Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Fundamentally, I think Tesla's problem is that while it has first mover advantage, it doesn't have enough capital to continue expansion and doesn't have enough of a technical moat over the competition to beat them out when companies who know how to make cars start getting into the game. 

This is a common problem in companies with first mover advantage in a market similar but adjacent to a larger market. 

I saw this years ago in enterprise SSDs. Companies like STEC and FusionIO were creating amazing products that were far beyond anything anyone else had, and they were creating market demand by supplying products that didn't have competition from the major storage vendors. They were flying high. But once the competition started catching up, they became acquisition targets by the big boys at far lower prices than they would have commanded at their peaks. 

They simply couldn't scale. They had technology, but not enough of a technology lead to remain freestanding companies. And because the biggest cost of enterprise SSDs is NAND, which neither company made, once the technology of other vendors caught up they had a pricing disadvantage. FusionIO was acquired by SanDisk [who is vertically integrated in NAND] and STEC was acquired by WDC*/HGST, a behemoth of the HDD industry which later acquired SanDisk to become vertically integrated in NAND.

I think Tesla has a similar problem. The behavior over the last quarter suggests that they're seriously cash-constrained. They hastily announced a Model Y hoping for a big influx of reservation cash like they had with the Model 3. It didn't materialize. They're laying off salespeople and closing retail locations. They're lowering prices [signaling a demand problem]. They're starting a lease program that appears to be a way to turn languishing inventory into immediate cash, but without a leasing partner to help shoulder the financial burden suggesting they're trying to get in hand cash now, also signaling a demand problem. Their bonds are slightly better than junk, so raising capital through bonds is hard, and they might be able to keep going if they try to issue a capital raise, but for some reason they have been unable or unwilling to do so.

Their cars appear to be pretty damn good. And the people who are pro-Tesla think that's enough for them to survive. Problem is that they're a company, and a company has to make money. And it doesn't appear they have a viable model to do so right now, so they're flailing around trying to save enough cash to keep the lights on.

Their technical moat is insufficient IMHO. Their only real technical advantage is battery-related, and it's unclear how much of that is Tesla and how much is Panasonic. Autopilot is nice, but I think the timeframe to actually get to autonomous / full self driving is far enough out that even if they had a lead and would be first to market, the survival of the company is a shorter term concern than what FSD can offer. 

Tesla is in trouble.

* Disclosure: I work for WDC, which acquired the companies who acquired STEC and FusionIO.

Yep, that was just a little above normal, whatever normal is these days. Dams are just dangerous on all levels. People see a "low head" dam like this and think they can manage it. Nope. Low head is a misnomer, in that it's only low head when it comes to gravity. There is much more to head than gravity, not to mention the risks of increased velocity and hydraulic jump.

I'm in negotiations on this now. I might couple it with a new SUV for Mrs. 847. It's all about the deal though. I don't need a new car. But, It might be my last one, and hers, so who knows.

Vehicle negotiations stalled last night, by the way. We'll see if he calls me back today. I suspect he will, but we'll see. I told him I don't need to do this, and I mean that. I'm cool with what we have, but I could see that changing when we move. We'll need a bigger SUV, I think?? I'm fine with my car. Sometimes I wonder if we would even need to have 2 vehicles. Maybe one and a golf cart or something. Those are electric, I think.

I suspect we'll always want one vehicle but I could certainly see alternative forms of transportation eliminating the need for a second.  Right now I telecommute 3-4 days per week anyway.  Covering the other 1-2 days with some combination of uber, light rail, and perhaps even city buses would be do-able.

When I was back in grad school, I took the bus from the suburbs down to campus every day and it worked really well-- gave me plenty of time to read and review cases, and even capture some of the written work I needed to do on the laptop.