Uh, if Panasonic increases capacity in Japan fast enough to stay in front of TM demand, I think Elon and investors should be overjoyed that capex is not required.
Also, People who are throwing shade on a massive M3 reservation list are full on crazy.
1) Massive influx of cash-- the very thing that the market was discounting TSLA on. "TM needs capital!! sell!!" doesn't work any more. This is turning a weakness into a strength in basically 1 week in April.
2) Massive media-friendly lines of people putting down money (10x more will be online the next day, but I heartily endorse the 1 day in-person thing). It will be a major story that day, covered by every paper and business news program.
3) Massive increase in mindshare in the car buying public. I work with fairly well-to-do people and a lot of them firmly ignore Tesla cars like they ignore all luxuries they cannot afford. With a well-optioned Tesla going for say $50k, suddenly all middle class Americans will be able to take a look. A huge number of young people are already on board, but this will cause a cascading number of people to decide this is the car they want... eventually.
4) TM can go back to work expanding. The "Tesla Killer" narrative will be forever discredited. When people mention the Bolt with its 30k runrate or whatever people will remember the 100k M3 backlog and put it in perspective.
The M3 reveal changes everything. It is completely different from other launches because it materially changes the financial prospects of the company. And, it is not "priced in" because so many people are freaking out about the general market and unwilling to give any credit to undemonstrated accomplishments. Basically the unveiling will be the mother of all risk-offs and we will have a clear line of site to high volume, high profit production.
