This article seems to be saying that Tesla is in a good place because they build good, popular cars and electric vehicles are the future.<p>Maybe, I'm reading different news stories than the author, but I don't feel like those are criticisms of Tesla that I'm seeing anymore. Pretty much every current news story I'm seeing is either focusing on Tesla running out of money because their cars aren't profitable enough, or the fact that Elon's behavior on Twitter is hurting the company. The author addresses neither of these points.<p>Sure, maybe a few years ago I could get behind the idea that the Koch bothers are spending billions of dollars to try and suppress the electric car industry. But currently, pretty much every major car company has some sort of electric offering and many are making commitments to be fully electric in the near future. Even if the Koch's are spending money to hurt the electric car industry, it seems like they are fighting a losing battle.<p>Honestly, this whole article reads like a straw man argument.
I decided to just look into an assertion from the first paragraph of this post: "NHTSA testing shows that the #1, #2 and #3 cars with the lowest likelihood of injury in a collision are the Tesla Models 3, X and S in that order."<p>This is linked to a news article on "CleanTechnica," sourced to the Tesla corporate blog. Notably, the blog does not claim that these vehicles are #1,2,3 in the rankings, but rather that in prior tests the X and S models were found to have "the lowest and second lowest probabilities of injury of all cars ever tested."<p>But it turns out NHTSA disputes even Tesla's more mild assertions:<p>"A five-star rating is the highest safety rating a vehicle can achieve," the agency said in the statement, which did not name Tesla. "NHTSA does not distinguish safety performance beyond that rating, thus there is no 'safest' vehicle among those vehicles achieving five-star ratings."
<a href="https://autoweek.com/article/car-news/nhtsa-downplays-teslas-statements-model-3-crash-ratings" rel="nofollow">https://autoweek.com/article/car-news/nhtsa-downplays-teslas...</a><p>In 2017, just over 30 cars attained 5-star ratings:
<a href="https://www.safercar.gov/Vehicle-Shoppers/my2017_5_star_tests" rel="nofollow">https://www.safercar.gov/Vehicle-Shoppers/my2017_5_star_test...</a>
> Tesla has achieved enormous results in ramping up its Model 3 production faster than almost any new model car in history.<p>That defies my gut feel, so I checked on carsalesbase to confirm/refute.<p>Nearly any new car model that I look at far outsells the Model 3 during new model ramp up...<p><a href="http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/tesla/tesla-model-3/" rel="nofollow">http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/tesla/tesla-model-...</a>
They're really struggling with delivery logistics though. I was scheduled to pick up my Model 3, which will be my 3rd Tesla, this Wednesday.<p>I've been hounding them for my bill of sale because the bank needs it before they'll send a check. I called the local delivery center again this morning and they informed me they gave my car to another customer. They didn't bother to let me know about this or the home office so they could begin looking for another VIN to assign to me. Apparently I was just supposed to show up on Wednesday and find out they didn't have a car for me then. I've also already taken out insurance for the VIN they gave me and provided it to my bank so now I have to redo all that whenever they get around to giving me another VIN and hope they don't give that car away too.<p>My first two delivery experiences were great but now I'm starting to think I'd get a better experience working with a traditional dealership.
As much as I'd like the company to succeed, it seems frivolous to dismiss the concerns as short sellers' PR projects and media's desire to drive traffic through clickbait.<p>Bond markets are largely dominated by institutional players who've seen every PR trick in the book, pay astute attention to fundamentals in hopes of finding a minuscule mispricing opportunity, and even they are not treating TSLA positively<p><a href="https://money.cnn.com/2018/09/10/technology/business/tesla-stock-bonds-elon-musk/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://money.cnn.com/2018/09/10/technology/business/tesla-s...</a>
Disclaimer up front: I work for a Tesla competitor, any opinions are solely my own.<p>From the linked article:<p>> "And now NHTSA testing shows that the #1, #2 and #3 cars with the lowest likelihood of injury in a collision are the Tesla Models 3, X and S in that order."<p><a href="https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-model-3-nhtsa-safety-claims/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-model-3-nhtsa-safet...</a><p><a href="https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/national-highway-traffic-safety-administration-issues-statement-about-new-car" rel="nofollow">https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/national-highway-traffi...</a><p>> "NHTSA does not distinguish safety performance beyond that rating, thus there is no "safest" vehicle among those vehicles achieving 5-star ratings."<p>Perhaps stop making claims that are not backed by the source you claim to use.
Just as a note, the author is from CleanTechnica. They are known to be extremely pro-tesla.<p>Best case scenario - most of their articles quietly ignore the downside and prop up the upside. Worst case - they lie or embellish the truth.<p>Disclosure: I've followed both bulls & bears for almost 6 months - and I've got quite a lot riding in short positions.
The Kochs didn't make Elon tweet himself into an SEC sanction<p>"Musk and the Tesla board have decided to keep Tesla public." Decided as in <i>there was no plan in the first place</i>
Tesla still isn't doing all that great on production.[1] They've been unable to sustain the 5,000 units a week output for the Model 3 line. They're back down around 4,000. The week to week numbers are all over the place, from 2000 to 6000.<p>Auto plants are usually much more consistent. A Ford exec points out that their F-150 production line at the Rouge produces a truck every 55 seconds. You can take the plant tour in Detroit and see this.<p>Tesla's open-ended tent setup in Fremont isn't going to work once rainy season starts. Their production problems should have been fixed by now, but clearly they're still struggling. And, as Bob Lutz says, they have way too many people in the Fremont plant. Tesla has 10,000 workers in Fremont. Ford's entire Rouge complex has about 5000 workers.<p>Tesla has accomplished a lot, but the core business still isn't running smoothly.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-tracker/" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-tracker/</a>
I actually really want to buy a Model 3 but these stories that Tesla has a bridge note due in March that they may not be able to cover have me concerned. If I buy a car I want to make sure the company is around to service it.<p>I don't see this article covering that particular article. In fact the word "debt" appears nowhere in it.<p>Edit: I'm actually asking someone to prove the debt issue wrong if they can. It is literally the only thing keeping me from buying.
And this is a bad article as well<p>> The company is massively outselling its competitors in North America<p>How can you compare Tesla models to BMW 7? It should be compared to BMW5. What is more, SUVs rule the market and that's where they main focus is (Audi e-tron, Mercedes EQ etc.)
This article is especially interesting in light of "Can We Go Electric Before It’s Too Late?" <a href="https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/10/where-americas-charge-towards-electric-vehicles-stands-today/572857" rel="nofollow">https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/10/where-america...</a>. The answer may be "no," but Tesla is a big part, and outside of China likely the biggest part, of the answer.
Besides the problematic assertions this article makes about Tesla's business fundamentals (already addressed in the comments), I just want to call out the absurdity of its media conspiracy theory:<p>> <i>Media outlets are doing what they can to survive. They’re laying off seasoned journalists with strong fact-checking instincts. They’re laying off fact-checkers. They’re laying off editors. They’re rethinking how they write headlines to compete with clickbait...Tesla and Musk are big eyeball grabbers. They have been for five years, as this Google Trends graph shows. One publisher I work with regularly told me, anecdotally, that anything with Tesla or Musk in the headline is likely to perform better than average.</i><p>Only someone who has his head firmly in the Tesla bubble could imagine that the eyeballs that Tesla/Musk articles attract are any kind of significant blip in the revenues or traffic of a major general news outlet. It's really hard to imagine how clueless this author is, as if he had just woken up from a 2 year nap and doesn't realize what currently dominates the headlines and reader traffic.<p>Take this Sept. 4 article from BuzzFeed News, which arguably directly led to Musk bringing a libel suit upon himself: <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/elon-musk-thai-cave-rescuer-accusations-buzzfeed-email" rel="nofollow">https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/elon-musk-thai-...</a><p>I would bet a decent chunk of money that the reporters who worked on that story get paid more, and put more work into that article than did their colleague for this article from yesterday, "16 Bakers Who Should Be Very, Very Ashamed": <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/jamiejones/people-who-wont-be-winning-star-baker" rel="nofollow">https://www.buzzfeed.com/jamiejones/people-who-wont-be-winni...</a><p>The "16 Bakers" article has 326,000+ views, according to Buzzfeed's own metrics. The BuzzFeedNews domain does not display pageview metrics, perhaps partly to look more dignified, but also because BuzzFeed's reported articles generally are nowhere near as popular in pure pageviews as the standard Buzzfeed listicle. Moreover, the Buzzfeed listicles sell ads (the Bakers' listicle has a sponsored Uncle Ben's ad), whereas the BuzzFeedNews articles rarely have any ads.<p>So tell me how paying quality reporters to write damaging articles about Tesla/Musk helps BuzzFeed's bottom line?
Anyone who has eyes can see that there are lots of Tesla vehicles on the streets wherever there are lots of wealthy people. That has never been a question or something that headlines suggest. The problem is Tesla sells these cars for less than it costs to build them and have had trouble making enough of them with a build quality matching the luxury price tag. Short sellers will magically go away if Tesla can start to consistently make money by selling cars, until then nothing matters.<p>If you haven't read it already, don't waste time reading this article.
Tesla's biggest problem right now is Elon and all the negative publicity he generates. I think the stress and lack of sleep and crazy long hours are finally getting to him, resulting in outrageous behavior that has become a severe liability for Tesla.<p>Just a year ago I would never have thought I would say this, but perhaps he needs to step aside and hand the reins over to a talented COO-type like with Gwynne Shotwell over at SpaceX.<p>edit: of course I'm getting downvoted for saying bad things about Elon on HN. Oh well, I've got karma to kill, so bring it on. :)