You probably don't want to give much credence to Kate Duguid's characterization of Soros' bond purchase. Buying the bond is not necessarily a bullish bet on the company. There are Tesla bond holders who have been shorting TSLA.
I concur. I think it's a very poor business and engineering decision to install a clearly unproven Autopilot program on a new breed of cars that is vulnerable to deadly fire upon crash. Elon Musk / his management team / Tesla engineers are basically using Tesla cars as guinea pigs for other car companies. Cramming too many new unproven features in a "critical mission" product is almost never wise. (It's not just cars. LMT's F-35 & F-22 fighter jets have proven to be expensive "high tech" screw-ups.) The warnings in the car manual might not protect Tesla from actions on fraud / fraudulent inducement / deceptive trade practice statutes.
I have a feeling that there will be a huge short squeeze in the next 3 or so months. Only 19% of the stock is retail owned:
Tesla’s $35,000 Model 3 Could Now Cost You $78,000 By Sally Bakewell and Olga Kharif May 20, 2018, 5:30 PM EDT Updated on May 21, 2018, 1:12 AM EDT Latest configuration will offer two motors, all-wheel drive Original idea of $35,000 version ‘kind of laughable’: analyst
Nice, is there an app for that? Can other companies shareholder structure be broken down the same way?
the stated plan is sell the larger margin car to cover initial model startup costs. Musk tweet explaining: With production, 1st you need achieve target rate & then smooth out flow to achieve target cost. Shipping min cost Model 3 right away wd cause Tesla to lose money & die. Need 3 to 6 months after 5k/wk to ship $35k Tesla & live.
Tesla Model 3 Falls Short of a CR Recommendation “I’ve been testing cars for 11 years,” Car and Driver Testing Director K.C. Colwell said in an interview with CR, “and in 11 years, no car has stood out with inconsistent braking like this. Some trucks have. . . . It was just weird.”