PowerWall is completely useless consumption that harms the environment in the vast bulk of situations. I'm not running a relative comparison to a diesel generator, since the generator has realistic use cases whereas the PowerWall is simply produced and discarded with no actual benefit accruing to anyone except Tesla over its life cycle. Somehow you agreed with the extremely limited use cases, but fail to understand how this is a net negative for the environment.

In addition you've struggled with both Google (a coy way of explaining your question was so incredibly dumb that it could be answered with a quick search), reading comprehension (the article you "quoted" doesn't conclude what you think it concludes), a sourced document (wikipedia), and some obvious facts about graphite production.

I'm sorry that you're such a novice on the subject that you require citation for basic elements of it. But here you go: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...-rain-to-china

In closing, I'm not really sure what you're goal post shifting about, or if you just want me to cite literally every statement I've made about lithium ion battery production and its environmental impact. Even after you agree that there are virtually no use cases for the PowerWall.

Where did I talk about PowerWalls?

I am talking about the environmental impact of batteries. You claimed something and have yet to post something to back it up. Battery production - if done right - has very little environmental impact. The key is the correct recycling of the used materials.


You are not very intelligent and try to be this super contrarian poster who comes up with an anti thesis to every single "common" opinion in BFI. This makes you very similar to Thremp. Where you differ is the fact that you are not smart enough to be per se contrarian.

I was talking about PowerWalls, and you responded. I'd try to keep up with the discussion.

If you aren't able to understand whats being discussed, it'd serve you better to read again more carefully, then type.

You still don't seem to understand what I wrote, or the claim I made. Your arguments are disorganized and rambling.

If the view is that the PowerWall is a great product and very useful here, then most of the people here are complete morons about the PowerWall. I'd suggest basic familiarity with the subject.

ETA: You linked a paper that does not support your position. Please cite the specific passage that concludes what you think it says. You have done this several times. I can't tell whether it is stupidity or outright dishonesty.

Good advice. As I said at the beginning, he's a particularly dense version of an this. (Now twice with TSLA -> batteries, Uber -> logistics, details be damned) and thinks his worthless abstractions are meaningful. He's not contrarian; he actually thinks that his abstractions are meaningful and that he's seeing more deeply than others. Hence the very marked case of aggressive splitting when people disagree with him.

Just put him on ignore, I have.

No, you weren't talking about the PowerWall, you were talking about battery packs:

Actually, most of the commentators think that energy storage is a great idea. The PowerWall is the most famous of a lot of products out there.

I mean it's obvious you are out of your depth here. You should argue with 9/11 truthers, that's more your level of competency.


TS is right, last post on this.

Weird. In a thread about Tesla, I talk about Tesla's battery pack product. I guess your reading comprehension really is that atrocious. (Or you are that dishonest.)

I see that you didn't bother to quote either of the "sources" you provided. So I'll guess that you can't find fact based support for the PowerWall being a "great idea". It is obvious you have no idea about even the most basic elements of Tesla's business model.

Clearly a car company invests 3b into a battery plant along with producing two battery related products.