Tag: Tesla

“He’s Full Of Shit”: New Bethany McLean Expose Eviscerates Elon Musk’s Solar City Bailout

Via ZeroHedge

Bethany McLean’s reputation proceeds her, with good reason. She’s mostly known for tackling the Enron scandal and the 2008 financial crisis – two of the biggest financial frauds over the last decade or now. She co-authored Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, which was later made into a movie.

And now, she’s setting her sights on Elon Musk and Solar City, something we expected was about to happen last week.

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IGNITION….BLASTOFF

Elon should probably smoke some more weed. He’s having a bad day. I love how they call a fucking explosion an anomaly. Have you put a deposit down on a new exploding Tesla or for a trip to the moon on an exploding Musk rocket?

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Elon to Give Away Teslas

Guest Post by Eric Peters

When Chevy couldn’t sell the Volt  electric car (RIP) it resorted to leasing them. Which at least gives the impression that people are buying them.

In fact, they were renting them – for well below what it would have cost to buy, which is precisely why leasing is attractive to those looking to drive more car than they could otherwise afford.

Or are willing to pay for.

GM offloaded Volts for just under $200 a month – before the proverbial plug was finally pulled. It doesn’t take green eyeshade to see the problem with a $200 monthly lease payment  . . . when the car stickered for $33,520.

A two-year lease cost the buyer $4,800.

It cost GM a great deal more.

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Libertarians and Tesla?

Guest Post by Eric Peters

I received a letter (below) from a reader who took issue with my taking issue with electric cars generally and Tesla specifically. This reader claimed to be a Libertarian – which staggered me like a punch from Ali in his prime.

I figured it was worth an at-length reply since there are actually a lot of people out there who think Elon Musk is a Libertarian.

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All Fired Up . . . Again

Guest Post by Eric Peters

Another Tesla has crashed – and burned.

And, killed.

Two Florida teens lost their lives on May 9 when the Model S they were traveling in erupted into flames after striking a concrete barrier. As in previous incidents – at least three others – a large portion of the car was quickly and almost completely consumed before the fire was put out.

Since Teslas are electric cars and don’t burn gas, this one wasn’t burned to a cinder by gasoline.

It was the lithium-ion battery pack that caught fire.

This happens when the physical structure of the battery pack is compromised and the materials within come into uncontrolled contact. Just the same as exposing gasoline to an ignition source. It can happen as the result of a design defect, or an impact such as an accident.

What’s not the same is the way electric car battery packs are shaped – and where they’re installed in the car.

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“Boring… Next”

Guest Post by Eric Peters

When financial analyst Toni Sacconaghi of Sanford C. Bernstein asked Tesla CEO Elon Musk about the money-losing electric car company’s capital requirements going forward (Tesla has burned through – cue Dr. Evil – one billion dollars in three of the last four quarters) Musk replied: “Boring, bonehead questions are not cool. Next?”

Fo sheer effrontery, this tops even The Chimp’s I am the Decider!

Neither man gives a damn about the damage – human or financial – imposed on others. Nor that others are made to pay for it all. They don’t even give lip service to pretending  anything they do bothers them in the least. All that matters is the Great Dream – whether it’s “regime change” in some resource-rich country which hasn’t attacked us (a war crime, once upon a time) or this equally demented business of manufacturing electric cars that almost no one would freely buy absent the subsidies and mandates.

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A Tesla Owner Speaks

Guest Post by Eric Peters

I’ve been accused of being unfair to Tesla, that I am infected by personal animosity toward Musk (true; I loathe rent seekers) and a general dislike of electric cars (not true; I merely dislike the way subsidies have distorted the market for them).

Well, here’s some owner testimony for you. This guy bought a new Model S – an $80,000 car. He was champing at the bit to get the keys. He most definitely did not have any ax to grind.

Listen to what he has to say about his car:

This does not bode well for Elon – whose company this week had to ‘fess up to a hemorrhagic cash bleed – $671 million, the worst yet.

Wait. It is going to get even worse.

Tesla announces worst quarter ever, Model 3 delays

Queue Starfcker in 5,4,3,2,1…..  to tell us all how this is part of Musk’s master plan to rule the world. It’s just another tiny hiccup. Last year at this time he proclaimed he would be producing 200,000 Model 3s in the second half of 2017. Instead, he will make less than 5,000. What a genius!!! Buy the dip!!!

Via Marketwatch

Tesla Inc. warned it will take months longer than expected to reach its goal of making 5,000 Model 3 sedans a week, a significant delay that could put additional pressure on Chief Executive Elon Musk’s limited cash pile.

The Silicon Valley electric-car maker had aimed to hit that production threshold by the end of this year, but said on Wednesday it won’t reach the milestone until late in the first quarter of next year.

Tesla also reported its worst financial quarter ever, posting a loss of $619 million attributed to common shareholders in the three months that ended on Sept. 30, compared with a rare profit of $22 million a year ago. On an adjusted basis, the company’s per-share loss of $2.92 was wider than the $2.28 consensus estimate of analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters.

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Why Won’t They Send me a Tesla to Test Drive?

Guest Post by Eric Peters

The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.

If – as Tesla’s carefully choreographed public relations machine maintains – the range issue has been solved and the car’s functional performance (as distinct from how quickly it can accelerate on a full charge . . . once or twice) is as good as implied – why not send me one to test drive?

I test drive new cars every week. All the major car companies (except GM, lately, for breach of political correctness) send me their vehicles for a week at a time, to drive them around and then relate to you how they drive – their good and bad points, etc. This is meant to be helpful to you, the prospective buyer.

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The Best Reviews Money Can Buy

Guest Post by Eric Peters

Car journalists aren’t supposed to be car salesmen. Or at least – if they are – they have an obligation to tell you they are.

Else you might think their reviews aren’t exactly  . . . objective.

Tesla gets some great coverage from certain journalists – who aren’t really journalists because they are on Tesla’s payroll.

And not telling you about it.

Our Friend Fred… Tesla’s friend, actually.

One of these is a guy named Frederic Lambert, who writes for a Tesla fanboi blog called Electrek. His “coverage” of Tesla vehicles – and Tesla generally – has been uniformly snuggly and warm. Perhaps because he is compensated for “referring” his readers to Tesla. If they buy a Tesla based on his “referral,” Frederic gets goodies!. The value of these free goodies is comparable to the subsidies taxpayers are forced to pay people who buy Teslas.

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Tesla Only Made 260 Cars Last Quarter—Big Trouble Ahead

Guest Post by Justin Spittler

Tesla just whiffed.

…and no one seems to care.

It’s complete insanity…and it’s going to end badly for many Tesla shareholders.

I’ll tell you why in a second. But let me first explain what I mean by “whiff.”

On Tuesday, the electric carmaker reported third-quarter sales of its Model 3.

This is the company’s first mass-market vehicle. It just started delivering them in July.

Yet, Tesla investors had high hopes for the first quarter of production… and why wouldn’t they?

In August, Tesla’s founder and CEO Elon Musk said the company would produce 1,500 Model 3s during the third quarter.

But on Tuesday, we learned that Tesla produced just 260 cars, or 83% fewer than Musk promised.

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The P. T. Barnum Economy

Guest Post by The Zman

Way back in the olden thymes, when companies were getting on-line to sell stuff, it looked like Amazon picked a strange market to exploit. Buying books on-line was not a great leap forward, but Bezos knew something the rest of us did not. He knew that a business that flattered the beautiful people would have an army of beautiful people promoting it to the rest of us. It was the central insight of Steve Jobs. He was the post-modern P. T. Barnum, selling the glorious future rather than a glimpse of the wolf-boy or the tattooed lady.

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Here’s The Real Reason Tesla Makes No Money

Tyler Durden's picture
by Tyler Durden
Jun 14, 2017 5:35 AM

Elon Musk bills Tesla as the pinnacle of “lean” manufacturing.  Just search for pictures of Tesla’s manufacturing plant and you’ll undoubtedly be served up futuristic looking images, like the one below, depicting 100’s of red robots building vehicles without a single employee in sight.

Tesla

 

But, if Tesla is truly the lean manufacturing powerhouse that it purports itself to be then we do wonder why it continues to burn through ~$600 million of cash every single quarter, or roughly $30,000 for every car that it sells?

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