30 Replies to “We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Cars”

  1. No offense to anyone that frequents this site, but the sooner Tesla goes under the better.

    1. No offense taken. It’s a car for virtue signaling idiots of the left. …. who have more money than brains. Too many still believe in global warming. … and the politicians are thrilled to tax that believe into poverty.

      1. Hey, nothing against the car, they are sleek and unique, although they trend on generic in terms of aerodynamics, etc.
        Its the business model (and subsidy harvesting) that is offensive and deserves to crash, spectacularly. Musk is a snake oil salesman, who has the institutional investors entranced with his witty charms.
        The longer it takes to go insolvent, the more spectacular the crash will be. The “tipping point” (I hate that term) is when Good ol boy Elon has to raise more cash, through new bond sales of the company, to find enough suckers to give him hundreds of millions to continue this sham, that think they will get a premium RoR on their investment.
        That date is later this year. Or does Morgan Stanley just put their name on the Brand instead? They seem to be the biggest institutional investors caught up in the scheme.

    2. when i was in business if my payables exceeded my ability to pay i would have been considered bankrupt. my how the rules have changed.

  2. Watching Tesla is an education, but we have our own: Bombardier. It has been bailed out at least 84 times by Canadians. How is that different from governmental subsidies?

  3. I can see the Tesla / Bombardier similarity but Tesla hasn’t been around as long as Bombardier. And Trump.
    I’m seriously considering shorting Tesla. It should fail. The only thing that can save it, is another government bailout. But will it get one?
    I mean Elon Musk’s entire business strategy is getting tax-payer money out of politicans.
    If it was Hillary in the WH I’d say yes he’ll get more, but with Trump, I’m saying no.
    But then I consider individual states -I’m looking at you Jerry Brown- and I’m thinking maybe….

  4. I think this will end with Elon selling all Tesla’s patents to a major car manufacturer with deep pockets. I never did see how he could succeed against the existing infrastructure of Ford, GM, VW, Audi, Nissan etc etc etc.

    1. Does Tesla have any major patents that other car manufacturers want or need?
      In my mind Tesla’s biggest draw is the name. Does it keep it’s prestige and virtue signaling power if Ford or Nissan buys it?

    2. There’s nothing innovative in their electric car engineering that would have a show stopper patent that Ford or GM or VW or other major player would want or need.

  5. SpaceX, however, does build good rockets, but I believe Musk is getting subsidized for that as well. Jeff Bezos, on the other hand, uses his own money for Blue Origin.

    1. If I had Bezos’ pocket change I’d start up a public subsidized Electric Ecto Carbonizer and free the world from “pollution”.

  6. Looks like Tesla is on it’s way to becoming the new Delorian. Hahaha back to the future … one more time.

  7. I’d be tempted to short it as well.

    A company with zero experience or track record of building a automobile – decides to build EV’s on Public money and cannot meet financial obligations or customer expectations. A vehicle that at -40C will likely go 10 blocks and yer heater dies, another 10 and the motor dies and god help ya if the doors are locked – you die.! All for the princely sum of $30,000 USD.

    yea thanx…but no thanx.
    Recycling my cardboard, plastic and glass is as far as I’m willing to go to appease some BS Green Agenda.

  8. Shorting is swimming with the sharks.

    I just go long in boring, consistently profitable industries. Or try to, anyway.

  9. Who wouldn’t want to invest in a company that’s burning through cash and has a CEO who sounds like an aging hippy suffering acid flashbacks?

  10. Shorting Tesla will be a sure thing for those who can time it just right. I’ve been burned trying and that was a few years ago. Actual car makers will put Tesla out of business as their profitable ICEs can carry them while they under-cut him in EVs. Barring state intervention.

  11. If you want to know how fast Tesla is going through cash, Bloomberg has run the numbers.

    Tesla Doesn’t Burn Fuel, It Burns Cash

    Tesla is going through money so fast that, without additional financing, there is now a genuine risk that the 15-year-old company could run out of cash in 2018. The company burns through more than $7,430 every minute, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Free cash flow—the amount of cash a company generates after accounting for capital expenditures—has been negative for six consecutive quarters and ballooned to more than $1 billion when Tesla reported earnings May 2.

  12. I know a very bright engineering student who spent an internship at Tesla’s battery factory in Nevada. He said it was the absolute worst work environment he had ever experienced.

    He said the pressure was way beyond normal work pressure you might typically find in high tech. It was more pressure driven by sheer panic.

    Musk is a narcissist, and working for narcissists is never pleasant even at the best of times. He is not the revolutionary, brilliant leader that all the thoroughly blind and mindless Tesla fan boys portray him as.

    What in the end is a Tesla? Commodity lithium batteries driving commodity electric motors all housed in a commodity car frame and body. There is nothing particularly brilliant about that at all. Sure the cars are cool, and I have experienced their acceleration first hand and it is fun.

    But beyond the gloss there is nothing revolutionary at all that Tesla has done. The company survives on Musk’s hype backed and bolstered by its legion of mostly virtue signalling wealthy liberal fans who will cough up any ridiculous sum of money to be seen in a Tesla vehicle.

    I just cannot see how the company can survive, but if it does it will happen in much the same way the Catholic church survives, that is through a constant influx of cash from fervent followers motivated out of fear of being seen as not belonging.

  13. Consider the devotion of Bruce Sidlinger, a 60-year-old aerospace engineer who lives in Flagstaff, Arizona:

    “The morning after the Roadster was announced, I put a deposit down. Putting down $50,000 for a Roadster that won’t be out for a few years is kind of like buying a bond that returns zero. Elon Musk is one of our planet’s great hopes. I would offer a kidney to him if he needed it.”

    Bruce Dummy-Pants Sidlinger should offer his brain to science because he’s obviously one of our planet’s great dopes.

  14. As always … reading the comments is better (and more educational) than reading the story. What I learned is that the Greenie weenie Fan Boyz of Elon and HATERS of ewwwwwww … fossil fuels … display a simplistic, monolithic, predictable commentary that reveals their RELIGIOUS FERVOR for all things “green”.

    Never a thought as to where the ELECTRICITY comes from (yeah, right … solar panels), and where these $$ RICH $$ virtue signaling drivers are placing their own personal pollution choice. Never a thought as to the COST to the planet to produce these eco saloons. Where does the plastic come from? Where does the steel and aluminum come from? It’s as if these materials just magically appear at the Fremont assembly (sometimes) plant.

    The Eco zealots behave like brainwashed fundamentalist cult members.

  15. “We’ve got barnacles on barnacles. So there’s going to be a lot of barnacle removal.”

    Sounds like their ship is going down, all those workers trying to scrap the bow are going to be swamped by the overweight stock drop anchor.

    Might be a good time to burn a few plants with those fire-stick lithium battery’s.

  16. immediately catching fire

    NTSB investigating deaths of Florida teens in fiery Tesla crash

    Two teenagers were killed on Tuesday after the Tesla car they were traveling in crashed and caught fire in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, police said on Wednesday.

    A preliminary investigation showed a 2014 Tesla Model S drove off the roadway and struck a concrete wall, immediately catching fire, the Fort Lauderdale Police Department said.

  17. The next step, is clearly a government bailout. And some slush for important donors…

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