Unraveling a Tesla Mystery: Lots (and Lots) of Parked Cars
Excellent reporting...
The New York Times: Unraveling a Tesla Mystery: Lots (and Lots) of Parked Cars
"Groups of new vehicles are being detected in unexplained locations across the country. Evidence being posted online has raised questions about production, logistics, quality and even demand."
New York Post: Elon Musk’s deal with the SEC doesn’t fix Tesla’s biggest problems
"... even the most diehard, fan-boy investors shouldn’t really be celebrating a company so intrinsically linked to a single person, much less to this person. In fact, these same investors might’ve preferred to see Musk gone, if only to see if the company can live up to its hype and make it without an erratic, celebrity CEO hooked on government subsidies (and who knows what else).
Tesla under Musk has always been a bundle of contradictions. Wall Street analysts paper over those anomalies, blinded by his halo (visionary, progressive billionaire tech entrepreneur), lucrative investment-banking fees and promise to save the environment via electric cars.
Consider: Musk may be a visionary, but he didn’t create Tesla. He was an early investor and took it over from its founder after a brutal internal fight.
Musk may also be liberal media’s model of the modern capitalist — progressive, green, wonky on all things tech — but reports suggest Tesla’s assembly line is rather robber-baronish: It’s 100 percent non-union with work conditions sometimes bordering on abusive (i.e., workers reportedly have to wade through raw sewage and gulp Red Bull to work late and meet production goals).
And for all Musk’s happy talk of electric cars saving the world from global warming, the carbon footprint created to actually build one is enormous.
If Musk is such a great capitalist, why is Tesla unprofitable, despite inhaling billions of dollars in government subsidies? Maybe, just maybe, Americans aren’t ready to give up gas guzzlers because electric cars are still inefficient (they need more frequent refueling, and there aren’t many refueling stations) and expensive (the latest model for the average person, the Model 3, is slated to cost $35,000 before subsidies.)
As most fads go, these hurdles barely made it into many of the business-media accounts and analyst reports. The glass-half-full scenario allowed him to sell his vision of Tesla almost unimpeded by logic.
The result is Tesla is now a car company that loses money (despite repeated promises that profitability was around the corner) and makes just a fraction of the vehicles of established carmakers.
Yet its stock value exceeds that of the very profitable General Motors.
As with most fads, reality eventually set in ..."
Emphasis ours. We are short Tesla.
The New York Times: Unraveling a Tesla Mystery: Lots (and Lots) of Parked Cars
"Groups of new vehicles are being detected in unexplained locations across the country. Evidence being posted online has raised questions about production, logistics, quality and even demand."
New York Post: Elon Musk’s deal with the SEC doesn’t fix Tesla’s biggest problems
"... even the most diehard, fan-boy investors shouldn’t really be celebrating a company so intrinsically linked to a single person, much less to this person. In fact, these same investors might’ve preferred to see Musk gone, if only to see if the company can live up to its hype and make it without an erratic, celebrity CEO hooked on government subsidies (and who knows what else).
Tesla under Musk has always been a bundle of contradictions. Wall Street analysts paper over those anomalies, blinded by his halo (visionary, progressive billionaire tech entrepreneur), lucrative investment-banking fees and promise to save the environment via electric cars.
Consider: Musk may be a visionary, but he didn’t create Tesla. He was an early investor and took it over from its founder after a brutal internal fight.
Musk may also be liberal media’s model of the modern capitalist — progressive, green, wonky on all things tech — but reports suggest Tesla’s assembly line is rather robber-baronish: It’s 100 percent non-union with work conditions sometimes bordering on abusive (i.e., workers reportedly have to wade through raw sewage and gulp Red Bull to work late and meet production goals).
And for all Musk’s happy talk of electric cars saving the world from global warming, the carbon footprint created to actually build one is enormous.
If Musk is such a great capitalist, why is Tesla unprofitable, despite inhaling billions of dollars in government subsidies? Maybe, just maybe, Americans aren’t ready to give up gas guzzlers because electric cars are still inefficient (they need more frequent refueling, and there aren’t many refueling stations) and expensive (the latest model for the average person, the Model 3, is slated to cost $35,000 before subsidies.)
As most fads go, these hurdles barely made it into many of the business-media accounts and analyst reports. The glass-half-full scenario allowed him to sell his vision of Tesla almost unimpeded by logic.
The result is Tesla is now a car company that loses money (despite repeated promises that profitability was around the corner) and makes just a fraction of the vehicles of established carmakers.
Yet its stock value exceeds that of the very profitable General Motors.
As with most fads, reality eventually set in ..."
Emphasis ours. We are short Tesla.
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posted by C. Guinness @ 12:10 AM
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