It’s happened again. Someone who hasn’t followed or has only loosely followed Tesla and Elon Musk in the past decade has swooped in with a damning, critical take on the two. The problem is that it’s based on an absurd lack of context, Trump-style hyperbole (i.e., rhetorical lies), and illogical conclusions.
Tesla has reached its artificial milestone of producing 5,000 Model 3s per week, and media outlets (and buyers) continue to post rave reviews. The company’s three vehicles are the three top-selling EVs in the US market. Model S has been consistently outselling every competing large luxury sedan for a couple of years, and it appears as if Model 3 will similarly dominate the small sedan segment. At least two sets of auto industry experts (Munro & Associates and a group commissioned by German automakers) have performed teardowns of Model 3, and concluded that the new EV should be earning a healthy profit margin. Does this really sound like a company in trouble?
With the advent of the internet came a new type of information gathering we’ll call the click-reporter. This new breed lives by provocative headlines that bring in clicks from the mouse or touchpad of internet viewers, and it’s those clicks that bring in the ad revenue. Get the scoop, create the enticing headline and some text to support it, and you’re golden. Elon Musk’s reaction to such reporting has really stirred this month.
All innovative companies attract negative press coverage, but the tide of anti-Tesla scare stories and misinformation has reached such preposterous proportions that it has become a story in itself (remember, colleagues, we’re supposed to report the news, not make it). It’s widely believed that much of the mud, especially the articles that focus on financial and stock-market topics, originates with short sellers, who have collectively bet some $12 billion against the California carmaker.
Tesla short seller extraordinaire Jim Chanos of Kynikos Associates — who hasn’t been served well by his positions on the company in the past several years — has continued to add to his short position on Tesla in recent days, he revealed at the recent Reuters Global Investment 2018 Outlook Summit.
