Tesla indicates there has been no “unintended acceleration” in its vehicles (aside from unintended acceleration caused by the drivers accidentally stepping on the accelerator pedal, which happens occasionally in all vehicles). However, something else destructive might have been intended by unintended acceleration claims, and not by Tesla.
Tesla responded to reports of sudden unintended acceleration involving its cars in a blog post January 20.
First of all, I’ll say that I think we f***ed up by publishing an article on this topic that lacked important context and included misleading framing. I think that stemmed from trusting the reporting of a couple of normally good and thorough publications, and also from not digging deeply enough into the story independently.
Since November 22, the day after the Cybertruck reveal, the stock is up over $130, or 27%. It’s been quite the run. But, as I pointed out with an article on December 19, it still seems no one knows exactly why.
It was just brought to my attention that Jim Chanos, one of Tesla’s fiercest short sellers, who believed/believes Tesla is a fraud, predicted in 2017 that Elon Musk would step down from his position as CEO of Tesla by 2020. He, like many short sellers, also predicted Tesla would go bankrupt, but he did not give a timeframe on that matter. As you can see, this information comes from a Reuters Global Markets Forum tweet from a little more than two years ago. It seems to be the only source of this information.
In this episode of “Tesla Inside Out,” we talk about David’s role getting sent down to Florida (from New York) in 2013 as a kind of Johnny Appleseed character — part of Tesla’s “asset light” program — in order to respond to consumer interest and stimulate sales in the region.
Ironically, David was sharing this story with me on Johnny Appleseed Day!
It finally happened. Tesla’s stock price reached an all-time high of $420, and on Festivus no less. 2020 may be around the corner, but 2019 is still here and it’s not over just yet. Today, as many who believe in a new way of celebrating the holiday season choose to celebrate Festivus, something magical happened.
I’m a fan of hilarious memes, but the nonsensical memes fully aimed at smearing Elon Musk and Tesla have been old and boring since day 1.
Tesla shorts have been losing money — a lot of money — and on the surface it’s because they’ve been betting on the failure of a company that is not only succeeding but changing every industry that it touches. They see this as madness, but the roots of their problem appear to be a basic error in the game “one of these things is not like the other.”
I honestly don’t know why, but I find the Tesla short seller story to be one of the most fascinating stories in cleantech, or at least I did. At times in the past couple of years, Tesla [TSLA] has been the most shorted stock on the US stock market, and it seems Tesla short sellers (stock market traders betting against the company) have certainly gotten more press than short sellers of any other company. I think that is part of why it’s been such a fascinating story — because so much money has been betting against Tesla, and those Tesla pessimists have been dominating or at least greatly shaping media coverage of the company.
