Although it has not yet entered the autumn, Tesla has reached an eventful autumn, and it is very likely that it will not survive this autumn.
Tesla has had a rough start to the year . In early January , a Tesla in Chongqing spontaneously ignited without a collision or overshoot ; then, the key person in charge of battery technology resigned, and the delivery of Tesla Model 3 was delayed again. A batch of September - 12 , 2013 The Model S produced in April has been recalled due to hidden dangers .
In March, the Tesla Model X accident in California was the second fatal accident of a Tesla car with the Autopilot system turned on since 2016. widely questioned. Then Tesla announced that it was calling 123,000 Model S vehicles worldwide .
John Thompson, a famous American hedge fund manager, made it clear that Tesla will go bankrupt within 3-6 months. The reason for his remarks is that Tesla can not deliver Model 3 in time , and the other two models are not in the same state. Demand is also falling, due to the extreme valuation of Tevezla and cash flow. Hit by a flurry of negative news, Tesla's stock has lost nearly a quarter of its value in more than half a month .
However, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was indifferent in the face of doubts and did not publicly respond to the company's financial instability, stock price plummeting, and the safety of autonomous driving technology. This year's April Fool's Day also joked that Tesla La is bankrupt. However, netizens did not buy it. Some people commented: This company is really good, and everyday photos can be used as April Fools' photos.
In April, Tesla’s natural and man-made disasters continued. At the beginning of the month, in order to solve the production capacity problem, Musk said that he had moved to the Model 3 manufacturing plant to sleep. He was so busy with work that he didn’t even have time to go home to take a bath. Tweeting admits that Tesla’s excessive automation is a mistake , and that Tesla, whose production capacity is lower than that in the past two months, has shrunk by nearly 16%.
Recently , Tesla lost its core executives again, and the head of the autopilot department moved to Intel. Musk said at the end of 2017 that a fully driverless system would soon be commercially available, but the frequent changes in the department's management have not materialized and will continue to be delayed .
Even Musk himself has been questioned by shareholders. One is that he has too many projects and the shareholders want an independent director. The other is that Tesla wants to acquire SolarCity, which is inextricably linked with Musk. Relationship.
Troubled Tesla
First of all, at the technical level , we must admit that Tesla has never been ahead in building cars.
The most important battery part, Tesla is currently the only car company that uses 18650 type cobalt oxide lithium-ion batteries. Tesla adopts the method of placing thousands of batteries in a battery array on the bottom of the car as its electric vehicle. , In the process of use, the battery array will inevitably have inconsistent battery attenuation. As long as there is a slight inconsistency, a circulating current will form inside the battery pack, causing self-discharge, increasing the loss of the battery, and even directly causing the battery to catch fire.
In the field of autonomous driving, although Tesla is famous for its various black technologies, in fact, he can only be regarded as the bottom enterprise . In March, consulting firm Navigant released a new report. This report lists and ranks 19 representative self-driving car companies. Tesla, which is optimistic in the industry, ranks at the bottom, and it has slipped from last year's competitor area to the challenger area, becoming a complete competitor. Complete bottom of the crane tail.
Secondly, in the safety part , Tesla accidents are frequent, the main reasons are also the two listed above, battery and automatic driving. In addition, there were also problems with the stability of airbags and some other components, and a large-scale recall was finally chosen. Tesla is very bold in the use of new technologies, but in reality, it has not yet reached the point of full maturity. The hasty application of technology will make Tesla's situation more passive once there is a problem .
Third, there is the issue of production capacity . Musk lied again and again, delayed the production capacity target again and again, and even made a move to supervise the company. If according to "the problem of production capacity is too automatic", then he Does living in a factory building help in any way? In fact, not long ago, Tesla’s California manufacturing plant was exposed to frequent injuries and worrying labor conditions. After an investigation by a non-profit news machine, it was found that Tesla’s injury rate in 2016 exceeded the industry average. But Tesla did not truthfully report safety incidents and worker injuries as required by California labor laws.
The fourth is management . Musk has several roles, and taking care of these things is at the expense of the development of the core business Tesla. And Musk isn't slowing down or giving up on any of his plans, which could create a shaky relationship between investors and Musk. In addition, Tesla executives have left one after another, and the Autopilot leadership has experienced the third personnel earthquake in two years . In fact, since the departure of Tesla's former chief financial officer Jason Wheeler in April 2017, it has triggered an "avalanche" of executive departures at the company. This makes Tesla extremely unstable, and the progress of the project will be greatly affected.
The fifth and most important point is the financial situation . Tesla is not only a supercar but also has to build a charging station. The cost is inherently high. Only by moving towards economies of scale can the average cost be lowered. It is difficult to become mainstream , and it can only continue to burn money.
Unlike Amazon, which is burning cash to expand, Amazon has always maintained a positive net operating cash flow despite continuous losses in the past. Therefore, although it does not make money, it still has funds to expand its business and dominate the market today. Not only is Tesla losing money, but net operating cash flow is mostly negative. This meant that cash could not be obtained from day-to-day operations and had to borrow. As of the fourth quarter of 2017, debt interest accounted for one-third of Tesla's gross profit.
At the end of March this year, the credit rating agency Moody’s downgraded Tesla’s debt rating , and the financial website CNBC also quoted analyst Sam Pierson ’s comments as saying that one of the lucrative deals in 2018 was “ shorting Tesla bonds . ”
Without a sustainable profit model, no matter how lofty the idea is, it will be in vain. Only by going to mass production to achieve sustainable profit can there be a future.