Right Now Tesla Is Haemorrhaging $8000 Every Minute

Analysts are saying Tesla's spending is unsustainable, but the eventual massive uplift in Model 3 production should be the company's saviour

Matt Kimberley

27 Nov 2017

Tesla’s incredible rate of spending equates to $8000 for every minute of the last 12 months, according to data from Bloomberg.

The company has spent some $4.2 billion in that time as it developed the Model 3, the Roadster and the electric semi truck. Of course, it has also pulled some money back in through sales of what cars it has been able to build, but the losses are currently pretty huge.

Right Now Tesla Is Haemorrhaging $8000 Every Minute

In a letter to shareholders dated 1 November, Tesla insists that it has enough money to ramp-up production and reach its target output of 5000 Model 3s every week by the end of March. After that, it says, money should be flowing in nicely. Deposits for Roadsters and semi trucks will help.

Estimating that Elon Musk will need to raise at least a further $2 billion by the middle of next year, Kevin Tynan, a senior analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence, said:

“Whether they can last another 10 months or a year, he needs money, and quickly.”

Deposits for the Roadster will ease Tesla's cash flow troubles a little

At the current rate, the brand is torching cash at a rate of $480,000 per hour, which is frightening. Bloomberg says that very few ‘Tesla watchers’ expect the spending to carry on like that, though, and investors seem to be as confident as ever.

Source: Bloomberg

Comments

As much as most people here want to see Tesla go down, I think Elon Musk will pull them out of it. He wouldn’t have been so successful if he didn’t know what he was doing. Trust the process

if anything, I think Musk is the one dragging them down. He’s pushing for too much, too soon. Right now, Tesla is at eleven-tenths on the Pikes Peak track without guard rails.

The tesla roadster won’t be helping their bank account either… :/

So right now, Tesla has two choices:

Build a Model 3 every 4 minutes.
Take a deposit on a Model 3 every 7.5 seconds.
We all know the latter is going to happen, and that’s exactly Tesla’s problem. Execution. It’s easy to say “Oh look at us, we just came out of nowhere and can now sell all these cars.” But actually building them is another story. If you look at other young upstarts, Koenigsegg and Pagani only need to sell a few tens of cars a year to keep afloat, and McLaren have years of expertise from F1. Tesla need to sell far more cars because their cars are so much cheaper. In my opinion, Tesla should have stayed in the 100k+ price range for longer before slowly working their way down.