When I talk about what they lose per car I'm not talking about just production cost. I have no idea on those and don't need to. All that matters is how much it costs in total to get that $35K in revenue when someone buys a $35K Model 3.

Marginal cost to factory gate the car, acquire the customer, close the sale, deliver it, deal with the immediate aftermath. And given what we know, there's no way it's less than $40K.

One of the problems with Tesla is that their accounting isn't comparable to other car makers because Tesla assume all the non-factory-gating costs as well, making their real gross margins far worse but somewhat hidden.

To specify my above, I’m talking about the COGS attributable to a 35k m3 (using Tesla accounting), which I think is the most appropriate point of reference/discussion. Sales/marketing and I believe some transport costs are wrapped up in SG&A, but i don’t think it’s too helpful to pull them out, since if you want to measure on a net basis you should just include all opex anyways (I think it’s clear the 35k m3 isn’t profitable on a net basis). We aren’t comparing to other OEMs, so using Tesla accounting is fine/easiest imo.

Fun day for Tesla. Another incident where "autopilot" failed to see a giant truck blocking the road. It passed straight under taking off the roof (and potential decapitation - the accident was fatal), before continuing for another 500 yards, in an excellent example of "autopilot", "fully self driving", "collision avoidance" and "automatic braking" as sold on Tesla's website. Just days earlier, Elon Musk claims that Tesla will have full end-to-end autonomy at the end of next year, and that his cars already have the hardware for "full self driving", in another brazen lie/fraud on the market.

Meanwhile, a Tesla store in England is having a massive fire with explosions, the day after staff find out that they're being suddenly fired (after negligent homicider, liar and fraud Elon Musk said in the 10K just weeks earlier that they were expanding their retail stores in 2019).

Closing all the stores seems like an awful move, don't really know how this will not reduce demand. Given the 6% in cost savings, I don't think this is thought through enough. I think this is really bad for the MS/MX sales.

February US numbers are obviously awful, don't see TSLA not going down to <$250 in the next three to six months. The stock has no business staying that high.

Bankruptcy is still off the table, obviously. The ASAP point on goal post moving was really spot on. Everything that was said a year ago no longer matters for bears.
Even if they are selling the $35'000 version at a loss, they are still selling the car and that means they are ahead of competition.

Bears make it sound like Tesla would not be able to improve production efficiency to eventually turn this into a profitable car. They already have significantly improved it in the past year.

This is an outstanding sentence.

Spurious is likely close to the peak of the dunning Krueger scale, but his posts are way better than asap’s

You basically imply that they are unable to get further funding to make up for those losses. You also say that they will not get efficient soon enough to produce cars profitably. You also say that the mere fact that Tesla cars are the most sold electric cars in the world means less than producing a profitable base version.

I disagree with all three.

Dude you have 700 posts here in <2 years (when the stock is basically flat) and you are talking **** about anyone's posts? Not to mention many are condescending off topic nonsense like this that do nothing to advance the discussion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCSlQyNnxqs

You need to watch the 6-7 minute segment and then jump to the 43 minute mark.

Baggy gold.

It's hard to pick out just a few clips. The video is amazing. The guys are clearly clueless about investing in general, but also just blind bulls. I enjoyed 49:40.

Not that I'm an investing expert, but at least I know I don't know.

some amazingly advanced discussion happening itt. comparing aircraft autopilot to a car autopilot is so painfully dumb. completely different requirements and tech

as far as trading goes, i think i posted this a year or two ago. tsla has traded sideways for about 5 years. selling vol has crushed. if tsla goes up, sell some more calls. if it goes down, sell some puts. i think tsla discussion is interesting, enjoy the thread, and am bearish, but trying to time a bankruptcy is just throwing a hail mary. seems like awful strat to me

No need to time it via over-priced puts, just short it and be patient.

It's clearly not a growth stock anymore, the market will reflect that eventually. Don't worry about the SEC, bankruptcy hopes, or other distractions. Just focus on the insane valuation for a marginally profitable no-growth car company.

First reports of price cut effects on sales, seems like this time Elon made certain to go deep enough to drag as many off the fence as possible. My guess is that the same 'backlog' effect is in play here, runrate will collapse one this pent up demand is over. Since we don't know when SR will start getting delivered this demand is all that can keep cash coming in. If it tanks again in a few weeks and SR models are not going out I don't know what they will do.

Reddit post, seems likely legit

The most shocking thing is the size of the S/X price reduction. We know they have had no improvement in costs there (battery is made on old lines (pre-Tesla) and hasn't changed, production lines are mature), yet they've dropped prices 20+% overnight, effectively wiping out a 1.5 billion dollar pure profit stream. 140K euro Model X or P100D Model S is now 95K euro. It beggars belief.

It's so drastic (and sudden and unplanned it seemed) you have the hilarious situation where 6 month old used CPO cars are 15K euro more expensive than a new one!

I can't for the life of me figure out wtf is wrong with them. I can only assume that demand has cratered across all products - partly because the iPace in Norway/Holland which is eating up thousands of sales and taking the lead over Tesla - and partly because of the tax credit dropping in the US. And they desperately need to hide the fact that demand has cratered, because if the quarter numbers are as bad as the US numbers indicate, the stock will plummet $100 in no time on confirmation of demand death and there will be a mass exit and Musk will get margin called on $4 billion worth of stock (Musk is obviously broke and no one will loan against his SpaceX shares). This way the sales rush in and the quarter delivery numbers look acceptable and the stock stays up.

I can't see any other reason to take this course of action if they can raise as the SenorKeeed/Spurious are irrationally certain they can.

If they can't raise, then a desperate cash grab after paying the bonds is the other obvious explanation.

In either case it's obvious they're in deep **** and Musk has been lying his face off about the level of demand and maybe their cash position/customer deposits.

I have a theory that they are planning a big write down of inventory. By doing this they can create a separate line item on the income statement and funnel lots of costs there that may or may not really belong there. When the waters are muddy, it’s easy to move numbers in your favor/however you want, ESPECIALLY with regard to presentation. A write down is very muddy waters.


This will allow them the illusion of still having great margins while dumping a bunch of worthless assets/debits through the income statement in a period they already guided to a loss. It will also enable the. To lower the value of vehicles sold in the future for more than what they cost to build. Totally ~legal too.


The story I think is “because of the launch of the model 3 some resale values have gone down and in an effort to be conservative we are writing down inventory in accordance with LCM guidance”


Only idiots will fall for that, but I think it’s totally legit and probably should have happened awhile ago to some extent (this is also why u see such huge numbers being shiftes to PPE in previous quarters, enables them to avoid LCM guidance)


Lower of cost or market = LCM

Model Y announcement March 14th. Elon really trying to pump the stock.

Considering it's basically a model 3 with a different shell it makes sense to push it out asap with higher end model 3 demand being dead. The more they push it up, the more obvious the desperation is.

That said... This might actually pump the stock.

Should be good for a $10 stock pump tomorrow. Show off a couple handmade Model Ys, basically a concept car. Start collecting deposits even though it will not be available until next year - definitely helps with the cash-flow problem! Cause they sure don't have the capex right now to build the thing.

The downside is people on the fence might just decide not to get the M3 and wait it out.

It's also a pretty obvious response to Friday's stock price action... No way this was planned to be (pre)announced today

Still can't figure out why Elon is spending all his effort pumping the stock instead of trying to raise capital if it's a possibility at all

The stock price IS the product at this point.

This should have been announced as part of the Thursday massive news-drop, but of course it wasn't ready. So elon could wait a few days to see how the 35k M3 was selling online, probably was not great, then rush out Model Y and get fresh deposits from March 15 that helps the end of quarter cash position.

Repeat later this year with the truck reveal/deposits.

I don’t think they can do that without being in violation of their ABL covenants.

I don’t think I agree but it’s a good question and I don’t know for sure, also ABL covenants shouldn’t have anything to do with GAAP but if it violated the ABL you can take it to the bank they would find a way to avoid it, so it’s a good question

How so?

Im just going to take the approach of buying weekly puts on Monday at open, thursday right before close , and friday at close (for next week) , until i cant anymore..

going with the 3/8 282.5 this week.