I remember that exchange well. I wasn't convinced by it then and I'm not now either.
Ted Talk 30 April 2017
Elon Musk: "I will announce locations for between two and four Gigafactories later this year, probably four. We need to address a global market".
How about:
Q1 2017 Earnings Call - 27 April 2017
Analyst: Can you just talk about what your ultimate vision of Tesla over the next few years, Model Y factory, truck factories, truck service centers, three Gigafactories, China expansion. Is all of that going to be funded with internal cash, or do you see partnerships funding despite the low margins that the battery industry has.
Elon Musk: Right. It's incremental dilution along the way. It's hard to say. I mean, I'm sure there will be some funding rounds that happen in the future. It's kind of a tradeoff between how fast do we want to grow versus like we can grow slower with no dilution, really. For sure we could grow at a moderate pace with no dilution. We could grow at a fast pace with some dilution. Or we could grow at a very fast pace with a high level of dilution.
Or this:
Q4 2017 Earnings Call - 07 Feb 2018
Elon Musk: But we are going to, as you suspect, need to make some capital investments in the second half of this year, really late Q3, Q4 for Model Y. But I think we want to wait probably three to six months before announcing any definitive plans on production location and the details associated with that.
Or finally from the same call:
Analyst: I'm just curious what your thoughts are with regard to when you also might generate free cash flow. Is that less of a medium-term focus as you prefer to invest operating cash flows from the Model 3 into the Semi truck, the Roadster, and Model Y?
Elon Musk: Yes. We could be positive cash flow, like I think pretty significant positive cash flow probably in like third quarter, which is like maybe four, five months from now. But we think it makes sense to invest in Model Y and – yeah.
Deepak Ahuja: Future growth of our energy products, Model 3, future growth of that, so.
Elon Reeve Musk: Our energy products, yeah. The opportunities we see are – we see really good opportunities there.
Deepak Ahuja: Makes good business case, good business sense to invest.
I'm not sure what more evidence you need before concluding that at some point between mid 2017 and mid 2018, management actively decided to slow growth and become totally self funding.
It is true that Shanghai could not have been done any faster with more money. But where's the European GF? US East Coast? The mystery 4th?
What's the bottleneck to completing GF1 and filling the Energy products backlog if not money? Supercharger deployment versus previous plan? Service centres?
Realistically, how long will European buyers have to wait before they are free of the 10% tariff on Model 3? What does this delay mean for addressable demand? How quickly can Tesla really scale to 500k Model Y per year for the US market given there is still no factory space to begin tooling?
