Maarten Vinkhuyzen Grumpy old man. The best thing I did with my life was raising two kids. Only finished primary education, but when you don’t go to school, you have lots of time to read. I switched from accounting to software development and ended my career as system integrator and architect. My 2007 boss got two electric Lotus Elise cars to show policymakers the future direction of energy and transportation. And I have been looking to replace my diesel cars with electric vehicles ever since.
August 14th, 2018 | by Maarten Vinkhuyzen
Today's blog post from Tesla CEO & Chairman Elon Musk confirmed my WAG about the cost of going private. It is somewhere between $0 and $24 billion. For both amounts, Elon can get the funding secured. But for the amount of $???, it is a bit harder. Investors want to know how much they are going to invest, and how much influence they are going to get for that amount
August 13th, 2018 | by Maarten Vinkhuyzen
For 15 years, Tesla has been prisoner of The Secret Tesla Master Plan. It called for the development of a number of products and the acceleration of the world's transition to renewable energy. To achieve those goals, Tesla was forced to travel from milestone to milestone, with a pause to recuperate and then get back to the maximum speed its financial resources would allow
August 13th, 2018 | by Maarten Vinkhuyzen
While this article waited for the editor to come along and publish it, the world changed. Elon published on August 13, 2018, a new blog post explaining his actions on and before the 7th of August, when he tweeted about taking Tesla private at $420 and sent a letter to Tesla's employees. I leave the original article as written, and add an addendum with the consequences of these new revelations
August 9th, 2018 | by Maarten Vinkhuyzen
First, the hottest question about Musk's idea to take Tesla private: Does he have the funding
August 9th, 2018 | by Maarten Vinkhuyzen
Last Wednesday, August 1, 2018, we got a ton of fresh information in the Tesla shareholder letter and conference call. The prediction of our financial model of the Tesla results, "Vijay’s SimTesla Game," was right within a few million, after correcting for the ignored restructuring costs. That's not because we got everything right, but because the mistakes cancelled each other out
July 31st, 2018 | by Maarten Vinkhuyzen
When you make a financial Model that pretends to show the development of Tesla's financials, you should dare to use it and show the results
July 30th, 2018 | by Maarten Vinkhuyzen
There will be again a lot of boneheaded questions at this week's Tesla earnings conference call for the results of Q2 2018. We have collected the most important questions we expect and put them into two categories
July 29th, 2018 | by Maarten Vinkhuyzen
Money manager Steve Eisman has a sterling reputation. He is one of the few who saw the 2008 financial collapse coming and reacted accordingly, making a lot of money for his clients. To do this, you have to know the market thoroughly and have access to a lot of information, researching large amounts of data
July 26th, 2018 | by Maarten Vinkhuyzen
Are you game? Can you beat Elon Musk? Can you understand his moves
May 30th, 2018 | by Maarten Vinkhuyzen
When driving past Amsterdam this morning, it occurred to me that all Tesla cars look the same. That is not good for an exclusive brand that aspires to sell hundreds of thousands of their cars
May 29th, 2018 | by Maarten Vinkhuyzen
We reported in recent months on a gigantic 28 stall Tesla Supercharger at a hotel in the Netherlands. Here's an update, including pictures of various phases of development
May 28th, 2018 | by Maarten Vinkhuyzen
"Tesla bankwuptcy" would perhaps be better termed "shorts losing their shirts"
May 27th, 2018 | by Maarten Vinkhuyzen
Business Insider decided to join the chorus of Tesla-bashing media. It did give the job to an excellent writer who had no idea what he was writing about, so it might have convinced others he was right who didn't quite know what they were reading about. We can’t all be experts, but a real "insider" would not write this misinformed and misleading piece
May 26th, 2018 | by Maarten Vinkhuyzen
Elon Musk confirmed on Twitter last night that 6 planeloads of equipment that Tesla just flew from Germany to California are indeed robots from Grohmann. Don't envision Westworld-like robots occupying all the seats in a jumbo jet, enjoying the latest movie. These are automated assembly systems for the Gigafactory to solve the last problems with battery module assembly. For over half a year, it is known that the biggest hurdle to ramping the Model 3 production is unexpected limitations of the battery assembly line
May 25th, 2018 | by Maarten Vinkhuyzen
Did you fall for this clickbait headline? You are not alone. Even the serious Dutch press thought it worthy to write about a car factory in California which performs normal scheduled upgrades/improvements on their production line while it is in development. When the local village paper in Fremont, California, mentions it because of the extra visitors to the shopping mall, that is understandable. But what crazy world do we live in that this is worldwide news? This has happened a number of times, by the way
May 24th, 2018 | by Maarten Vinkhuyzen
Renault and Nissan integration will be a difficult path. The financial markets prefer a simple single company with one set of shares and one top management structure and don't care much how the internal structure of the company is functioning
May 17th, 2018 | by Maarten Vinkhuyzen
How did Tesla get into this hopeless situation? The short answer: “It did not.” The long answer is in 3 articles. The first one examined the problems 450,000 Tesla Model 3 reservations created. The second one gave a long look at the profitability of Tesla products. This third one finishes with the media madness about “Tesla Cash Burn.”
May 13th, 2018 | by Maarten Vinkhuyzen
What am I thinking? Calling Tesla a very profitable company? But I think it is secretly a potentially very profitable company. Or not so secretly if you really pay attention to Tesla's finances
May 13th, 2018 | by Maarten Vinkhuyzen
How did Tesla get into this hopeless situation? The short answer: "It did not." The long answer is in 3 coming articles. This first one examines the problems 450,000 Tesla Model 3 reservations created. Then we have a long look at the profitability of Tesla products. We finish with the media madness about "Tesla Cash Burn."
May 6th, 2018 | by Maarten Vinkhuyzen
Vladimir Lenin famously said: "The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." I think the shorts have done something similar. They have hired the shares from us with which we will bankwupt them
May 5th, 2018 | by Maarten Vinkhuyzen
In the Q1 2018 earnings call on Wednesday, there was an Elon Musk who clearly was not in the mood to be nice to Wall Street and the financial press
April 3rd, 2018 | by Maarten Vinkhuyzen
As Liza Minnelli sung in Cabaret: "Money, Money, Money makes the world go around." Tesla needs cash, lots of cash. There are many panicky stories of the cash squeeze Tesla is going to experience. Those stories are not only appearing on Seeking Alpha, even Moody's is starting to believe and repeat them. That is a serious situation because the Moody's investors service is supposed to know what it's talking about. They are essentially saying: "We see risks, we see opportunities, but we don't know whether there is solid ground in the near future. This uncertainty forces us to downgrade Tesla until we know more about the financial results and expectations."
April 2nd, 2018 | by Maarten Vinkhuyzen
Tesla is doomed, doomed I tell you. When the real carmakers with their century of experience start making electric cars, it is over for Tesla. Ford, VW, and Toyota are so much better. Etc., etc. ……… . How often have we heard comments like this? In a couple of previous articles, I compared the ramp of the Tesla Model 3 to the ramp of the Chevy Bolt. Tesla is clearly as good as or better than GM in bringing electric cars to production
April 1st, 2018 | by Maarten Vinkhuyzen
The whole world is talking about Tesla's inability to produce cars, Elon Musk's unrealistic timelines, and "broken promises." But the facts are different
April 1st, 2018 | by Maarten Vinkhuyzen
Bloomberg recently reported on rumors that Renault and Nissan are in talks to come to a single stock notation on the exchanges. It would make things easier and create extra shareholder value. But it is not a goal, just a tool to reach their goal
