I have been talking about Musk's shady way of doing business for a while now, despite liking the car and technology (i would buy one in a heartbeat if viable). The fact that many problems are always downplayed during financial calls (like Edmunds 5x drivetrain failures), and the way he "deals" with any customer or media that is negative on Tesla (remember first supercharger trips where Tesla showed wrong range and journos were left out of juice which Musk called malicious reporting), etc, etc.

Now car media is catching up.

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/201...sales-numbers/

Few other things that came out recently:

- Musk said they are talking to Toyota about future partnership - stock went up - Toyota denied any talks
https://technology.ihs.com/510779/

- Musk said they are talking to BMW about future partnership - stock went up - BMW denied any talks
http://wolfstreet.com/2014/11/28/bmw...boration-hype/

- Tesla Fleet sales started:
http://www.ibtimes.com/zappos-ceo-to...-vegas-1638282

- Seeking Alpha article about "missing" Tesla's vehicles:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2695...-external-data

- Merrill Lynch claims Tesla has 3000 unsold vehicles at the end of Q3 2014:
http://dailykanban.com/2014/11/broke...0-unsold-cars/

 

^ I think a big part of Tesla's problem is his lack of dealerships. If he wants to be taken seriously, you need to have a dealer in every major metropolitan market. Nashville, for example, the city itself is a very politically blue dot in a very red state. Over 1 million people, population booming, people moving in from all over the country. Its also a very car centric city, ie no public transit and very spread out.

No Tesla dealer here. You want a Tesla, drive to Atlanta. Where your Tesla MIGHT have enough range provided you don't live on the far side of either city.

 

Not necessarily falsification of figures. Could some of those so-called "missing" Teslas have gone to places that, once sold, don't require formal registration of electric vehicles?

 

Well I'm convinced, Tesla Motors is going down the tubes.

 

if you actually read first link, you will see that export was 4600 vehicles in 2014, not anywhere close to get to the numbers that are missing.

 

Well, that is why I said some of the missing cars, not all.

Virtually everywhere in the U.S (and I would assume most of Europe and the Far East) require vehicles registration, but that's not necessarily the rest of the planet.

 

How could Musk get away with falsifying the numbers? The financials should not add up - where are the auditors?

 

While none of us can say for sure (And I'm not making a blanket statement either way), I'm somewhat skeptical that he is actually falsifying numbers.


Musk is correct on this....the media DOES often read a lot of things into the auto market that aren't necessarily there....one of the reasons, of course, why we discuss matters like that every day in CAR CHAT.

 

with gas prices dropping like a rock, tesla's at even higher risk. i sold my stock recently for a nice upside though.

 

these numbers are not in financials. Merrill Lynch analysts started calling Tesla out back in September for having unsold inventory according to financials (where input in raw materials/inventory was much larger than output), while Musk was saying that they cant produce enough cars even after that and in response to that.. .it is linked in OP.

 

I believe sales numbers and registration numbers can be quite different. Sometimes limited models are snatched up by brokers. These cars remain unregistered, but sold. You can still find brand new, unregistered cars from the 60's and 70's in Hemmings Motor News. It's rare but it happens.

 

goodies :-)

Stock is down 31% since September 2014 and its going down more.

Tesla is not going to go out of business, it has a good product... but the stock is insanely overvalued based on statements and promises that are not going to happen.

 

Tesla doesn't report sales numbers, that 19,530 figure is an estimate by a news outlet. So how could one falsify numbers that one doesn't report in the first place?

 

Tesla does report sales numbers. What they don't do is report monthly sales or regional breakdowns like other manufacturers, allowing analysts to rampantly speculate on discrepancies.

I'm sure Musk's infantile rants/ravings/mistruths don't help.

 

right... they also tell us they are constantly sold out and that they have no inventory at all... which is what these analysts have been talking about for past 3 months.