they certainly have a "leak problem" don't they? https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/10/01/tesla-is-about-to-set-new-records-for-deliveries-a.aspx
Actually this move is a huge eye-opener in a way. For me at least. One credit I have always given TSLA (Elon) was that they (he) were writing the book on this stuff. So for all of their cash-flow shortcomings... and despite the oftentimes ease of bashing the whole operation... I have always been a secret fanboy of their engineering brilliance. I'd have thought they were on the cutting edge of this stuff. In house. Hmph.
Burn baby burn, disco inferno, burn baby burn!!!! https://insideevs.com/news/373722/truck-trailer-five-teslas-burns/amp/
One of the best comments on SA, it deserves to be reposted here: Slow & steady wins the race: A rational investor should understand the concept of demand in economic theory. In normal parlance, demand is something you ask. You can say: "I demand silence, please". In economics, demand is how many items can be absorbed by the market, for a given price (or, at any given price). To state page 1 of any microeconomics manual, demand is a function of price. Formalized (economists like that): D = f(p). This ends up as a line in a chart. E.g. you can put D on the vertical axis, and p on the horizontal axis. The resulting line will be sloped down-right: it will start at a certain high "demand" (quantity bought by the market) for a "low" price, and the demand will go lower while the price increases. Anybody who wants to sell anything says that there is "demand" for his good IF he can sell the good at a unitary price that recover his costs. If you open a lemonade stall, and spend $50 in making your lemonade (50 servings), and sell it for $70, you are happy because there is "demand" for your lemonade. But if you spend $50 to prepare it, and lower your price so that, at the end of the day, you cannot go past earning $30 for all the lemonade (you sold all the 50 servings), then you don't have a profitable business, because your market doesn't pay enough to recover the costs. "There is no demand" means: "the market doesn't pay enough for my lemonade to allow me to sell it profitably". It goes without saying that if that somebody spends $50 to prepare the 50 servings, and sells all of them for overall $30, and says "I sold all my lemonade, which means there is strong demand for my lemonade", that guy is either a Tesla investor, or an idiot (or both. The two cathegories frequently overlap). In economic parlance, you would say "there is no demand for my lemonade". That doesn't mean OBVIOUSLY that you did not sell all your lemonade, but that you could not sell it at a price which recovers the costs. Saying that "no one can doubt that the demand is strong" when Tesla sells the cars they sell at a price which is not profitable, means the Author has some problem with basic economic principles. I mean page 1 of any Economics textbook. Demand is always "infinite" for a price = 0, in economic theory. And it's always "strong" for a price which doesn't recover costs, that is. If Author gave one-to-one tutoring to Economics students for $1 per hour, and the parking costs $2 per hour, the author would find a very high number of students for his lessons (maybe), but he wouldn't have a business, i.e. he wouldn't have "demand" for his one-to-one Economics tutoring business. Tesla has a HUGE demand problem, and they have it since ever. Huge. Insurmountable, as well. They cannot sell their cars at a price that recovers their cost, and they sell them at a loss, just like the guy who spends $50 to prepare the lemonade which he sells for overall $30.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pets.com "...Pets.com lacked a workable business plan and lost money on nearly every sale because, even before the cost of advertising, it was selling merchandise for approximately one-third the price it paid to obtain the products. Pets.com tried to build a customer base by offering discounts and free shipping, but it was impossible to turn a profit while absorbing the costs of shipping for heavy bags of cat litter and cans of pet food within a business field whose conventional profit margins are only two to four percent. The company hoped to shift customers into higher-margin purchases, but customer purchasing patterns failed to change and during its second fiscal year the company continued to sell merchandise for approximately 27% less than cost, so the dramatic rise in sales during Pets.com's second fiscal year only hastened the firm's demise..."