In the beginning, getting cash was difficult because Tesla was a private company. It had to go back to the same family and friends to get cash to pay bills.
It's difficult to ask more money from the outside circle because they wouldn't know who you are and they wouldn't know if you could even build a car
It was difficult but not impossible. It has survived as a private company from 2003 to 2010.
In 2010, Tesla went public. Since then, whenever Tesla has ever needed cash, it has been able to get it very easily from the public. There's no need to go back to family and friends to beg for cash.
Thus, the public is Tesla's cash.
Debt is only a problem if Tesla would default on it but it has never done that.
Short sellers were predicting that Tesla wouldn't be able to cover its $230 million convertible bonds due in November 2018 and Tesla would doom.
Well, it has been 3 months and all the repeated doom and gloom prophecies have never come true since 2003.
Of course short sellers predicted all sorts of things. I'm asking if Tesla will have the cash they need to get the model Y out the door as well as open a facility in China and bring the pickup to production, etc, etc, etc, as they keep talking about.
I always find it interesting when someone ignores current facts and looks to the past as if past successes guaranteed future successes.
While I think Tesla has done great things so far, they have had many failures as well. While they did finally get the model 3 into volume production, that happened some six months later than they forecast and the forecast was important in terms of keeping the company afloat. Musk himself pointed out that they were not so far from running out of money.
Tesla has also failed regarding a $35,000 model 3. That is a
big inhibitor to sales. It's almost humorous how Musk says there is lots of demand for the model 3, just not at the price they are selling it! lol
The lateness of achieving milestones is par for the course with Tesla. At some point it won't be cute anymore.
With more competition coming up in the next couple of years Tesla will need to start operating like for-profit company, meeting deadlines and achieving goals, especially financial goals.
Does anyone actually expect to see model Y cars rolling off a production line in any real volume by the end of 2019 like they are forecasting?