Tesla to raise $1B
As an investor of Tesla who bought into Elon&#x27;s vision I&#x27;ve been getting more and more nervous about how the company is actually run at this point.<p>A modern car company is as much of a production and supply chain company as it&#x27;s a product and tech company. I get the feeling that due to Tesla being cutting edge in the tech department it led to all the supply chain&#x2F;production problems being treated as if they are speed bumps on the way, when in reality they are fundamental core competitive areas for an automotive company. Toyota is not the world&#x27;s premier automaker because they have cutting edge tech, they are what they are because they build unbelievably number of reliable cars at an unbelievable scale.<p>The bleeding of cash after so many promises of &quot;not going to raise money again&quot; just shows that their vision is way ahead of their execution ability. Decisions like the terribly executed Falcon Wing Doors on a SUV that delayed production and increased cost and hurt reliability just further gave fuel to all the doubters.<p>I also have a strong suspicion that Tesla has not been honest with their Auto Pilot 2 and full self driving tech&#x27;s progress. The current AP2 is an unsafe joke and I have no idea how people are ok with paying $5-10k for a <i>significant downgrade</i> when compared to AP1 because of a non-binding promise that it &quot;might&quot; get upgraded before their lease term is out. Any other automakers would be laughed out of the room for suggesting this kind of sales tactics.<p>I still believe in Tesla&#x2F;Elon&#x27;s end game vision, and I think what they accomplished is nothing short of brilliant, but I think it&#x27;s a very risky investment at this point and the road ahead is bumpier than many like to admit.<p>The upcoming Model 3 will be the acid test for Tesla. It will no doubt be a good car, but at this point people should focus less on <i>what the car can do</i> and on <i>how</i> the car will be rolled out, sold and supported afterwards. A wealthy Model S customer <i>may</i> be ok with having the car in the shop after a minor accident for 5 months due to lack of replacement parts, but for an average Joe paying $500&#x2F;month leasing a Model 3 that would just be the birth of a new BMW customer.