Wasted money on Fisker & Tesla?

Unfortunately there is so much regulatory red tape and testing that it takes huge venture capital to get a car start up now. The government can do a lot to help. They can simplify the safety and emissions standards so that people can understand them, then provide lab resources for small companies to test. DOE already gives money to A123 and JCI for batteries, they could mandate they build some standard cells to get to start ups to test BEV and PHEV concepts. But if we look at fisker the government provided half of the funding. If its sucesfull the investors get to keep all the money and the government gets its money back. If it fails the government loses all its money. I would give it at least a 20% chance of failing, which does not seem like a good investment for a taxpayer to make that will never be able to afford one of these cars, but all the profits go to the wealthy like Fisker, Lane, and Gore that know how to get government money. Don't get me wrong I would love this to be a successful venture to build luxury phevs in america, but it seems to violate the program guidelines.

I like your idea of some smaller investments that put small companies on a more level

Tesla is much more likely to be able to repay the loan. It also is providing drive trains to toyota and mercedes as well as building the tesla S. Fisker, seems like a big risk. Its a beautiful car, but it weighs much more than I expected, and makes me think execution might not be there. The Karma and Nina are going to be in a competitive world, and the Karma doesn't seem to get great range or efficiency. Fisker exit plan may be to become a design center that sells out to bmw or another group, so chances of us getting paid back are better than the cars being profitable, but I don't expect many green jobs for the risk.

 

Talking bail outs, how can Tesla compare themselves to Ford. Elon stated the following today "Tesla and Ford remain the only American car companies who haven't gone bankrupt"

How does a 100 year old plus company (Ford) compare to a company less then 20 years old.

 

Source:
Tesla [TSLA] Now Really A Dramatically Shorted Stock (#CleanTechnica Exclusive) | CleanTechnica

. . . It was a profitable quarter several years ago that helped Tesla stock to skyrocket from $30–40 a share to $100+/share and eventually $300+/share (now $290/share). Elon actually warned people back then that shorts were going to be in for a tsunami — that they’d get squeezed like lemons betting against Tesla. They ignored the warnings, acted like Elon was crazy, and then got absolutely squashed. There are certain investors/short sellers who routinely get burned by assuming Elon Musk is wrong or lying. But I find it exceptionally striking when he says something like “Tesla is going to show a profit soon” and such people continue to short the stock. Of course, we’re not approaching Q3 or Q4 at the moment, but I’m curious to see what happens with this mountain of shorts as we do get close to those quarters and potential temporary profit.

One more thing: If Tesla does get Model 3 production up above 5,000 cars/week, or even 10,000 cars/week (a deeper target), that will put the company on very different footing than it’s ever been on. It will be producing a few electric vehicle models steadily and one of them at a genuinely mass market rate. It will be turning a profit. It will basically fulfill its original Secret Master Plan. It will demonstrate that it can indeed play with the big boys … er, it can do something they haven’t yet been able to do. Presumably, that would put a long-term crater in the Tesla shorts market.​

I'm not terribly confident in this source but it is an interesting hypothesis: Musk vows to ‘burn’ Tesla shorts while copping to ‘foolish’ call - The Globe and Mail

Elon Musk pledged to “burn” investors shorting Tesla Inc. and criticized analysts and even himself after exchanges during the electric-car maker’s earnings call sent shares tumbling.

Musk tweeted that analysts at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. and RBC Capital Markets were representing “a short seller thesis, not investors” when posing questions that Musk cut off during the Wednesday call. The chief executive officer reiterated that an inquiry about capital expenditures by Bernstein’s Toni Sacconaghi was “boneheaded” and said RBC’s Joseph Spak posed an “absurd” query about Model 3 reservations.
. . .​

Their suggestion is Musk is permanently angry with 'short sellers' and blew-up the investor call to bait short sellers into a bad place. The trap closed with the positive stockholder's meeting. Hummm, can we 'short' a Tesla short selling company?

Bob Wilson

 

ford was fortunate to procure a very large operating loan just before the crash. that's the only reason they weren't bankrupt as well.
then it would only have been tesla.

 

They also had to sell off Land Rover. Jaguar, Volvo, and their controlling stake in Mazda.

Though, I think Musk had to pour in some of his own cash to keep Tesla going at one point.

 

i wonder if any other auto execs have done that.

 

DeLoren

 

Interesting to look back at this thread with almost seven years of history.
One not about this loan program. Not all recipients were expected to succeed.
Built into the program was a %40 failure rate as I recall.

 

still there? at least the company is!

 

this is a very humbling dredge. i have said some really dumb things over the years.

 

ummm both have gone bankrupt? ... or, how about both had slow starts?
how does a 7yr old thread compare, to asking aboua 7yr old irrelevant article ...

haven't we all ~
.

 

We all make predictions that don’t pan out.

Those who are wise learn from history.
Those who aren’t try to bury it.

 

it is ironic that we are still reading the exact same tesla stuff we read six years ago. i guess amazon went through the same hype though, until they finally squashed everyone like a bug.

 

....... then they repeat it
.

 

looking for a place to place fiskars latest announcement, i couldn't stop myself from dredging again.
this should be a tesla sticky

 

8 yr old thread o ridiculousness .... the zombies are on the loose

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