Apple Should Help Take Tesla Private, or Acquire, or Merge
Tim Cook says he cares about climate change. “The time for inaction has passed,” he said four long years ago at a U.N. climate summit. Yet, Apple has made no meaningful investments in consumer product development in this area.1 Certainly, Apple is committed to reducing its environmental footprint, for example, shifting its facilities to renewable energy. However, Apple mitigating its own impact won’t matter to the big picture if civilization remains addicted to fossil fuel.2 Transitioning the world to sustainable energy and transportation is the crux of the matter.
Helping to take Tesla private – or acquiring Tesla outright, if that is even possible at this juncture, or perhaps merging with Tesla if an acquisition is unviable – would put Apple’s money where Tim’s mouth is, and return a massive upside for Apple’s shareholders. Tesla is on track to grow from a $60 billion to a $500 billion market cap (or much more) over the next decade. Adding $500 billion to Apple’s market cap would be a win of unprecedented dimensions.3
Apple ended 2017 sitting on nearly $300 billion in cash, a mind-boggling sum. That number will continue to grow as Apple reaps windfall profits.
Over the past five years, Apple has been squandering its fortune on a stock buyback program that creates nothing of value. Apple spent $87 billion on this program between 2013 and 2015 alone. Apple’s share price has risen dramatically since the start of the program. But what breakthrough products or services were created? How did this unfathomable cash incineration benefit the world, Apple’s low-paid workers in its supply chain, or position Apple for the future?
More promising is Cook’s recent announcement to invest $312 billion into the US economy over the next five years.4 Although we don’t yet know what products, services, or jobs this investment represents, it’s the perfect jumping off point to help take Tesla private, acquire the company, or merge.
Musk has already stated that all shareholders will have the opportunity to retain their shares if Tesla goes private, so Apple being one of the key funders – in addition to, or better yet, instead of Saudi Arabia – would be phenomenal. The Saudis have a massive conflict of interest: ensuring they squeeze every last dollar out of petroleum. Apple has no such conflicts. If Apple pursues a merger or acquisition, existing Tesla shareholders would become shareholders in a public Apple Tesla. This could arguably be a much better setup than a private Tesla, given that there would be no obstacles to any retail investor, anytime, buying or selling shares. Apple Tesla shareholders would have the benefit of reliable revenue on the Apple side and growth potential on the Tesla side. In short, Apple Tesla shareholders would gain more liquidity and a desirable mix of security plus growth in their investment.
Even if Apple were to retire Tesla’s $9.5 BN in long-term debt, $80 BN to take-private, acquire, or merge with a debt-free Tesla would be a steal. This investment would cost Apple less than what it spent re-purchasing and retiring its shares over a two-year period.
Apple should set up the following basic management structure:
- Musk runs Apple’s Tesla division/partner
- Cook cuts Musk a mostly blank check to rapidly acquire the factories and hire the workforce necessary to build and scale the Tesla Semi, the Model Y, additional Model 3 capacity, the Pickup, the Compact, Solar Roof, utility-scale solar/storage, and any other projects Musk wants to work on.
- The only basic requirement is that the Tesla division hits profitability within the next five to seven years, timeframe re-negotiable based on revenue growth. Simply, while Tesla is massively scaling revenues, profits are deferred so long as there’s a clear path to profitability once the product line is mature and agreed-upon scale targets are achieved.
Anyone who looks at Apple’s culture and skeptically asks whether it would fit well with Tesla’s is right to do so. Apple is a mature company running a tight ship. Tesla in spirit and culture is more like the original Macintosh project with the pirate flag than today’s Apple. Tim shouldn’t try to micromanage Musk, or send Jony Ive to oversee Franz von Holzhausen. Either could be a disaster.
The one personnel change, or addition, Tim should make is to assist Musk in hiring a COO. Musk needs a Tim Cook, circa 1998, in the way that Steve Jobs needed Tim Cook at that time. Cook should find a younger version of himself and send that person to report to Musk and help Tesla get the trains, I mean the manufacturing lines, to run on time.
This could, and should, end up looking a lot like Disney’s acquisition of Pixar. That was one of the most successful acquisitions in history, and massively benefitted both companies. Jobs made most of his fortune on Disney equity. An ironclad point of the acquisition negotiation was assurance that Pixar would operate mostly autonomously. The Disney/Pixar structure is a model for how Apple’s acquisition of Tesla should look. Here’s how Craig Good described the atmosphere at Pixar, post-deal:
I changed “Thank you for calling Pixar Animation Studios” into that same announcement but starting out with Mickey Mouse’s voice chuckling, “Hi, everybody!” I heard that a lot of people at Disney were getting a kick out of phoning up to hear it over the next few days.
I soon got a call from Ed Catmull’s assistant asking me to remove it. Ed’s reason was the best ever: “We want Pixar to stay Pixar.”
And, to an astonishing extent, that’s exactly what happened.
Tesla needs to stay Tesla.
Back to the premise, I suppose I haven’t conclusively demonstrated why, from Tim Cook’s perspective, Apple should make a bid for Tesla. Tesla will most likely succeed at massive scale on its own, without Apple. And if Tesla does, then Apple doesn’t really need to make an impact on the world’s transition to sustainable energy and transportation, because Tesla will have won its revolution. Tim Cook will be able to sleep at night knowing that the Big Problem was solved, even if he and Apple didn’t play a meaningful role in solving it.
However, Tesla’s success – at massive scale – isn’t guaranteed. Every time Tesla grows, there’s a risk that something unexpected will go wrong. Tesla will be growing for a long time to come, at ridiculous rates of 40-70% per year. Apple’s involvement would ensure Tesla has near-unlimited resources to grow, execute, and scale.
In short, Apple buying or assisting Tesla in a go-private would be lights out and game over for the internal combustion engine and fossil fuel industries. Apple, and Cook, would be the backers guaranteeing the sustainable energy victory that is necessary, without which civilization will collapse5. And the collapse of civilization would be bad for iPhone sales. Sea level rise, and the flooding of most coastal cities, would be bad news for Apple, too.
Other than helping Tesla succeed, massively increasing Apple’s market cap, and saving civilization, why else should Cook acquire Tesla? Simply, Tesla’s product line fits beautifully with Apple’s. There are many reasons so many people call the Model 3 the ‘iPhone of Cars.’ It’s a leapfrog product. It’s the reinvention of the car. It’s going to decimate and obsolete existing cars, the way the iPhone relegated Blackberry, Palm, and Nokia to tech museums. And, virtually everyone who rides in a Model 3 recognizes that “Holy s*&t, this is the car Apple would have built if Apple had built a car.”
Apple spent a few years trying to build a car. From the outside, Project Titan appears to have been a beautifully disastrous failure for Apple. A bold experiment, and a risk worth taking, it reportedly resulted in mass layoffs and a reduction from building hardware and software to working on only self-driving software.6
“People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware,” Steve Jobs said while introducing the iPhone in 2007, quoting Alan Kay. There are many implications of this statement, one being, if all you’re doing is making software when you should be making hardware, you aren’t serious. You’re a joke. Apple, currently, isn’t serious about cars. If Apple had a viable EV program today, investing in Tesla might make less sense than competing with Tesla. But Apple has no EV hardware, and on its current path is unlikely to ever have EV hardware.
Who thinks different today? Elon Musk, and Tesla. Acquiring Tesla would be Tim Cook’s think different moment. This mega-dent in the Universe would set Apple on a course to help save civilization.
- Seemingly; Apple is great at secrecy, so who knows what it’s developing behind closed doors.↩︎
- And by the way, Apple’s products are still delivered on fossil fuel burning trucks.↩︎
- Apple’s current market cap is $1TN. Assume that Apple will double to $2TN over the next decade, which is a reasonable estimate based on revenue growth of its existing business plus inflation. The Tesla part of the business would add $500BN, for a total of $2.5 TN. The Tesla division would represent 20% of Apple in 2028. Put another way, acquiring Tesla would be like acquiring a business the value of the entire existing iPhone business, which roughly represents $530 BN of Apple’s existing $1 TN market cap, based on its 53% share of Apple’s revenues. These numbers are conservative. Tesla could be a multi-Trillion dollar company if it becomes the global leader in transportation and energy. Given that energy and transportation are larger industries, combined, than smartphones, tablets, and computers, eventually Tesla’s market cap could exceed Apple’s.↩︎
- The total is $350BN, of which $38BN is repatriation taxes.↩︎
- Civilization may collapse anyway. The transition is necessary, but it may not be sufficient. Other factors are beyond the scope of this writing.↩︎
- Post-acquisition of Tesla, Apple should send the rump of Project Titan – those engineers and the software of value that remain – over to its new Tesla division. Also, self-driving software may be cool, but on its own will have no impact on climate change or ending the world’s addiction to fossil fuel.↩︎
Tesla’s Compact Model 2 Will Annihilate Honda and Toyota
“I think we will do a compact car in less than five years,” Elon Musk declared at the 2018 Tesla Shareholders Meeting. To date, it’s been an open question as to whom, if anyone, will disrupt the mass market compact segment, which moves almost 15 million units globally and more than 2 million in the US. Compact leaders Honda and Toyota sell an annual combined total of 1.7 million Civics and Corollas on a global basis, and roughly 675,000 in the US. No one has a compact EV in production, or on the horizon, with a prayer of making a dent in those numbers. The Nissan Leaf is a joke, with no charging solution for long distances and insufficient range.
Up until now, Tesla hasn’t even hinted at plans to sell a car for under $35,000. Even under the most optimistic scenarios in which Tesla ramps to 500,000 – 750,000 units each of its midsize Models X and Y, or 1 million to 1.5 million total, this would leave the $19,000 – $30,000 compact market mostly unaddressed. We can assume some potential buyers of compacts at the high end of that price spectrum will stretch their budgets to buy an entry-level, $35,000 Model 3. However, there are masses of working class consumers who can’t afford a $35K car, no matter what its benefits. Furthermore, a midsize car is too large for many people. The compact and subcompact sizes are popular for reasons beyond pricing, including the squeezed parking spaces and narrow garages found in dense urban environments.
A smaller version of the Model 3 would conquer the Compact world.
Now, it’s certainly possible that Tesla’s future compact will be priced at levels nearly identical to, or slightly below, the Model 3, placing it like a smaller BMW 2-series or an Audi A3 in terms of market position. However, I think this is unlikely. Tesla’s mission is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. Tesla understands that someone has to sell a mass market compact EV. Otherwise, the transition will get stuck in third gear. Furthermore, the premium compact segment is smaller than a postage stamp, moving less than 100,000 units in the US annually.
At the Shareholders meeting, Musk revealed that Tesla is making rapid strides in reducing battery costs. This is the key to the kingdom. Furthermore, Musk stated that Tesla is planning two additional Gigafactories in the near term, in China and Europe, and eventually will grow to twelve Gigafactories. By the time Tesla introduces its compact car, it will have vastly more experience and economies of scale, plus a Supercharger network that blankets the globe.
All of these tells point toward Tesla selling a compact Model 2 (a shrunk-down Model 3) with a base price of $20K – $25K. If a budget-constrained consumer could buy a Tesla with 200 miles of range and access to a ubiquitous Supercharger network, why would they even consider a Civic or a Corolla? At $25K, it’s a grand slam. At $20K, it’s a board-clearing game over. This assumes no incentives or rebates.
A Model 2 at a $20 – $25K base price might entail selling it at cost. Musk won’t care if the base model is break-even, as there will be profits aplenty from higher spec Model 2s. Furthermore, Tesla will be rolling in Model 3, Y, Semi, and Pickup profits. It won’t need to make money on a new model, the way the company does today.
A further indication of where a Model 2 would be priced is found in the German German magazine WirtschaftsWoche’s report on a Model 3 teardown, that indicates a $28K cost based on a presumed 10,000 per week future run-rate. Musk validated that math as accurate. Imagine what it will cost per unit for Tesla to manufacture 28,000 per week of a Model 2, five years from now. Let’s assume Tesla sells 1.5 million Model 2s globally per year; roughly as many as the Model 3 and Y combined, or as many as the current Civic and Corolla combined. This is a conservative number, and would mean Tesla is only capturing 10% of the global compact market.
So, mark your calendars: in 2023 we’ll see the introduction of the Model 2, with a $20 – $25K base model. At that point, Honda and Toyota will be facing an existential crisis similar to the one that Model 3 is unleashing on BMW and Mercedes, as sales of their most popular vehicles disappear like dinosaur dust in the wind.
Insolvency of the Shorts, or, How To Jump in Front of a Tesla Semi
Within the next six to twelve months, the Tesla Shorts will be insolvent.
On the eve of Tesla’s transformation from high-end niche player to unstoppable mass-market powerhouse, $TSLA is the most-shorted stock on Wall Street. For those unfamiliar, shorting means you bet that a stock will go down. The way it works is you borrow shares you don’t own from person A, pay interest on the shares to person A, sell the borrowed shares to person B, then hope to purchase the shares later at a lower price to return the shares to person A. If the stock goes down a lot, you make a lot of money.
The problem with shorting a stock is if you’re wrong, and the stock goes up, your losses could be unlimited. When you buy a stock in the belief it will go up in the future, which is known as a long position, all you risk is your initial investment. But because a short-seller is forced to repurchase the stock later, his potential loss is equivalent to how much the stock rises – and stocks can go up an unlimited amount. Clean Technica explains it in further detail here.
As we previously explored, Tesla will demonstrate with its Q3 or Q4 2018 results that building and selling Model 3 is profitable. When that happens, the stock goes up a ton. What we have here is a setup for an unprecedented short-seller meltdown.
When a stock is heavily shorted, and it goes up a lot, what happens is known as a short squeeze: all the shorts desperately try to bail out of their short positions and buy shares to return to the lenders. But, because the longs aren’t selling while the stock runs up, there aren’t enough shares available for the shorts to cover. This forces the stock up even more, exacerbating the shorts’ losses.
The Mother of All Short Squeezes is coming.
Take for example Mark Spiegel, proprietor of postage-stamp-sized hedge fund Stanphyl Capital (assets under management: $8.5 million). I have no idea what ‘Stanphyl’ stands for, perhaps ‘Short Tesla, Anxiously Nervous, Praying Heartily Ya’ll Lose,’ or something. He’s been short TSLA since the stock was in the 90s. When the stock jumped in response to the company massively ramping production and revenues, and eventually delivering the highest-rated car in Consumer Reports history, Spiegel apparently decided this was a sign to double down, and increased his short position. His average basis price is 251. At TSLA’s current price of $290, Spiegel’s bet against TSLA is down 15%. Given that his TSLA short is reportedly 25% of his portfolio, he’s down over $350,000.
He could, if he wanted to, cut his losses, buy the shares back for $290 to repay the lenders, and get out of his losing game.
But, no. Spiegel is certain the sky is about to fall. He says his plan is to cover (buy the shares back) “somewhere between the 30s and zero.” At 30, he’d make 830% on his investment. And Elon Musk would, after all, have to mainline shots of Teslaquila, dried tracks of tears and all.
But. When Tesla produces Model 3 profits, and the stock hits 400 and keeps climbing, what will Spiegel do? At $400, his loss is 59%. At 500, his loss is 99%. At $600, which TSLA will hit within the next three years, his loss will be 179%! Meaning, if he originally invested $2.5 million in his short position, he loses it all plus an additional $2 million. When TSLA hits 1,000, which it will eventually, his hedge fund is a zero. Adios, Stanphyl. You were almost a Berkshire Hathaway.
It’s amazing how disturbed human psychology reliably engages in projection, which in layman’s terms, means “seeing in others a perceived flaw that is entirely about you and your own, disowned, unconscious flaws.”
Mark Spiegel’s catchphrases are, “Tesla is a zero,” “Tesla is going bankrupt,” and “Tesla has created nothing of value.” Hold a mirror up, Mark. You just described your hedge fund.
Mark and his merry band of bears at Seeking Alpha can be persuasive. They point out that Tesla has allegedly ‘incinerated billions of dollars,’ as if the company is shoveling money into a furnace. What they don’t say is that Tesla has invested billions of dollars in building valuable assets such as the Gigafactory, the Supercharger network, manufacturing infrastructure, autopilot software, Model 3 – the iPhone of cars, and many other assets.
They also point out that Tesla has been unprofitable for most of its existence. What they don’t say is Amazon was unprofitable for decades, plowing revenue right back into growth. Anyone who doesn’t know any better, reading the FUD-storms that the shorts generate every now and then, would be convinced that the sky is about to fall.
History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. Tesla’s stock has gone up 17.5X since its IPO in 2010 at $17 per share, wiping numerous shorts out in the intervening eight years. Whitney Tilson, managing partner of Kase Capital Management, shut down his fund after his short position lost tens of millions of dollars while the stock shot from $35 to $205 between 2013 and 2014. “It was the worst short I’ve ever had… a traumatic experience,” Tilson said.
Tesla shorts lost a combined total of $2.74 billion in 2017. That’s an appetizer compared to what’s coming later this year. Shorts have bet a staggering $10 billion that Tesla won’t make the Model 3 profitably.
Angel Investor Jason Calacanis sums it up: “Anybody who bets against Elon Musk is betting against the future of humanity… These idiots who short Tesla stock are jumping in front of a Maglev train.”
Calacanis couldn’t possibly be more wrong.
These idiots are jumping in front of a Tesla Semi.
CEO Elon Musk had this to say just before this story went live:
Oh and uh short burn of the century comin soon. Flamethrowers should arrive just in time.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 4, 2018
Tesla’s Q1 2018 Earnings: Long on Substance, Short on FluffBots
Key takeaways from Tesla’s Q1 earnings report and investor call:
- Tesla will open a Gigafactory in China to build Model Y. Showstopper.
- Tesla is on track to hit 5K per week of Model 3 production. The short-sellers are in deep trouble.
- The Model 3 will soon outsell all midsize luxury cars in its class combined. BMW and Daimler are toast, for starters.
- Innovation rate is Tesla’s competitive edge, and will be for decades into the future. The legacy auto/energy companies are the Wal*Marts, and Tesla is the Amazon.
- Musk is open to sharing the Supercharger network with the legacy auto industry. Will they bite? Pride goeth before a fall.
- Tesla only wants you as an investor if you’re in it for the long term. Day traders and nervous nellies, be gone.
- The CEO will fire underperforming humans and/or robots alike. Equal opportunity employer.
- Galileo Russell of HyperChange TV knocked it out of the park with brilliant questions. Enough with the Wall Street snoozefest. Tesla should invite him and/or other representative(s) of the retail investor community on future calls. How about Rob Maurer with Tesla Daily Podcast for the next call? Also, people like Galileo and Rob are more likely to ask long-term oriented questions, which is what Musk rightly says investors should care about.
Daimler Doubles Down on Diesel Disaster, Debuts At #1 in Dieter’s Dead Pool
Is Daimler freaking serious? This is a joke, right?
Skip to 7:51 in Now You Know’s Tesla Times News video, a must-subscribe:
“We are making every effort to bring more facts and objectivity into the discussion about the diesel engine. We are placing our emphasis on innovation rather than driving prohibitions.” -Dieter Zetsche, Chairman, Daimler/Mercedes-Benz
Sounds like a ‘clean coal’ scam. There is no greening diesel, or any fossil fuel-powered car. There is only shredding and replacing with pure EVs. Or, bicycling.
But wait, it gets worse:
“We advocate technically practical and financially responsible ways to further reduce the emissions of vehicles that are already owned by our customers. The software updates we have announced for more than three million vehicles will reduce the vehicles’ nitrous oxide emissions by 25 to 30%. In the drive system mix of the future, the high-tech diesel engine will not be the problem, it will be a key part of the solution.”
What is he smoking? Did he suck on some diesel tailpipes before his speech, like he and his German colleagues forced these monkeys to do?
When Tesla updates its software, the car drives faster, you get more battery life, the windshield wipers automatically detect rain, the car saves your life, or you get Santa mode.
When Daimler updates its software, the car is still a diesel-emitting, life-killing, biosphere-destroying disaster. The Terminator should add Daimler to his lawsuit against Big Oil for ‘knowingly killing people all over the world.’1
But here’s the crux of the matter:
“An increase in electric cars is good for CO2 balance, but it’s not so good for our group’s balance sheet, at least in the short term.”
Translation: “I care more about my retirement package than the survival of human life on Earth.”
What Daimler should do is rip off the band-aid, discontinue all fossil fuel cars, and shift the entire company to 100% EVs. Immediately. This would produce massive short-term pain and staggering financial losses for a few years, but would set the company up for long-term profitability and a position as one of the few post-Tesla Revolution survivors.
But, Dieter would rather milk short-term, destructive diesel profits for as long as he can, and sail off into retirement a few years from now, right around the time Tesla takes the rest of Daimler’s business and bankrupts the company.
Inspired by this speech of incomprehensibly self-destructive madness, RT inaugurates a new feature: Dieter’s Dead Pool (coming soon), which will serve as a semi-regularly-updated repository of the impending wave of auto and fossil fuel industry Game Overs. Daimler debuts at #1.
Dieter’s remarks will be remembered as approximately as prescient as Steve Ballmer’s reaction to the debut of the iPhone.
- In addition to Big Oil and Daimler, Schwarzenegger should sue all of the legacy auto companies. All. Of. Them. ↩︎
Tesla’s Desperate Plan to Avoid Bankruptcy
Since selling Easter Eggs didn’t work out last month, how the heck is Tesla not going to bankrupt itself before it takes over the auto and energy industries? After all, the mainstream media agrees with the TSLA PermaShort Industrial Complex that Tesla will, without a shred of doubt, go bankwupt any second now.
April Fools’ jokes aside1, Tesla’s financial plan is neither desperate nor-last second, and isn’t designed to avert a sky-is-falling bankruptcy that isn’t in the cards in the first place.
Reduced to three words, the plan is: Model 3 Profits.
Huh? What? It has to be more complicated than that!
Nope.
To elaborate, here’s Tesla’s 2018 Growth Plan, which is the culmination of the original 2006 Master Plan:
- Scale manufacturing of Model 3, the iPhone of Cars.
- Demonstrate with Q3 or Q4 2018 results that manufacturing and selling Model 3 is profitable. Worst case, if Elon’s too optimistic as he has been in the past, Q1 2019 is the profitable quarter. But I think it’s a 2018 thing.
- The stock goes up a ton, based on results/profits and anticipated future revenues on essentially unlimited demand for the iPhone of Cars.
- With stock price and market cap high, raise funds to reinvest in even higher volume & more profitable Model 3 production, plus fund the launch of Model Y (the iPhone Plus of Cars), Semi, the Pickup, and the new Roadster2. Fundraising will be easy when the world realizes that Tesla is no longer a niche, high-end player but has transformed into a mass market, profit-making powerhouse.
Four simple steps.3
OTOH, if Tesla is unable to profit on Model 3 at scale, then they’d have a Big Problem. However, there’s no evidence that this plan will fail. All evidence points towards success, as the Model 3 ramp accelerates.
Remember, something like this happened when Tesla announced its first profitable quarter in 2013. Back then, profits elevated Tesla from its former status as ‘long-shot startup’ to a ‘successful luxury EV manufacturer, but still risky.’ This time, Model 3 profits will transform Tesla from its prior niche/luxury status into Unstoppable Conqueror of the Automotive Industry.
This basic plan of raise funds, invest in assets, grow, demonstrate positive results, raise more funds, grow more, and repeat is what Tesla has been doing from the beginning, and is what they’ll be doing for many years to come until they achieve full spectrum dominance of the global transportation and energy industries. Tesla’s growth curve will take decades. Recall Amazon’s 20-year growth story.
Eventually, Tesla will become a cash-generating powerhouse with Model 3, Model Y, the Pickup, and the Semi producing hundreds of billions in revenue and tens of billions in profit. At that point, Tesla’s debt – no matter how large it is – will be a nothingburger.4 Not nothing as in zero, but nothing as in ‘factored within, and not deleterious to, an overall market cap of many hundreds of billions of dollars.’5
- A non-trivial percentage of Wall Street took Musk’s ‘Tesla Goes Bankrupt’ April Fools’ joke literally and the stock dropped 6% on April 2nd, on top of the prior 12.5% drop that was engineered by Shortville’s ‘Impending Bankruptcy’ FUD-storm in late March.↩︎
- Musk’s Tweet on April 13 said Tesla will not ‘need’ to raise funds this year. Strictly speaking, this is true. Once Model 3 profitability is established, Tesla will present its fundraising as a way to accelerate future business development and capital expenditures, not a necessity for current operations.↩︎
- Unlike an Underwear Gnomes Financial Plan, Tesla’s has four consecutive steps with no question marks. If the gnomes could ever figure out step two, they, too, might be able to avoid bankwuptcy.↩︎
- Apple currently has 122.4 billion of debt; more than ten times Tesla’s. Shockingly, Tim Cook has yet to devise plans for a mass sale of Easter Eggs to stave off bankwuptcy. A critic might say, “Unfair comparison; Apple is profitable, Tesla is not.” When Tesla hits profitability on Model 3, that argument is roadkill.↩︎
- Even then, the TSLA PermaShort Industrial Complex will be happy to tell you that Tesla’s bankruptcy is coming at any moment!↩︎