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n1 [soylentnews.org] writes:

Bloomberg reports [bloomberg.com]:

Elon Musk sent an e-mail to employees at Tesla Motors Inc. urging them to cut costs and deliver “every car we possibly can” in a push to show positive cash flow in the third quarter.

The chief executive officer of the electric-car company said it would be his last chance to show improved financial numbers before he tries to raise more money. The third quarter is crucial to Tesla’s future because the company is trying to acquire SolarCity Corp. and preparing to roll out the Model 3, its lower-priced sedan, late next year.

[...] The e-mail says that Tesla is “on the razor’s edge of achieving a good Q3, but it requires building and delivering every car we possibly can, while simultaneously trimming any cost that isn’t critical, at least for the next 4.5 weeks.”

Tesla delivered 50,568 vehicles in 2015 and has said it will deliver about 80,000 this year. It missed its first two quarterly sales targets and has not given guidance for the third quarter, but has said it will deliver 50,000 cars in the second half of the year.

“I thought it was important to write you a note directly to let you know how critical this quarter is,” Musk wrote. “The third quarter will be our last chance to show investors that Tesla can be at least slightly positive cash flow and profitable before the Model 3 reaches full production.”

[...] Tesla burned through $611 million in cash in the first half of this year and $2.2 billion last year, according to Bloomberg data. The company also lost $568 million on an adjusted bases in the first half of this year and lost $889 million last year.

Bill Maurer at Seeking Alpha reports [seekingalpha.com]:

On the morning of August 31st Elon tweeted that he would be uploading a blog post later that day detailing major improvements to autopilot. Given all of the news surrounding this key Tesla vehicle feature and its potential role in accidents over the past few months, this could be very important news. Well as everyone knows, one of SpaceX's rockets blew up on Thursday, and that forced Elon to postpone this blog post to the end of the weekend. Even giving him the extra day for the US Labor Day holiday, [...] and we are still waiting.

I wonder how this makes Tesla employees feel. On one hand, you have Elon telling them to rush production and deliveries to boost the company's Q3 results. On the other hand, it seems that every time Elon is going to do something for Tesla there is a massive delay. This is why I argued a few months ago he may want to give up his CEO role, just because he has too much on his plate.

Why am I making such a big deal about all of this? Well, the next year or so is probably going to determine the long term future of Tesla as we get the Model 3 reveal, start of production, and ultimately the beginning of deliveries. As SpaceX notes on its website, it has over 70 launches on its manifest, some of which will come before the end of 2017. What happens if we have another problem, or if Elon Musk spends too much time working on that business? Every delay in the Model 3 inches Tesla closer to the onslaught of competition in the EV space.

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