Tesla held an unusual event at the Fremont factory over the weekend at which Model 3 reservation holders could drive home a new Model 3 immediately, as long as they were willing to take one that was already built instead of one configured to their exact specifications.
In our first week tracking Tesla headlines across major media outlets, several things stood out to us. One of the big takeaways was that a few major media sites routinely publish a ton of articles about Tesla. Furthermore, those same media sites have demonstrated an overall negative slant on the company.
CleanTechnica’s Maarten Vinkhuyzen recently took a deep dive into a UBS report about the Tesla Model 3. The finding was that the report demonstrated tremendous ignorance at best or intentionally misleading nonsense at worst.
When companies report earnings, the financial news mentions how the company’s revenue and earnings per Share (EPS) performed against professional estimates. If a company beats both, the stock price will usually go higher. And if they miss both, the stock price will go the opposite way, lower. If either misses, financial analysts will ask management questions on the conference call to get a better idea of how the underlying business is doing.
In the news, we hear a lot daily about missed or delayed production numbers and high cash burn. However, Tesla announced recently that it expected to be cash flow positive and profitable in Q3 and Q4 2018, and even more interesting, for all future quarters. Let’s discuss together if these statements can be trusted using the past to predict the future.
I was pleasantly surprised to see the Company Update from Tesla arrive tonight. I saw the announcement of Jerome Guillen into the President of Automotive position as a big positive. Guillen is an eight-year Tesla veteran with tons of positive experience. The new general assembly line for Model 3 has been attributed to him. He appears to have excelled at every project he has managed at Tesla.
Three weeks ago, I published that I expected the Tesla Model 3 would be the 5th best selling car in the United States in August. That has now been confirmed. (Note: we’re just talking cars, not SUVs or pickup trucks.)
Tesla has a long history of in-sourcing production. It started with the idea of following the Apple model. That meant doing the design itself, finding factories which could make it, having no production itself — only design, marketing, and sales. That didn’t work — nobody did know how to make an electric car.
The most popular CleanTechnica stories of the past week happened to be led by fake news — real fake news, not journalism that just happens to reveal Donald Trump crimes and cons. That said, the fake news is news with a purpose — it’s satire of some of the anti-Tesla hit pieces we’re seeing in higher and higher number.
Tesla CEO & Chairman Elon Musk is a wild man, a mad scientist who has lost his marbles, a gorilla ape gazillionaire who has brilliantly brainwashed the masses, a South African clone of Conor McGregor.
