Tesla No Longer Even A Growth Company; Going Bankrupt: Shortseller

[atan651]

It will take awhile but rest assured tesla will declare bankruptcy one day.

 

[SgtGungHo]

The rumor is the big battery announcement has to do with a new production process to make lithium batteries...not switching out components. Apparently Maxwell stumbled upon a new process that is quicker, less expensive, and more robust so they have less loss after a large number of recharging cycles (ie million mile battery). After Maxwell made the announcement Tesla immediately bought Maxwell for $200 Million and basically put a gag order on any future news announcements.

Tesla will make money from licenses to world battery makers so they can use this process in not only cars but for things like phones and laptops. This is why their stock is skyrocketing.

No, there is nothing new about solvent-free manufacturing of Lithium battery electride (and it's only for cathodes; Tesla is trying something different with anodes) and it won't change the fact that the industry needs to move on from Lithium to reduce the cost per kWa and turn the whole industry profitable without the government's subsidy. In fact, when I look into financial reports of some battery companies, it seems like they really struggle to stay profitable at all with their margin of being very, very slim. Of course, I could be wrong.

 

[F-22Raptor]

Tesla Short Thesis
We remain short Tesla Inc. (TSLA), which I still consider to be the biggest single stock bubble in this whole bubble market. The core points of our Tesla short thesis are:

• Tesla has no “moat” of any kind; i.e., nothing meaningfully proprietary in terms of electric car technology, while existing automakers—unlike Tesla—have a decades-long “experience moat” of knowing how to mass-produce, distribute and service high-quality cars consistently and profitably, as well as the ability to subsidize losses on electric cars with profits from their conventional cars.
  
  
• In 2020 Tesla will again lose money, as it has every year in its 17-year existence.
  
  
• Tesla is now a “busted growth story”; revenue growth is flatlining while unit demand for its cars is only being maintained via price cutting.
  
  
• Elon Musk is a securities fraud-committing pathological liar.

In June, courtesy of Business Insider, we once again learned how much of a sociopath Elon Musk is:

Then, courtesy of J.D. Power, we again learned about the atrocious quality of Tesla’s cars; it ranked dead last of 31 brands surveyed:

Stanphyl Capital
And here’s a great graphic from Twitter user @clausMller17 clearly demonstrating Tesla’s blatantly fraudulent EPA range claims for its cars:

short tesla
And as @TeslaCharts points out on Twitter, Tesla is no longer even a growth company:

short tesla
In May, faced with a shortage of demand in an increasingly competitive (see the many links below) electric car environment during an economic depression, Tesla cut prices across the board. Nothing’s more amusing than seeing this giant stock promotion of a company continue to add capacity (expanding its Chinese factory while supposedly breaking ground on brand new factories in Texas and Germany) in order to desperately try to maintain an image of “limitless demand” as it continually slashes prices to unprofitable levels (excluding its unsustainable emission credit sales and accounting fraud) just to utilize its existing capacity.

In April Tesla reported $16M in Q1 “earnings” thanks entirely to the sale of $354M in 100% margin emission credits that disappear after next year when other automakers no longer need to buy them as they’ll have enough EVs of their own. Additionally, Tesla’s earnings are typically inflated by around $200M/quarter from its ongoing warranty fraud (here’s an excellent Seeking Alpha article and another one in Fortune explaining some of this), so adjusted for these two factors the company would have lost over $500M in Q1, while free cash flow was minus $895M. This is not a viable business.

In addition to the typcial quarterly warranty reserve fraud, Musk may generate a Q2 profit by recognizing part of $600 million in non-cash (it’s already on the balance sheet) deferred revenue from its fraudulently named “Full Self-Driving” (the capabilities of which offer nothing of the kind), thereby turning yet another a money-losing quarter into one showing paper profits. Meanwhile, God only knows how many more people this monstrosity unleashed on public roads will kill, despite February’s NTSB hearing condemning it as dangerous.)

Meanwhile, a terrific chart from Twitter user @fly4dat illustrates how Tesla’s EV market share (the pink line below) in Europe (the world’s most competitive EV market) continues to erode as new competition arrives; this foreshadows what will soon happen to Tesla worldwide:

short tesla
And for those of you looking for a resumption of growth from Tesla’s upcoming Model Y, demand for that car is reportedly disastrous. This is unsurprising, as it will both massively cannibalize sales of the Model 3 sedan and (later this year and in 2021) face superior competition from the much nicer electric Audi Q4 e-tron, BMW iX3 (in Europe & China), Mercedes EQB, Volvo XC40 and Volkswagen ID.4, while less expensive and available now are the excellent new all-electric Hyundai Kona and Kia Niro, extremely well reviewed small crossovers with an EPA range of 258 miles for the Hyundai and 238 miles for the Kia, at prices of under $30,000 inclusive of the $7500 U.S. tax credit. Meanwhile, the Model 3 will have terrific direct “sedan competition” later this year from Volvo’s beautiful new Polestar 2, the BMW i4 and the premium version of Volkswagen’s ID.3.

And if you think China is the secret to the resumption of Tesla’s growth, let’s put that market in perspective even without the coronavirus problem: prior to a recent 10% sales tax exemption Tesla was selling around 30,000 Model 3s a year there, and “the story” is that avoiding the 15% tariff and that 10% sales tax will allow it to sell a lot more. There’s also a $3600 EV incentive available (which will be reduced over the next two years), but China just cut to 300,000 yuan the maximum price allowed for an EV to get it; Tesla is thus slashing its Model 3 price from 323,000 yuan to qualify and will now make little-to-nothing on the car, and thus all volume increases will be profitless. Meanwhile the rule of thumb for the elasticity of auto pricing is that every 1% price cut results in a sales increase of up to 2.4%. If we assume a 2.4x “elasticity multiplier,” domestically produced Model 3s that are 40% cheaper (than the original price at the 30,000/year sales rate) would result in annual sales of just 59,000 (40% x 2.4 = 96% more than the previous 30,000), meaning Tesla’s new Chinese factory would be a massive money-loser vs. its initial 150,000-unit annual capacity and the 500,000/year capacity it will supposedly have in 2021. Even if we were to increase the previous sales rate by 150% to 75,000 cars a year, it would be massively disappointing for Tesla bulls and the factory will be a huge money-loser.

Meanwhile, sales of Tesla’s highest-margin cars (the Models S&X) will be down by over 50% worldwide this year vs. their 2018 peak, thanks to cannibalization from the less expensive Model 3 and direct high-end competition (especially in Europe and China) from the Audi e-tron, Jaguar I-Pace, Mercedes EQC and Porsche Taycan, with multiple additional electric Audis, Mercedes and Porsches to follow, many at starting prices considerably below those of the high-end Teslas. (See the links below for more details.)

And oh, the joke of a “pickup truck” Tesla introduced in November won’t be any kind of “growth engine” either, especially as if it’s ever built it will enter a dogfight of a market.

Meanwhile, Tesla has the most executive departures I’ve ever seen from any company, including in June its VP of Business Development; here’s the astounding full list of escapees. These people aren’t leaving because things are going great (or even passably) at Tesla; rather, they’re likely leaving because Musk is either an outright crook or the world’s biggest jerk to work for (or both). And in January Aaron Greenspan of @PlainSite published a terrific treatise on the long history of Tesla fraud; please read it!

In May Consumer Reports completely eviscerated the safety of Tesla’s so-called “Autopilot” system; in fact, Teslas have far more pro rata (i.e., relative to the number sold) deadly incidents than other comparable new luxury cars; here’s a link to those that have been made public. Meanwhile Consumer Report’s annual auto reliability survey ranks Tesla 23rd out of 30 brands (and that’s with many stockholder/owners undoubtedly underreporting their problems—the real number is almost certainly much worse), and the number of lawsuits of all types against the company continues to escalate-- there are now over 800 including one proving blatant fraud by Musk in the SolarCity buyout (if you want to be really entertained, read his deposition!).

https://www.yahoo.com/news/tesla-no-longer-even-growth-121604978.html

Tesla has closed at an all time record high today.

It will crash 500-700 dollar in 1 day it's a massive Ponzi scheme

• World has enough oil to last 1,000 years

This aged really well.

It will take awhile but rest assured tesla will declare bankruptcy one day.

El o el

 

[zectech]

It will take awhile but rest assured tesla will declare bankruptcy one day.

Don't bet against a US pet project, you have to work against it.

 

[Cookie Monster]

It will take awhile but rest assured tesla will declare bankruptcy one day.

You need to read up on all the things Tesla has been working on...
- Their battery tech(acquisitions of companies related to that)
- Automated driving research
- Providing their own insurance(which usually ends up being cheaper)

Tesla isn't going anywhere anytime soon. They have left the competition behind by a long distance. Other companies are barely entering the US market either with EVs that are too expensive or with EVs that have a shorter range(in comparison to Tesla vehicles).

Recently California passed a law that will ban sale of new gasoline powered cars in the coming years...
...EU had tightened restrictions for which Fiat Chrysler is paying Tesla(to offset their total emissions by including Tesla's zero emissions cars)...that's pretty much Tesla getting paid by it's competitor for doing absolutely nothing.

Not only is their product good enough...it is also the direction countries want to take. A few more decades of research into EVs...and EVs will be better than ICE cars in every metric. So Tesla is here to stay for a long long while.

 

[Path-Finder]

I am looking forward to Toyota entering the Electric car market which will be a huge blow to tesla.

 

[Beast]

Tesla has closed at an all time record high today.


This aged really well.


El o el

All due to speculation. Nothing to do with facts and wealthy create by Tesla.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

I am looking forward to Toyota entering the Electric car market which will be a huge blow to tesla.

Actually Toyota had the EV market completely owned for 17 years with their super successful 2000 Prius hybrid introduction. But when the Model 3 came along in 2017 it wiped them out.

 

[F-22Raptor]

All due to speculation. Nothing to do with facts and wealthy create by Tesla.

Tesla is on the verge of setting quarterly record deliveries from here on and their tech, manufacturing, software, AI, battery technology is miles ahead of the competition.

Everyone else is riding the coattails of Tesla.

 

[FuturePAF]

The plan, according to some, is that Next generation Tesla’s with their autonomous capabilities will be taxis in cities and then enter the Tesla only tunnels (made by the boring company, also owned by Elon musk) to quickly move people between cities at 150 miles an hour, for hundreds of miles. This is most useful to move freight, so the Tesla semi trucks and possibly a Tesla bus will be competitive with high speed rail.

If the boring company can find a way to make tunnels a lot cheaper then this idea could really take off, pardon the pun, like SpaceX

Also keep an eye on the proprietary? brick making technology (he might go into construction other than tunnels, considering the global demand). All his companies seem interconnected in a way, so you need to factor that in. Btw, if you don’t want to invest in Tesla, perhaps investing the Boring company maybe the next big time.

 

[xyxmt]

One day Tesla investor will feel the research in motion pain.

Tesla is on the verge of setting quarterly record deliveries from here on and their tech, manufacturing, software, AI, battery technology is miles ahead of the competition.

Everyone else is riding the coattails of Tesla.

So do you think in the future there will only be one car company, what will happen to BMW, Mercedes, Audi, VW, Toyota, Honda etc, will they all just give up their market share to Tesla?

 

[Path-Finder]

Actually Toyota had the EV market completely owned for 17 years with their super successful 2000 Prius hybrid introduction. But when the Model 3 came along in 2017 it wiped them out.

are you comparing hybrid with fully EV? secondly there are far more global sales of hybrid Toyota than Tesla will ever achieve. I am talking about global reach which tesla does not have.