Lots of interesting news today around Tesla needing to do another round of financing to fund the Model 3 assembly line. That, amongst other things, hit the stock price hard and got the press all in a fit about TSLA bleeding money. Elon is having a rough week with Falcon 9, the Twiiter self-imposed and missed deadline for AP 8.0 and such...
It got me thinking. How could Tesla get quick access to funds at a low cost without another round of stock dilution, bond offering of selling of shares?
If Tesla asked existing reservation holders to pony up another $5K in deposit money I wonder how many would? I'm not sure I'd want to give an interest free loan to tesla for 2 years even though I'm a firm drinker of the Tesla kool-aid.
Now, change that to pony up $5k in additional deposit money and Tesla will provide Supercharging for free on your car. Would you do it? I would in a heartbeat. This would be a win:win because I doubt most people really use Superchargers so much as to run up the cost. Those that have the extra $5K in the bank are getting next to nothing anyway in return. In fact, if they said pony up $10K and we will throw in AP for free, I would. Since SC and AP are both just software entitlements on the Model S they wouldn't be out anything. I'm assuming the 3 will all have the capability to supercharge and arrive with the hardware installed.
If 100K people were willing to make the extra $5k deposit tesla would generate $500MM which is what they need I believe for the new assembly line. If another 50K people were to opt for the additional $5k for the free AP upgrade that's another $250MM.
That's $750mm in 0% financing for the next several years and it would send a very strong signal to all the other fence sitting car manufacturers that the demand is legitimate.
Anyway, that was my thought. I also though about a bigger deposit to get bumped up higher in the delivery queue but that seemed to be very against what Elon is trying to do with his vision and the Model 3. Would like to hear other's opinions that have reservation(s).
It got me thinking. How could Tesla get quick access to funds at a low cost without another round of stock dilution, bond offering of selling of shares?
If Tesla asked existing reservation holders to pony up another $5K in deposit money I wonder how many would? I'm not sure I'd want to give an interest free loan to tesla for 2 years even though I'm a firm drinker of the Tesla kool-aid.
Now, change that to pony up $5k in additional deposit money and Tesla will provide Supercharging for free on your car. Would you do it? I would in a heartbeat. This would be a win:win because I doubt most people really use Superchargers so much as to run up the cost. Those that have the extra $5K in the bank are getting next to nothing anyway in return. In fact, if they said pony up $10K and we will throw in AP for free, I would. Since SC and AP are both just software entitlements on the Model S they wouldn't be out anything. I'm assuming the 3 will all have the capability to supercharge and arrive with the hardware installed.
If 100K people were willing to make the extra $5k deposit tesla would generate $500MM which is what they need I believe for the new assembly line. If another 50K people were to opt for the additional $5k for the free AP upgrade that's another $250MM.
That's $750mm in 0% financing for the next several years and it would send a very strong signal to all the other fence sitting car manufacturers that the demand is legitimate.
Anyway, that was my thought. I also though about a bigger deposit to get bumped up higher in the delivery queue but that seemed to be very against what Elon is trying to do with his vision and the Model 3. Would like to hear other's opinions that have reservation(s).