They also said this on the call:Are we talking about the same capex guidance? In the Q3 shareholder letter, Tesla (Wheeler), guided for $1B in capex in Q4. Not spending that (or something reasonably close) would be considered a redflag about the CFO's cost projection abilities.
Note, I have every expectation that Tesla will find cost savings where they can, and will spend pretty close to what they guided for in Q4. I'm just taking issue with your expectation that a capex spend under guidance (assuming significant at least $100 million under, otherwise cap raise issue doesn't get addressed) and then viewed as a positive by the market. You can't be off by almost 10% and still be expected to be trusted on faith alone.
"Jason S. Wheeler - Tesla Motors, Inc.
On CapEx, our original guidance at the beginning of the year was $1.5 billion, and then when we made the initial announcement to bring forward production of 500,000 vehicles into 2018, then we bumped it up. And I think now we're just getting smarter about that, and that's why we brought that guidance back down in the letter this quarter.
Elon Reeve Musk - Tesla Motors, Inc.
Yeah. We're probably just too conservative on our capital projections, but it's turned out to be that we can do this with less capital than anticipated."
Right or wrong, it's pretty clear to me that they are pretty much making educated guesses on capex as they go, as they've adjusted the guidance like 3 times in 2016. From Elon's words, they are clearly guessing on the conservative side. If they end up telling us that they only needed $600 million in Q4 because things are cheaper than they anticipated, I won't be mad.
If you reread the transcript you will see it's full of talk about capital efficientcy, changing the way things are done traditionally, benefits of scaling, etc. They tend to run with themes. I expect this to get used again. If bears (not you, to be clear) want to tell me it's a bad thing when Tesla can arrive at the same result with less money I'm happy to take their money when they get proven wrong in Q3 2017.