It's important when you look at their revenue and cash on hand. They got a fat wad but they aren't bringing it in near as fast as they are sending it out. What happened to all that battery money they were going to take in? I thought the whole scheme was to sell batteries? At least that's what people kept telling me when I'd bring up the idea that building profitable cars is hard for companies that have done it for decades and Tesla doesn't have a big track record in lower margin consumer widget manufacturing, let alone cars.
A few articles above this one is Aston Martin Expected to Achieve First Profit Since 2010 Even with large cash reserves on hand and generous loans, it's sometimes hard to imagine how these big companies are able to stay afloat for long periods of time and it often seems that their only avenue to continue to exist is to be bought out by other companies. See Aston Martin again with this great tidbit "Aston Martin was often financially troubled. In 1972 David Brown paid off all its debts, said to be £5 million or more, and handed it for £101 to Company Developments, a Birmingham-based investment bank consortium chaired by accountant William Willson" or Chrysler in recent years. Tesla? Who'd buy that? What's their IP worth? Their physical assets? The brand name? I dunno man. I know they're trying to innovate, but what makes them worth buying when other companies are starting to do what they're doing? When it comes to electric cars, you have cars like the Chevrolet Volt and Bolt, the Nissan Leaf, and BMW's i marque making more than considerable ground and I don't think any of them use Tesla's batteries or charging stations or nothing. When it comes to self driving cars, everyone is getting into the game, from Ford to Volvo to Toyota. Honestly, I think if Tesla can't deliver, they're not gonna survive at all. Edited: Added additional thought about self driving cars.
Holy fucking shit that Aston Martin article is insane. So 2.2m pounds is not $29 million, it's $2.9m. $2.9m over 3330 cars is $870.87 per car. This is an Aston Martin DB11. It starts at $211,995. This is an iPhone X. It starts at $999. Aston Martin makes about $871 on that car. Apple makes $642 on that phone.In the first nine months of the year, Aston recorded a pre-tax profit of 2.2 million pounds, or roughly $29 million. It sold 3,330 cars, an increase of 65 percent. It lost 124 million pounds during the first nine months of 2016.
