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Is this speculation, or are you talking about some previous time where Tesla had to pay a lot more to raise after an Elon comment?

Also, can you point out who said "Tesla will not need money again"? Elon is always careful to say something like "We will not need to raise money in <relatively short timeframe>". And then he raises money, says he did it because the price was right but it wasn't needed. Shorts accuse him of lying. Rinse, repeat.



If you feel that pissing off institutional investors is going to reduce the price of the next raise I'm fine with that.

As for the second part of your comment:

The Economist wrote that Tesla would have to raise money this year, 2.5 to 3 Billion $.

Elon Musk's response to that:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/984705630106673152

And as far as I can see it has no qualifiers. The complete text of the tweet:

"The Economist used to be boring, but smart with a wicked dry wit. Now it’s just boring (sigh). Tesla will be profitable & cash flow+ in Q3 & Q4, so obv no need to raise money."

Now, that's a pretty strong statement and just like the 5000 vehicles per week production in Q1 that everybody seems to have forgotten about (now it is suddenly good news they do about half that much) it is very much falsifiable. For Elon's sake (and all those employed at Tesla) I hope it works out that way but this could turn out to be a very expensive own goal.


Notice that his response to the Economist is in the form that I said -- the word "need" is present.

As for Tesla's targets, they have changed (downwards) several times, and I've seen plenty of people noticing. IIRC the target announced after Q4 earnings was 2,500 Model 3's per week by the end of Q1, and they missed by 500.

Honestly, this entire discussion is the kind of thing I'd expect on Seeking Alpha, not Hacker News.


> As for Tesla's targets, they have changed (downwards) several times, and I've seen plenty of people noticing

Bloomberg has even charted the successive reduced projections against measures of actual production.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-tracker/


Tesla might raise to accelerate the Semi production line or the Model Y line, but I can’t fathom that’d happen this year.

If we’re talking about Model 3, there’s also no way they’ll have unforeseen expenses in Q3/4. It takes way more than 6 months to plan a billion dollar expenditure, so it seems exceedingly unlikely Tesla’s expenditure model is wrong.

So that leaves their revenue model as the only wildcard. If they dramatically fail to increase production... say they plateau at 3k per week... that’s like $50k * 3k * 35 weeks = $5 billion in Model 3 revenue.

Plus they have a couple billion in the bank?

I just don’t see how this is a bankruptcy year for them.


> Tesla might raise to accelerate the Semi production line or the Model Y line, but I can’t fathom that’d happen this year.

Even with release of the Model Y pushed out to 2020, if they need money and they aren't raising it this year, it probably means more delays.




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