Posted on 07/23/2018 3:20:35 PM PDT by Signalman
Shares of Tesla were down 4 percent Monday after falling more than 6 percent on a report that the electric car maker has turned to some suppliers for a refund of previously made payments in a bid to turn a profit.
Tesla has asked some suppliers to refund money it has paid since 2016, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday, citing a memo.
The memo, which the paper said was sent by a global supply manager, described the request as essential to Tesla's continued operation and characterized it as an investment in the car company to continue the long-term growth between both players.
Tesla could not be immediately reached for comment, although the WSJ quoted the company as confirming it is seeking price reductions for projects, some of which date back to 2016.
CEO Elon Musk also tweeted: "Only costs that actually apply to Q3 & beyond will be counted. It would not be correct to apply historical cost savings to current quarter."
"Automakers often have brutal pricing demands on suppliers for future work, but retroactive rebates is not something we hear much about, and this is troubling for us to hear," David Whiston, an analyst with brokerage Morningstar wrote in a note to clients.
Tesla has been burning through cash as it ramps up production of its Model 3 sedan. While Musk has said the company does not need to raise cash this year, several analysts have predicted that the electric car maker would need to raise capital soon.
Tesla had about $3.2 billion in cash as of the first quarter ended March 31, after spending about $1 billion in the quarter.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Elon Musk is a total fraud. by Maureen Callahan
One disastrous tweet has finally revealed Elon Musk for what he is: a fraud.
Enraged that a British cave diver called his idea to rescue the Thai soccer team for what it was — “a p.r. stunt [with] absolutely no chance of working” — Musk took to Twitter and called him a “pedo.”
Just like that, Tesla’s market value plummeted by $2 billion.
Musk has been in business since 2002. His stated goal is nothing short of transforming humanity through his products: his electric cars, space travel, and an underground high-speed Hyperloop system.
He has yet to succeed at anything but somehow spins every failure into proof of imminent success. His only accomplishment has been this decades-long Jedi mind trick.
Tesla is best known for blowing deadlines and consistently falling short on production.
In November 2017, Bloomberg reported that the company burns through $500,000 per hour. For two years now, Tesla has been suffering an epic talent drain, and in May, two top execs — one the liaison with the National Transportation Safety Board — walked out the door.
That’s to say nothing of the human toll.
In March, a Tesla driver was killed while test-driving an autopiloted Model X, the impact decimating half the car. Then in May, the NTSB announced an investigation after two teenagers were killed in a Tesla Model S after its battery caught fire following a crash. A similar accident claimed a driver two months prior, with California firefighters reporting that the Tesla battery kept reigniting days after the smash.
California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health opened its third investigation into workplace safety at Tesla Inc. in July after employee complaints. Two investigations have been ongoing since April, yet Musk took to Twitter to boast that Tesla was now building its cars in a tent.
“Not sure we actually need a building,” he tweeted. Meanwhile, he was “back to sleeping at the factory” to hit production deadlines.
This is a genius?
Tesla was founded in 2003, but the world’s largest automakers quickly surpassed Musk’s vision for electric vehicles. Tesla will never catch up. Shareholders are finally catching on.
Musk isn’t sorry and nothing is ever his fault
So should the government, which reportedly gifts Musk’s companies with an estimated $4.9 billion in subsidies.
Star investor Jim Chanos called Tesla a “walking insolvency” back in 2016. He doubled down in December, saying Tesla is “headed for a brick wall.”
SpaceX — which Musk touts as replacing NASA and colonizing Mars — has been a literal failure to launch. So many of its rockets have burned up or crashed that Musk, for reasons unknown, has made a blooper reel.
As for that Hyperloop, most experts say it’s impossible and unnecessary. “It gives me pause to think that otherwise intelligent people are buying into this kind of utopian vision,” Harvard professor Jose Gomez-Ibanez told MIT Technology Review in 2016.
“They’re up against the airlines, and airlines don’t need to install hundreds of miles of track.”
Rocket scientist and aerodynamic engineer Leon Vanstone has called the Hyperloop yet another Elon Musk hustle.
Writing in Fortune, Vanstone asked: “Is it possible to build a Hyperloop train into a 200-mile underground tunnel on a reasonable timeline that moves people in 29 minutes [from DC to New York] and isn’t prohibitively expensive? Probably not.”
Musk infamously does not take criticism well and refuses to be questioned or challenged — three lethal traits in a leader. On a conference call with analysts in May, Musk dismissed questions about Tesla’s diminishing capital and other dubious claims with name-calling.
see also
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s bizarre tweets are raising red flags on Wall Street
“Excuse me,” Musk said. “Next. Boring boneheaded questions are not cool.”
Tesla’s stock plummeted 5.6 percent after that performance. They also dropped 5 percent after an April Fool’s Day tweet in which Musk announced Tesla had gone bankrupt.
“Elon plays by his own rules,” a former Tesla exec told the Washington Post, “but I think he underestimates the weight of his own words.”
Musk’s attempts to insert himself into the Thai cave rescue show he has less intelligence and even less humanity than we realized.
He finally apologized on Wednesday for his disgusting accusations against the hero diver, but only after shareholders demanded it and not without accusing the diver of lying, insisting his own efforts weren’t p.r.-driven but “an act of kindness.”
Oh — and that the sub he built was “to specifications from the dive-team leader.”
In other words: Musk isn’t sorry and nothing is ever his fault.
Business as usual.
Link: https://nypost.com/2018/07/21/elon-musk-is-a-total-fraud/
The market for sedans has been cratering for a year. With their subsidies set to go away it will be awful tough for Tesla to make profit on a $30K mid size semi-luxury sedan.
Even if they can make 5000 of them a week who is going to buy them? They don’t have a pickup truck.
And they are building them in California! Think about how freaking expensive the labor and regulation compliance costs must be.
I wouldn’t answer that question until you get your 4.9 billion from the government.
or “cave submarines” lol
Like I said, if Tesla’s purpose for existing is to push the industry to electric, then it may be successful in accomplishing that... but it never was going to be able to compete once the big players moved into the space at scale.
There is no doubt if Tesla starts to produce good numbers and selling them consistently at reasonable prices, the big players will move in and Tesla can’t compete with that.
Most likely outcome is if that does happen it will get slurped up by someone, and the nameplate might live on in some capacity, but it never had a long term play IMHO if electric goes mainstream
I always thought his intent was to sell Tesla to a big player which buy because of government regs. He’s probably lost that gamble.
Tesla could survive as a super-premium brand. Electric Ferrari, maybe 10,000 units, starting at $200k. But the Tesla3 delusion needs to be dropped fast.
Tesla will fold like a cheap suit.
Soon, everyone who wanted one will have one. Then what? The residential panel business is mature and has its share of buyer remorse stories.
Tesla’s battery as grid backup story can only go so far. What would you rather have: a battery bank or a diesel generator as a backup for your hospital?
Come to think of it, I picked up a disposable electric toothbrush on closeout. It had a AAA visible in the handle.
At college in the latter 1970s, one of the engineering departments hosted an appearance by a GM electric concept car. Memorable because the driver managed to stall it. It was a standard.
So do hellary’s sycophants...EM is a high order overt cerebral narc using other people’s money to fund his grandiose dreams...enjoy the ride...like a bottle rocket....
Ferengi First Law of Acquisition: “Never, ever give them their money back!”
Let me guess....Tesla reached out to suppliers whoms only Customer is....wait for it Tesla. Elon kinda has them by the family jewels, they can’t say no.
Supposedly Musk is trying to fast track a Chinese Factory. Say good bye Fremont, or minimal figurehead production /R&D.
Yet, my NY Jewish SIL, a retired public teacher and hard core member of the NEA, is still chomping at the bit to get one. Put her $1K down ages back and believes everything the salesman at the Orlando Tesla dealer tells her.
Maureen Callahan doesn’t have the chops to cover business news.
Where’s Obama when Tesla needs him the most?
Hey, democrats, a ‘green’ company is in deep trouble. Start up a go-fund-me-page to rescue it, since Trump ain’t about to dump money down the toilet like Obama did.
Should’ve stuck to rockets. The car companies have been doing this business since the beginning of time, through thick and thin, with a lot of hard lessons learned. This guy thinks he going to step right in and show everybody what’s what? How’s that working, pal? Despite what the media and Californians are talking, people don’t want inferior cars that cost triple what a gas car does up-front and 20 times the maintenance costs. Lots of people will talk it up, damn few will actually put money down. And the few that did are sick of the delays and walking. Elon will probably survive on his rockets but the car side of the business is screwed and his stock prices are already showing it.
Yep. Those of us that said so last summer were slammed for being haters. This summer, not so much. Tesla is circling the drain and Elon isn’t going to fix it no matter how many nights he spends in a cot next to the production floor. The fact is, too many things are already put into motion and can’t be changed mid-stream, the company won’t survive it. Their antics in trying to raise cash from somewhere, anywhere, are not going unnoticed. Car manufacturers are face-palming right and left at what this guy is doing.
He might have the secret sauce on rocket launches but when it comes to making cars, he hasn’t even made it up to the bush-leagues. Even the Apple-type fanboys with plenty of eff-you money are canceling orders in droves.
And I’m betting that a guy can put money down and drive off in one that day, not an IOU. “We’ll get you a car someday, really!” A person that buys a car like that is DUMB—and no, I’m not going off on the tycoon that is putting down full-payment on a 2019 Ferrari that is $2.6 million and 1 of 50 made. They’re the notable exception, that’s not how 99.99% of us roll.
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