It's pretty clear that the second tweet wasn't a correction but a clarification of a misunderstood statement. Elon has made clear many times that he doesn't think in calendar month cut-offs but in moving calendar blocks (i.e. annualised production per week rather than production in a calendar year).
This exchange from the 30 Jan call shows exactly that, clarifying the earlier comment of:
"Yes. Maybe in the order of 350,000 to 500,000 Model 3s, something like that this year".
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Emmanuel Rosner
Okay. And, I guess, my follow-up would be on the demand side. So you're talking about 50% increase this year. You said a few times that it could be higher than this. I think you just mentioned in the previous question 350,000 to 500,000, if I understood well. So what is sort of like what drives the cautious outlook that's in your letter? Because it feels like it's the - it's just basically four times the fourth quarter run rate, which would imply sort of 50% for the full year but not really a lot of growth versus what you just accomplished. So, I guess, how do we think about the total demand for 2019, especially if you introduced this - the cheaper version?
Elon Musk
Well, we need to bring the Shanghai factory online. I think that's the biggest driver for getting to 500K plus a year.
There therefore seems at least a very reasonable case that the first tweet did not represent a material change in guidance and did not need pre-approval. Whether that is good enough for a judge, I'm not sure many of us here are qualified enough to say.
The fix for the tweeting issue of course, is that any tweet concerning Tesla in any way should be made from the corporate account (or a second corporate account with a slightly online identity). Musk can then retweet this to his 25 million followers without further comment.
What I think is almost certainly true whatever the outcome of this latest case, is that it nudges Elon back towards privatisation. Which would be very sad, not only because it would be a distraction for management. But also because of the severe undervaluation of the stock versus fundamentals, the amount of time many of us have spent to confirm this thesis, and most importantly the capital we've risked during Tesla's trickiest development phase (including during multiple capital raises, credit downgrades and missed production milestones). I don't want out at 400 or 420, I want to stay invested and support this venture for the long term.