DaveinOlyWA said:there is a reason Tesla does not report sales or its finances the same way other car companies do and its because it would destroy their cash cow of promoting hype
In my opinion this in unfair. They are carefully balancing loans, investments and income to try to step from rock to rock, build production infrastructure, build charging infrastructure to support and promote the use of the car. Yes, like ANY public entity they do use hype to generate excitement, but to imply there is not a solid business plan is not right. Anyone can study and understand what they are trying to do.
Now whether they will succeed or stumble is another argument. But they have a plausible business case, and to be fair, have so far managed to hit every step as they had described (mostly), with the only exception being time slip. Which BTW is pretty much what you would expect when building from ground up. I mean SOFTWARE slips years, and this is building complex machines and production lines.
Only real issues I see is that:
a) They are over selling potentially the rate of growth and market size,
b) The slip has caused viable alternatives to appear on the horizon, but that would have happened eventually anyway, and
c) The concern that if the powerwall business really rockets and the gigafactory is online it may dwarf the potential for the cars and the company focus may drastically shift. But this one is a very big what if and musing.