As I understand it they have 2 shifts working 12 hour days. The costs under California's labor laws must be horrific. The rosy profit forecasts were for robot built cars that would be churned out with far lower costs than the "dinosaurs" like GM, Ford, and Toyota.
Current job posting for Production Associates shows: “Flexible availability to work any shift (Day, Swing, Graveyard…)”
Tesla's stock price is just fine, but how many times can Musk drop $35M to prop it up? As I understand it he's borrowing money on his stocks to buy more of them, is this far removed from paying your Visa bill with your MasterCard? The bond market is where trouble has set in and I'm not convinced that they will be swayed by 700+ cars built today.
Musk knows the Tesla stock price is about to take off, so why not buy? He tweeted last month that short sellers would have “the short burn of the century” come next week (after good preliminary Q2 production numbers are released). A happy side effect to his buying a lot of stock is, it makes life miserable for shorts, because they will have less free float to try to rescue themselves with. Having billion$ lets you do that.
If you know a company is failing, you don’t buy a lot of stock, you sell!
As Musk has said, Tesla has no problem getting money whenever they need it. The news now is that Tesla will likely not need to raise further capital this year. BECAUSE they have tightened up expenses, and the Model 3 will be profitable in Q3.
Pointing out that GM and Toyota have long histories of making cars and perfecting assembly lines is entirely valid - until one recalls that Musk had built an assembly line that he thought would put theirs to shame.
What happened of course is that Musk was wrong, and has been forthright in admitting this error.
Now he has financial problems, and it appears that he's stripping his investment in his cousin's solar business to lower the overhead. How much is the $2B Solar City acquisition worth after a 62% drop in installations followed by a cut in personnel and pulling out of a apparently successful sales partnership with Home Depot?
In a few months, Tesla will be making more cars at the Fremont plant than NUMMI ever did! Growth will continue, and in 2020, the plant will be making twice that. Putting, as you say, others to shame.
“People expect a company to be profitable,” Musk said. “I agree.”
Tesla has grown fast! It’s time to pare the dead wood and make hard financial choices. The company wants to sell its solar products in its own stores. Most of the Home Depot employees were offered positions elsewhere. Solar City grew by leasing its panels, but
selling solar/battery systems outright is more profitable than leasing, which is why they are changing to that model.
We need increasing numbers of EVs, and Musk gets full credit for trying to make this a reality. I just wish someone else was leading the charge.
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My local VW dealer told me they sold out of their 2018 allotment of EVs in November of 2017. I wasn't even aware that VW was offering an EV. There is a real pent up demand for these vehicles and someone will meet it.
Musk deserves to be the one to profit from this, but the world isn't always just.
Terry
The VW eGolf never sold at volumes big enough to make a difference. No more than 3 or 4 thousand a year total in the U.S. (source: Inside EVs) Hardly the example of “accelerating the advent of sustainable transport” we need. Tesla sold more than a year’s worth of eGolfs in the month of May 2018 alone! And VW is not exactly the poster child for clean transport.
Even the German car manufacturers now admit that if Tesla had not made EVs popular, they wouldn’t be making (or hoping to make) them. And their progress so far is less than inspiring. Musk is operating differently than many people are comfortable with. And he has to, to counter the monster that is the fossil-fueled industry. But he is succeeding where so many other have failed. And the Tesla future looks bright.