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Tesla Is Doing Much Better Than Headlines Suggest

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Re: Tesla Is Doing Much Better Than Headlines Suggest

#51
As the article states: The Koch Brothers

During 2015, their network of fossil-fuel CEOs worked together create and fund an advocacy organization with $10 million USD in February of 2016. The organization launched in August of 2016 as: Fueling U.S. Forward.

BIG OIL's disinformation campaign to destroy Tesla

Re: Tesla Is Doing Much Better Than Headlines Suggest

#52

And this is a bad article as well > The company is massively outselling its competitors in North America How can you compare Tesla models to BMW 7? It should be compared to BMW5. What is more, SUVs rule the market and that's where they main focus is (Audi e-tron, Mercedes EQ etc.)

The 3 is more comparable to a BMW 3 series.

Re: Tesla Is Doing Much Better Than Headlines Suggest

#53

Just as a note, the author is from CleanTechnica. They are known to be extremely pro-tesla. Best case scenario - most of their articles quietly ignore the downside and prop up the upside. Worst case - they lie or embellish the truth. Disclosure: I've followed both bulls & bears for almost 6 months - and I've got quite a lot riding in short positions.

I saw a graph on one of the pro-Tesla sites that basically showed that the Tesla debt is to scale with the rampup of the Model 3 production, and that it isn't out of proportion for the scale of what the production scale of the Model3. And the scale now is above profitability. Is that not true?

Re: Tesla Is Doing Much Better Than Headlines Suggest

#54
post #44

Anyone who has eyes can see that there are lots of Tesla vehicles on the streets wherever there are lots of wealthy people. That has never been a question or something that headlines suggest. The problem is Tesla sells these cars for less than it costs to build them and have had trouble making enough of them with a build quality matching the luxury price tag. Short sellers will magically go away if Tesla can start to…

Supposedly, Tesla's cars themselves sell for more than their production cost. The loss comes in supporting Tesla-as-a-fuel-reseller* - aka the Supercharger network.

It would be like if Toyota started opening gas stations, and Camrys and RAV4s and Siennas and Tundras got almost-free gasoline. While these businesses are complementary, they're very different operations, and should at least be in separate business units, if not a subsidiary or partnership with an existing fuel supplier.

*Electricity of a specific voltage and amperage is now a motor vehicle fuel.

Re: Tesla Is Doing Much Better Than Headlines Suggest

#55
post #29

> Tesla has achieved enormous results in ramping up its Model 3 production faster than almost any new model car in history. That defies my gut feel, so I checked on carsalesbase to confirm/refute. Nearly any new car model that I look at far outsells the Model 3 during new model ramp up... http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/tesla/tesla-model-...

Yeah, I'd imagine a new Rav4 or CR-V model goes from 0 to 10,000 a week pretty damn fast and with little to no fanfare.

Toyota sells 1/2 million Camrys a year. For Model 3 to reach that level, Tesla will have to produce 10,000 a week.

Re: Tesla Is Doing Much Better Than Headlines Suggest

#56

As much as I'd like the company to succeed, it seems frivolous to dismiss the concerns as short sellers' PR projects and media's desire to drive traffic through clickbait. Bond markets are largely dominated by institutional players who've seen every PR trick in the book, pay astute attention to fundamentals in hopes of finding a minuscule mispricing opportunity, and even they are not treating TSLA positively https://…

Does that show the debt servicing costs vs the expected profitability of the current production pace? The August/September production numbers were pretty robust, and given the profit margin on the current models I could see the debt being serviced.

The tweets and executives leaving are just drama. Tesla will make or break on the production rate and the profitability per car, both of which seemed on target, but I haven't seen definitive numbers.

Re: Tesla Is Doing Much Better Than Headlines Suggest

#57
This article is especially interesting in light of "Can We Go Electric Before It’s Too Late?" https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/10/where-america.... The answer may be "no," but Tesla is a big part, and outside of China likely the biggest part, of the answer.

Re: Tesla Is Doing Much Better Than Headlines Suggest

#59
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is the Tesla stock illiquid? It's publicly traded. Pardon me, imprecise phrasing. SpaceX stock is illiquid. Tesla stock is liquid, but if Tesla is having financial difficulties its stock will go down. If Elon can sell Tesla shares, Tesla can sell Tesla shares. > I'm sure he could sell SpaceX stock on the secondary market quite easily Not "quite easily". One, he's a super material insider. That makes the process…

I'm not convinced that selling some of his SpaceX stock on the secondary market is difficult, or that selling some of his Tesla stocks would cause a rout, especially when the immediate consequence would be paying back the debt, thereby saving the company. But I hope some experts (e.g. stock analysts) would comment on this scenario, I think it's interesting.

A CEO selling off a large share of stock in the company (s)he's running is a de facto red flag. Often it's headline/breaking news.

Re: Tesla Is Doing Much Better Than Headlines Suggest

#60

This article seems to be saying that Tesla is in a good place because they build good, popular cars and electric vehicles are the future. Maybe, I'm reading different news stories than the author, but I don't feel like those are criticisms of Tesla that I'm seeing anymore. Pretty much every current news story I'm seeing is either focusing on Tesla running out of money because their cars aren't profitable enough, or t…

I am a fan of Tesla who feels like a lot of the coverage has been really unfair. I still largely agree with the point that you are making, and I don't really consider this article to be better than some of the "bear" case articles that I have seen from time to time for the past few months.

Having said that, I think it is also a little unfair to imply that the work that the (???) are doing to try to push a false narrative and to get that narrative into the press has been unsuccessful. I'm honestly not even sure what to call these people. Are they really shorts in all cases? Maybe call them the twitter-geniuses-who-use #tslaq a lot?

An example is this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/business/tesla-cars-quest...

Despite the title, did that article actually unravel the mystery? Or did it just devolve into unsupported claims of soft demand and quality issues, along with a poor job of setting an appropriate baseline for how much inventory a typical auto-maker would have in-transit?

I wouldn't attribute it to malice, but would these poorly researched articles exist were it not for the "tslaq" crowd stuffing "tips" to friendly reporters? And do they have something to gain from such mediocre work?

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