We ought to be careful about shooting the messenger before reading the message. Bob does have some valid points. There are very good reasons why there hasn't been a fully new auto maker since the 1920s.
Elon & crew are very knowingly betting the farm in a very high risk game. I figure that Tesla has a 50/50 shot (at best!) at surviving for another 5 years as an independent company. But I also think that they are too big and have done too well to die; the brand alone is incredibly valuable. If they were to financially collapse, they could be purchased and live on as an "electric brand" subsidiary of a larger automaker. Or they could become part of Google or Apple - either of which could pay whatever is required to see Tesla through to time where they have enough mass to become fully profitable. Either way, I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that the Tesla brand will still be attached to high end electrics in a decade.
That said, Bob's assertion that Tesla should make something that sounds very suspiciously like a new Volt is a bit disingenuous. It's not like anybody from GM is in a position to lecture the world on how to be successful and innovative automaker.
In the article he criticizes Tesla for trying to adopt the Apple store model and says it doesn't work with cars. He said all Apple needs to do is lease space in a mall and hire a bunch of kids to run the place. Last week I went to the nearest Tesla store for the first time for a test drive. (I had driven a very early P85 briefly, but this was the first time I had a chance to really drive the car I wanted.) It was in a shopping mall and most of the staff were 20 somethings. The guy who gave us the test drive was a recent grad of my alma mater which was sort of funny. So it looks to me like Tesla can open a store in a shopping mall and staff it with kids.
Having re-read the editorial, I think Lutz's words shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. He may not be completely right, but he may also be seeing some patterns Tesla should be paying attention to. He says in the article, "bleeding cash, securitized assets, and mounting inventory. It's the trifecta of doom for any automaker." Tesla is technically losing $4000 a car, but not all of those are on fixed costs like GM had to deal with before the bankruptcy. A fair amount of those expenses are things Tesla chose to take on like building out the supercharger network. If they needed to, they could cut back on that development and stem the bleed. In the past year they have been building the Gigafactory, building out the supercharger network, and putting a lot into R&D for two new products (the Model X and 3) and they are only losing $4000 a car.
I'm not completely sure what he means by securitized assets. He may mean leased vehicles. He also says inventory is climbing. That one had me confused, but I did find an article that made the case Tesla was quietly building to inventory and selling the cars as demos and/or used. However the article was from February of this year and I couldn't find anything more recent. They may have stepped up the rate at which they retire demo cars and sell them on, which would allow them to build a few more cars on spec, but I think the vast majority of new sales are custom orders.
The introduction of the dual motor cars has created a bit of a glut of used rear wheel drive cars. I think the bulk of used Teslas on the market right now are from people who upgraded to a newer Model S. There is a willing market out there for people who want a Model S, but can't afford a new one. I suspect they would probably sell out a large number of the CPOs if they lowered the price a little more, maybe a CPO sale at year's end? But they want to keep the prices up on used Teslas to keep the market strong. Another thing I've noticed with CPOs is Tesla enables any firmware disabled features when they turn the car around to sell as a CPO. This boosts their profits. They can low ball someone selling back a car without supercharging enabled or the tech package, then enable those features and sell the car on for more money with those features enabled.
I think Tesla is in a stronger position than Bob Lutz seems to think, but I also agree that there are a number of scenarios where Tesla could also end up a subsidiary of another company. My first bet would be Google. Elon Musk is good friends with the top people at Google and I think he really doesn't like Apple too much. He almost sold out Tesla to Google in early 2013. I would give a little better odds that Tesla survives though, probably about 70-80% chance of survival.
