Featured Tesla: Wth is going on

So, I've been a fan of Tesla since the Roadster. I remember drooling while reading about it on Digg.


Tesla is far from perfect and always has been. I test drove a 40kwh Model S -- one from the first year of its production -- and... it wasn't great. The turn signal and wiper controls were on the wrong side. There's a distinct lack of buttons for climate and audio controls. No AUX connection. They burn through 12v batteries. The big display is distracting. These are little kinks that needed hammering out, nothing insurmountable, but certainly noteworthy and substandard on a $50k+ car.


But it seems like in the last 6-9 months they've gone off the deep end. Burning crazy amounts of cash, a trend that seems to be increasing rather than decreasing. Burning bridges with suppliers left and right, first Mobileye now Grohmann Engineering and Alcantara. CEO and CFO saying ridiculous and contradictory things on official SEC filings and investor calls, like that the robots are both being operated by hand instead of being automated and also that they are operating so fast that air resistance is a problem.

The naysayers were against Tesla from the start. They said the Roadster would never happen. It did. They said the Model S would never happen. It did. Is all this bad news the canary in the coal mine, or is it just more of the same naysayers trying to avoid a short squeeze?