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.
Members of the mass media — on both the left and right — come out in force to prove Elon Musk’s point and push Tesla closer to privatization.
On a Tesla Motors Club thread, some members there recently shared a few old claims of perennial Tesla bears. It was a brilliant little move of reverse trolling, and it prompted me to do something I’ve been wanting to do for ages — dig up some old claims about Tesla from prominent bears and see how they held up to the light of today.
The mainstream media normally compares Tesla to other automotive companies, but since the Tesla earnings call this week, we are seeing a lot more discussion and analysis of the company that strives to not put it into a box. Tesla is largely a software-enabled battery company that rolls its batteries into cars and stationary energy storage products powered by the sun. That new categorization has continued to scramble the brains of analysts the world over.
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.
The hottest articles on CleanTechnica in the past week are below. Take a bite, chew them up, and share them all around.
Your favorite not on the list? Let us know what it was!
It’s widely speculated that Tesla delayed US deliveries and shipped more cars abroad in the second quarter in order to not pass the 200,000 vehicle milestone that starts the US federal EV tax credit phaseout. Indeed, as Tesla told us recently, the 200,000 vehicle milestone was passed in July, not June.
Are you game? Can you beat Elon Musk? Can you understand his moves?
Tesla has sent a letter to some of its suppliers asking for some of its money back as part of its push to become profitable as soon as possible. Is this a plea for help from a company in financial distress or just business as usual?
Negative media coverage is a fact of life for any company, large or small. However, as it does in so many areas, Tesla approaches this problem quite differently than most firms do. Conventional wisdom has long been that companies shouldn’t respond to attacks in the media, but Elon Musk never got that memo. He responds quickly, forcefully, and often colorfully.
