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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Tesla will report its first quarter earnings [bloomberg.com] at the end of the day on May 2. The company needs some good news [bloomberg.com]:

The company that Elon Musk built to usher in the electric-car future might not have enough cash to make it through the calendar year. The anxieties that lurk beneath the tremendous ambition of Tesla Inc. moved into the forefront in recent weeks. The company again fell far short [bloomberg.com] of its own production targets for the mass-market Model 3 sedan, another person died in a crash [bloomberg.com] involving its assisted-driving feature and Musk entered into a public dispute [bloomberg.com] with federal safety regulators. Tesla's once high-flying stock, buffeted by a downgrade from credit analysts, has dropped 24 percent from its peak in September.

There's a good reason to worry: No one has raised or spent money the way Elon Musk has. Nor has any other chief executive officer of a public company made a bankruptcy joke [twitter.com] on Twitter at a time when so much seemed to be unraveling.

Tesla is going through money so fast that, without additional financing, there is now a genuine risk that the 15-year-old company could run out of cash in 2018. The company burns through more than $6,500 every minute, according to data compiled by Bloomberg [bloomberg.com]. Free cash flow—the amount of cash a company generates after accounting for capital expenditures—has been negative for five consecutive quarters. That will be a key figure to watch when Tesla reports earnings May 2.

Tesla has just been sued by Nikola Motor Company for patent infringement [theverge.com]. Tesla is accused of copying the design [marketwatch.com] of Nikola's hydrogen semi trucks; Tesla says that Nikola's claims are without merit.

Related: Tesla Burns More Cash, Fails to Meet Production Targets [soylentnews.org]
Tesla Sued Over Alleged Racism; Deliveries Pushed Back; Semi Truck to be Unveiled [soylentnews.org]
Elon Musk's Monstrous, Enormously Large Compensation Package [soylentnews.org]

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