Dana Hull and Hannah Recht write a critical review of Tesla's cash burn rate and potential liquidity challenges in their recent Bloomberg article. While I greatly admire Elon Musk as an inventor and innovator, I am also flummoxed by his apparent deficits as an operator as Tesla continues to miss its production targets. However, my interest in the article has nothing to do with whether or not I think Tesla is viable as a long term company. I have included my favorite facts below. Please share yours or links to other articles in the comments section.
- The current cash burn rate is $6500/minute. It took me $52,000 to read the article.
- Tesla has approximately $875 million dollars in deposits for future cars and prepayment for features that Tesla has not successfully developed yet.
- Telsa has received $1.3B or $3,500/car sold from selling Zero Emissions credits.
- The company currently has 40,000 employees and majority of its manufacturing process is currently being done by hand and not through automation.
Disclosure: I probably own shares of Tesla as part of Broad US market index funds held in both my brokerage and retirement accounts.