Mark Spiegel’s Stanphyl Capital had a killer year up close to 31% in 2016 and some small caps are up several hundred percent– see below for an excerpt on Tesla Inc (TSLA) from their June 2017 letter. But first… although he is known as Elon Musk’s number one enemy, Mr. Spiegel makes most of his money from killer small cap picks. His under the radar small caps which could pop just based on this piece (if we discussed it publicly) were profiled in ValueWalk’s 2nd edition of our quarterly premium newsletter. Below is an excerpt on Tesla stock.
Also see: Tesla Tax Incentives: When Will The Federal Credit Start To Wind Down?
Specific to Tesla, the size of our short position has ranged anywhere from approximately 2% of the fund (when I first put it on in the high $90s back in 2013) to as much as 1/3 of the fund more recently, when—in my judgement– the stock’s price went from “crazy” to “insane” and Tesla became “the greatest fundamental individual stock short opportunity I’ve ever seen.” However, despite my strong belief that Tesla is still “the greatest fundamental individual stock short opportunity I’ve ever seen,” in mid-June I drastically reduced the position size to a range of approximately 5% to 15% of AUM (depending upon technicals and news flow) and– despite the company’s ongoing disastrous fundamentals– shall only upsize the position (as a percentage of AUM) upon the appearance of what I judge to be “company killing” news; i.e., a major fraud indictment, a major safety recall accompanied by clear evidence of a company cover-up, a disastrous Elon Musk-related item, etc. Furthermore, if I happen to judge such news as “company killing” and yet the stock shows technical strength in the face of it, I shall again drastically reduce the position size. In other words, as a fundamental investor I’ve always adhered to the old adage to “respect the technicals but not defer to them,” but going forward with Tesla I shall defer to them…
Why haven’t I done this continually? Because Tesla isn’t a typical short position that I expect to decline “linearly”; rather, it’s a land-mine filled story-stock that could literally be cut in half overnight when one of those mines detonate and I’ve wanted to be sure to be there “in large size” when that happens. Well now we’ll be somewhat less likely to be there “in large size,” but if the equity component of Tesla is truly the “zero” that I strongly believe it is, there will still be plenty of money to be made in 100% downside from a stock that’s already been cut in half…
Many people have said to me “You’re 100% right about Tesla but it’s un-shortable.” Well, they’re all “un-shortable” on the way up! And as someone running a fund much larger than this one said recently: “If you wouldn’t short Tesla, what would you short?” This is a long-short fund and unfortunately during the latter stages of a bubble (when we swing from a long bias to a short one, as we’ve done now) we may go through this kind of pain prior to coming out successfully on the other side. I thus hope you’ll stick with me as I work to turn things around. And now onto the fund’s positions.
As noted at the introduction to this letter, we remain short shares of Tesla, Inc. (TSLA), this bubble-market’s largest individual bubble, as well as the operator of what may be the world’s least efficient car factory which—according to new insurance industry data– produces cars that crash 37% more often than those of its competitors with overall losses that are 124% higher!
What else happened lately with Tesla? Well, there was this Tweet from Musk, endlessly repeated in the breathless fanboy media:
Having hinted in December that those same future Superchargers would be at least 350kw, let’s do some basic math: in sunny areas a highly efficient solar array generates an average of around 5 watts per square foot net over eight hours a day (assuming 9 watts peak and considerably less non-peak). This means that to run just one 350kw charger for eight hours a day would require 350,000/5= 70,000 square feet of solar cells, and to store enough power to run that charger the other 16 hours a day you’d need to triple that to 210,000 square feet, then add in 10% more for storage efficiency loss, thereby upping the requirement to 231,000 square feet. Thus, if this mythical Musk Supercharger station had six connections (the Tesla average) at 100% utilization, it would require approximately 1,386,000 square feet = 32 acres (!) of solar cells (plus room for all the batteries). And the cost? Well, existing grid-connected Supercharger stations seem to average around $350,000 each, so let’s start with that. Then add the necessary 6.3mW of solar capacity (350kW chargers x 6 x 3) @ $1.25/watt = $7.9 million, plus 33,600kWh of battery storage (350kw chargers x 6 x 16 hours/day) @ $250/kWh = an additional $8.4 million. So Tesla’s cost of each “disconnected” Supercharging station would soar from $350,000 to almost $17 million! Even if you cut the solar and battery capacity by 1/3 (assuming significantly less utilization), the per-station cost would still be over $11 million! Anyone who can’t see that Tesla’s CEO is full of shit (pardon my French!) is just a sucker at his poker table.
Also in June yet another Tesla “Head of Autopilot” departed (the second in six months). This apparently occurred nearly simultaneously with the departure of three other key people on the team and followed the escape of the “Head of Autopilot Hardware.” But then if you saw this (watch from 11:30) or this (watch from 3:35) video of the latest system, you’d understand why they’d depart before more Tesla drivers become “dearly departed.”
As for June’s “Tesla China factory” rumors (i.e., the search for a local JV partner to share half its losses), here’s a great story that puts it all in perspective.
Then there was this hilarity (headline below), further proving that Elon Musk is simply allergic to businesses that make money:
And finally in June we learned that when you own shares of Tesla you’re investing with a CEO who jokes about Tweeting while mixing red wine and Ambien. It’s unclear whether this was “outright joking” or “confession time”; however, here are some Tweets (read them from the bottom up) from just two days ago– you decide:
Despite all the above-noted craziness, Tesla’s stock was up 6% in June (69% year to date) even though in May it reported a disastrous Q1 2017, with an operating loss of $258 million and a net loss of $330 million, while the market for its luxury EVs (Models S&X) is clearly saturated even before the arrival of next year’s competition from Jaguar, Audi and Mercedes:
Q3 2016 deliveries: 24,821
Q4 2016 deliveries: 22,252
Q1 2017 deliveries: 25,051
Q2 2017 deliveries: 24,000 (estimate)
In fact, Q2 2017 (the quarter ending June 30th) was headed for a much worse sales comp vs. the previous three quarters (and may still be, thanks to the disappearance of a major tax break in Hong Kong) when in a mid-April move of desperation Tesla slashed the price of the Model S75 by $7500 to $69,500 and in mid-May brought back free lifetime Supercharging for buyers with (easily found) “referral codes.” (Say hello to an instant 2% margin hit for that one!) Want to know how desperate Tesla is to move metal (and lithium)? Here’s a deal someone was just offered (on June 24th) for $10,300 off a BRAND NEW inventory car (a $9300 “adjustment” plus a $1000 “referral credit”) plus an additional $5000 off for deactivating the (so-called) “Advanced Autopilot.” (There’s much more about that technological abortion elsewhere in this letter.) To protect the salesperson (it’s not his fault he works for a CEO who swears they don’t discount new cars for “anyone”), I’ve removed the specific location and serial #:
And here’s a screenshot of a lot more brand new inventory from earlier this week; the starting discount is in the 2nd column from the right:
And here’s a new Seeking Alpha article about even heavier discounting! Considering that in Q1 COGS per car sold (not leased) would have been approximately $83,000 at an ASP of approximately $108,000 if adjusted for Autopilot revenue deferred from Q4 and the re-introduction of lifetime free Supercharging, it seems pretty clear that Tesla is now selling lots of Models S & X hoping only to make a small gross margin via the options. This does not bode well for the Model 3, which will supposedly start at $35,000. (I discuss this in greater depth below.)
And remember, in April Tesla’s “Supercharger moat” was definitively drained when Electrify America announced a charging network that will be both larger and faster. So the sole advantage Tesla had (easier but still klugey long-distance travel) over myriad soon-to-arrive competition will soon be gone.
And how did Tesla energy storage do in Q1? (Because, you know, Tesla is really a battery company!) How about total revenue of $5.2 million (down 76% year over year!) at a double-digit negative gross margin? How’s that for “crazy off the hook”! And in May Tesla’s battery cell supplier Panasonic (that’s right, Teslarians: Tesla doesn’t make its own batteries) announced that it’s going all out to supply its batteries and electric car design skills and components to all comers. Of course none of this has stopped Tesla from continuing to promote the “energy narrative” by introducing glass solar roofing tiles (a previously failed product for multiple others) with a nonsensical financial analysis that I was happy to debunk on Seeking Alpha while others debunked the product itself. And then a story in June uncovered that last October’s solar roof tile debut was a complete fake, designed solely to push through approval for the SolarCity merger and apparently there’s very little happening at the factory where these tiles will allegedly be mass-produced.
Of course the “bright shiny object” now for Tesla shareholders is the “$35,000 mass-market Model 3” (with an estimated ASP of $43,000), and yet Tesla’s normalized gross margin of around 23% (for non-leased vehicles) on cars selling for an ASP of approximately $108,000 reinforces my old Seeking Alpha article’s claim that a $35,000 base-priced Model 3 can only happen at a massive per-car loss. A new report from UBS agrees, although it optimistically thinks a high-volume, well-optioned Model 3 may break even at $41,000. Although I think UBS is optimistic, for the sake of argument I was willing to assume it was correct and wrote an article for Seeking Alpha incorporating that information to explain why Tesla’s current $1 billion annualized operating loss will still worsen in 2018. Rather than repeating that explanation here, please do read the article.
Additionally, Model 3 sales (regardless of its profit margin) are likely to disappoint. In fact, I expect mass reservation cancellations to occur when the $7500 tax credit runs out by mid-2018. Just have a look at the Model 3 equipment level (compared to, say, a Honda Accord) and (in a new spyshot posted by the Tesla shills at Electrek.co) its incredibly cheap looking, glued-on iPad-like dashboard (with no gauges or head-up display):
Meanwhile, 2017 crash tests by the Insurance Institute For Highway Safety show the Model 3’s big brother the Model S (proclaimed by Musk to be “the world’s safest car”), falling short of a safety rating awarded to 42 other cars while analysis of data from the state of California showed that its autonomous driving system was statistically far behind most of the competition’s. Then the excellent investigative journalists at Daily Kanban proved that the videos Tesla put out promoting its new autonomous system were hugely deceptive. (And as noted earlier, most of the key people have left the program.) Then in May we learned that the CPU in Tesla’s hardware suite may be incapable of full autonomy despite Tesla charging $8000 up-front for that “future capability.” (Hello, “future class action lawsuit”!) Current Teslas also have no LIDAR and yet experts universally say LIDAR is required for full autonomy. So have a look at the “Autonomous Driving” links a few pages below (as well as the new video links earlier in this letter) and tell me how anyone with a brain in his head could seriously think Tesla is ahead of the rest of the industry in safe autonomy. Tesla also now faces significant class action lawsuits for sudden acceleration, and defective regenerative braking, as well as a slew of Model X lemon-law lawsuits. And how about all that great Tesla IP because, you know, it’s really a “technology company”? Oops… what IP?
And what about the Gigafactory? Battery production is a mostly automated, modular process with few economies of scale beyond a size much smaller than “Giga”. Seeking Alpha published a terrific article about this specific to Tesla and soon Chinese producers will match or beat any price coming from the Gigafactory as China builds a vast number of new battery factories; in other words, watch out for a looming oversupply. And in June Audi revealed that its battery cost (probably at the cell level) for the long-range EVs it’s rolling out in 2018/19 is only around 100 euros per kWh, which may be significantly less than Tesla’s cost due to older “take or pay” commitments Panasonic demanded before installing its equipment in the Gigafactory.
Meanwhile Tesla faces an onslaught of competition in all facets of its business. (Note: these links are updated monthly.) First, here are the competing cars…
- The All-Electric 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV
- GM CEO: Chevrolet Bolt Is Our Platform For A Huge Range Of Vehicles
- BMW to introduce electric 3-series in September 2017
- BMW launches second wave of electrification
- All New 200-mile Nissan Leaf Coming September 2017
- Jaguar I-Pace: 2018 production car set for September 2017 debut
- Jaguar Land Rover says half of its new cars will have electric option by 2020
- Audi Launching Three Electric Cars Beginning 2018
- Daimler to invest $11 billion in electric vehicles
- Daimler brings forward electric-car goal
- New Mercedes EQ Concept ride review
- Porsche Mission E electric car to have wide range of variants
- 200-Mile Hyundai IONIQ Electric Coming In 2018
- Upcoming Hyundai Kona Electric SUV With 50 kWh Battery, 220 Mile Range
- Hyundai’s Genesis fashions itself as South Korea’s Tesla
- Honda to launch two new electric cars in 2018
- Volvo’s 2019 Electric Car to Have 250-mile Range and Cost $35,000-$40,000
- Volvo’s Polestar brand to build its own electric sports cars
- Volkswagen plans to ‘leapfrog’ Tesla in electric car race
- Ford to launch fully electric SUV with range of at least 300 miles & two electrified police vehicles
- Toyota, in about-face, may mass-produce long-range electric cars
- New Mazda electric car due in 2019
- Electric Kia Stinger GT to rival Tesla Model 3
- Infiniti to launch performance EV with Nissan tech by 2020
- Nissan, Renault, Mitsubishi to share electric car platform
- MG E-Motion confirms new EV sports car on the way by 2020
- All electric Lucid Air to Start At $52,000 After Tax Credit
- Maserati executive confirms electric Alfieri
- Peugeot and Citroen Promise 450 km (280 Miles) Electric Vehicle in 2019
- New 2017 Renault ZOE ZE 40: 400 km Range*, 41 kWh Battery
- Seat to launch first electric car in 2019
- Mitsubishi To Launch New All-Electric and PHEV Compact SUV Between 2017-2020
- Subaru Considers Electric Versions of Its Cars to Leverage Brand
- 2017 Karma Revero (nee Fisker) launches with updates
- Borgward BXi7 Electric SUV Flies Under The Radar
- Skoda Citigo set to be brand’s first EV; will have five EVs by 2025
- NextEV plans Tesla Model X fighter for U.S. in late ’18 or early ’19
And in China…
- Daimler strengthens dedication to emission-free mobility with new DENZA 400km EV for China
- Daimler to produce electric cars for EQ subbrand in China
- Daimler, BAIC agree to make electric cars in China
- Volkswagen To Launch 8 New Energy Vehicles In China
- Volkswagen Eyes Third China Joint Venture in Continued Push Into Electric Vehicles
- GM plans to launch 10 electric cars in China by 2020
- Audi and FAW sign China electric car cooperation deal
- Ford to Make Electric Cars in China Amid Green Drive
- China’s BYD has overtaken Tesla in the battery and electric car business
- SAIC to spend $2.2 billion on EVs, connectivity, aftersales services
- Volvo’s first all electric car will be made in China
- Chery Breaks Ground on $240M EV Factory in China
- Chery’s second EV plant to open in May in Dezhou
- NIO Unveils Production Vehicle for China Market
- New Chinese Car Brand: WM Motors To Bring EVs To The Masses
- LeEco Starts Building Its 20 Billion Yuan Car Factory In China
- GAC Begins Construction of $6.5 Billion Industrial Park to Boost EV Business
- Chinese electric car start-up Future Mobility edges closer to taking on Tesla
- Honda to debut electric vehicle in China next year
- The Singulato iS6 From China Is Aimed At The Tesla Model 3
- Quianu Motor aims to grab share of US electric vehicle market
- NEVS receives approval for electric car factory with capacity of 200,000 units per year
- Karma Owner Building 50,000 Cars/Year Electric Car Factory in China
Here’s the competition in autonomous driving…
- The 2018 Audi A8 will be capable of Level 3 autonomous driving
- Updated 2017 Mercedes-Benz S-Class – first ride with autonomous technology
- Cadillac Super Cruise™ Sets the Standard for Hands-Free Highway Driving
- GM Produces First Round of Self-Driving Chevrolet Bolt EV Test Vehicles
- GM’s Cruise Automation does a 90-minute urban drive with no intervention
- GM’s Cruise Automation Wades Into HD Mapping to Aid Autonomous-Car Efforts
- Nvidia and Mercedes-Benz to bring an AI car to market within a year
- NVIDIA and Toyota Collaborate to Accelerate Market Introduction of Autonomous Cars
- Audi and NVIDIA team up to bring fully automated driving accelerated with artificial intelligence
- Volvo and Autoliv team up with Nvidia for self-driving cars
- NVIDIA Partners with Bosch for System Based on Next-Generation DRIVE PX Xavier Platform
- Bosch and Daimler join forces to market fully automated, driverless taxis by 2020
- Volkswagen and Mobileye sign agreement to develop autonomous driving
- Autonomous Nissan Leaf Video
- Nissan and Mobileye to generate, share, and utilize vision data for crowdsourced mapping
- Subaru, Nissan hit highway with affordable self-driving
- BMW, Intel, Mobileye & Delphi Developing Autonomous Driving For Multiple OEMs
- Continental Joins Autonomous Driving Platform from BMW, Intel & Mobileye as System Integrator
- Ford expands fleet of self-driving test cars
- Hyundai Presents Autonomous IONIQ Electric Prototype at 2017 CES
- Waymo to supply autonomous hardware & software to any car maker
- Lyft and Waymo Reach Deal to Collaborate on Self-Driving Cars
- Lyft teams up with NuTonomy to put ‘thousands’ of self-driving cars on the road
- Bosch Creates a Map That Uses Radar Signals for Automated Driving
- Honda Targeting Level 3 Automated Driving By 2020, Level 4 by 2025
- Groupe PSA’s safe and intuitive autonomous car tested by the general public
- Baidu to open-source its autonomous driving technology
- Lucid Chooses Mobileye as Partner for Autonomous Vehicle Technology
- Cook Says Apple Is Focusing on Making an Autonomous Car System
- Samsung Gets Green Light to Test Self-Driving Cars
- BlackBerry to open autonomous vehicle hub
- Mitsubishi Electric Develops Automated Mapping For Autonomous Driving
- Hitachi demonstrates vehicle with 11-function autonomous driving ECU
- DENSO and NEC Collaborate on Automated Driving and Manufacturing
Here are the competing car batteries…
- LG Chem targets electric car battery sales of $6.3 billion in 2020
- Samsung Presents Innovative Fast Charging Battery with 600km Range
- Samsung SDI to build $358 million car battery plant in Hungary by 2018
- SK Innovation Focusing on Becoming the Top Global Company for EV Batteries
- Daimler’s battery gigafactory begins Europe challenge to Tesla
- General Motors China To Open Battery Factory In Shanghai
- Panasonic Opens New Automotive Lithium-Ion Battery Factory in Dalian, China
- China’s BYD takes aim at Tesla in battery factory race
- Contemporary Amperex’s Chinese battery factory will be bigger than Tesla’s Gigafactory
- Contemporary Amperex building an EV battery/drivetrain facility in Europe
Energy Absolute Plots Asian Project Rivaling Musk’s Gigafactory - BMW Shows Off Its Battery And Electric Motor Production Facility
- TerraE confirms German Giga factory for battery cells
- FORD ACCELERATES ELECTRIFIED VEHICLE BATTERY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
- Volkswagen will invest $3.7 billion in battery cell & electric drive plant
- Hyundai Motor developing solid-state EV batteries
- Jaguar holds talks with Ford and BMW over building a giant battery factory
- Toyota works to develop advanced electric-car battery
- Kreisel Seeks to Overtake Tesla With Souped-Up Plug-In Cars
- Wanxiang is playing to win, even if it takes generations
- UK provides millions to help build more electric vehicle batteries
- Former Tesla executives plan to build $4bn Nordic battery plant
- Rimac is going to mass produce batteries and electric motors for OEMs
Here are the competing storage batteries…
- Panasonic
- Samsung
- LG
- GE
- BYD
- AES
- Mitsubishi
- NEC
- Hitachi
- ABB
- Saft
- EnerSys
- GS Yuasa
- E.ON
- SOLARWATT
- Daimler
- Schneider Electric
- sonnenBatterie
- Kokam
- Sharp
- Nissan – Eaton
- Tesvolt
- Kreisel
- Leclanche
- Lockheed Martin
- Alevo
- EOS Energy Storage
- Energy Storage Systems Inc.
- UniEnergy Technologies
- electrIQ
- Belectric
- Sunverge
- Stem
- Green Charge Networks
- Imergy Power
- Exergonix
- Redflow
- Renault
- Fluidic Energy
- Primus Power
- Simpliphi Power
- redT Energy Storage
- Bluestorage
- Adara
- Blue Planet
- Clean Energy Storage Inc.
- Swell Energy
- Tabuchi Electric
- Younicos
- Orison
- Moixa
- Powin Energy
- Nidec
- Powervault
- ViZn Energy
- Schmid
- 24M
(And by the time the lithium-ion Gigafactory is completed, it will not only be an oversized white elephant but may be obsolete, as “Argonne Settles On The Two Most Promising Successors To Lithium-ion Batteries” and the guy who invented the lithium-ion battery has now invented something better.)
And here are the competing charging networks…
- ELECTRIFY AMERICA UNVEILS FIRST $300M OF $2B INVESTMENT IN ZEV INFRASTRUCTURE
- EVgo Installing First 350 kW Ultra Fast Public Charging Station In The US
- BMW and Volkswagen Take on Tesla Motors With a New U.S. Fast-Charging Network
- Nissan and EVgo to build i-95 Fast-Charge ARC connecting Boston and Washington D.C.
- BMW, Daimler, Ford, VW, Audi & Porsche JV for 350kw Charging On Major Highways in Europe
- Chargepoint Europe Gets $82 million in new funding from Daimler
- ChargePoint – InstaVolt partnership; more than 200 UK rapid charge systems
- ChargePoint Express Plus Debuts: Offers Industry High 400 kW DC Fast Charging
- Fastned building 150kw-350kw chargers in Europe
- DBT unveils the 1st 150 kW universal ultra-fast charging station
- 5 European fast charging networks form Open Fast Charging Alliance
- Shell starts equipping petrol stations with electric chargers
- Total planning EV charging points at its French stations
Yet despite all that deep-pocketed competition, perhaps you want to buy shares of Tesla because you believe in its management team. Really???
- With Misleading Messages And Customer NDAs, Tesla Performs Stealth Recall
- Who You Gonna Believe? Elon Musk’s Words Or Your Own Lying Eyes?
- How Tesla and Elon Musk Exaggerated Safety Claims About Autopilot and Cars
- When Is Enough Enough With Elon Musk?
- Musk Talked Merger With SolarCity CEO Before Tesla Stock Sale
- Debunking The Tesla Mythology
- Tesla Continues To Mislead Consumers
- Tesla Misses The Point With Fortune Autopilot Story
- Tesla Timeline Shows Musk’s Morality Is Highly Convenient
- Tesla Scares Customers With Worthless NDAs, The Daily Kanban Talks To Lawyers
- Tesla: Contrary To The Official Story, Elon Musk Is Selling To Keep Cash
- Tesla: O, What A Tangled Web We Weave When First We Practice To Deceive
- I Put 20 Refundable Deposits On The Tesla Model 3
- Tesla’s Financial Shenanigans
- Tesla: A Failure To Communicate
- Can You Really Trust Tesla?
- Elon Musk Appears To Have Misled Investors On Tesla’s Most Recent Conference Call
- Understanding Tesla’s Potemkin Swap Station
- Tesla’s Amazing Powerwall Reservations
I’ve argued for a while that the “Tesla love/loyalty” one reads about on the forums (“Even though my Tesla is in the shop a lot I’ll never go back to a regular car!”) and in the Consumer Reports owner survey is really “EV loyalty/EV love”—in other words, many people like the instant torque and quietness of their EV drivetrains, not necessarily the fact that their frequently repaired cars happen to come from Tesla equipped with the interior “luxury level” of a 1990s Acura. Here’s a recent study from McKinsey supporting this:
So when the Germans (Audi, Mercedes and Porsche) and Jaguar roll out their 300-mile luxury EVs beginning in 2018 they’ll capture a lot of Tesla owners who love Tesla’s driving experience but not its reliability or interior, especially as fear grows that Tesla’s cash bleed means it may not be around to honor the eight-year drivetrain warranty that those “reliability issues” force it to provide. (Tesla’s Model X has been a quality-plagued disaster, with Consumer Reports in November giving it an overall rating of 59 on a scale of 100—tied for worst among 16 competing vehicles in its class.)
In addition to its quality problems, the X’s multi-thousand-dollar premium to a comparable Model S sedan has helped result in hugely disappointing sales, as nearly all the luxury competition prices its premium SUVs considerably less expensively than its premium sedans. For instance, the most basic “X” with no options and a warm-weather range of just 237 miles (well under 200 miles in cold weather) starts at $82,500 with only five seats standard. By comparison, the Porsche Cayenne starts at $60,600, the Audi Q7 at $49,000, the BMW X5 at $56,600, the Volvo XC-90 at $45,750, the Jaguar F-Pace at just $41,990 and the seven seat Mercedes GLS at $68,700, and all those vehicles average more than twice the range of the Tesla with far more flexible refueling capabilities for long trips. And as noted earlier, the upcoming pure electric “crossovers” from Jaguar, Audi and Mercedes are all expected to price at least $15,000 cheaper than the least expensive Model X.
Meanwhile, the heretofore revered Model S is now on the Consumer Reports “Used Cars to Avoid” list with “much worse than average reliability” (although the new models have improved to “average”). On the bright side though, Tesla owners get to make lots of new friends at their local service centers, assuming they don’t mind the month-long wait times for an appointment.
So in summary, Tesla is losing a massive amount of money even before it faces a huge onslaught of competition (and things will only get worse once it does), while its market cap now exceeds those of Ford and GM despite a billion-dollar annualized operating loss selling just 100,000 cars while Ford and GM make billions of dollars selling 6.6 million and 9 million cars respectively. Thus this cash-burning Musk vanity project is worth vastly less than its nearly $70 billion fully-diluted enterprise value and—thanks to its roughly $8 billion in debt—may eventually be worth “zero.”
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