Then why fire 20% to 40% (as some rumors are pointing out today) of your staff? Why get rid of the supercharger team? Why get rid of the new vehicles team?
If they really were "low debt" and "lots of cash" on hand kind of company, then there's no reason for huge cuts.
Tesla lost $2.5 Billion in cash flow in Q1 2024, likely due to increasing inventory (aka: they can't sell their cars fast enough despite all the price cuts).
The knee-jerk reaction to just start laying off huge swaths of the company to compensate is... understandable. Clearly a dumb move but understandable. I think you're underselling the clear problems of Tesla the company that go far above and beyond Elon Musk.
Was firing the whole Supercharging team the right move? Probably not. In fact, I'm certain that this move will only make fewer people buy Tesla, now that the charging situation is complete chaos. But given the numbers, Tesla doesn't have many quarters of runway left (even with Tesla's $26 Billion in cash and short-term investments, there's over $15 Billion in various liabilities. So Tesla only has ~4 more quarters at this cash-burn rate before it runs out of cash).
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Tesla sales in China, Germany, and USA are all down for April 2024 as well. Meaning there's even larger inventory glut and even more cash-flow losses.
Supercharging is already fired. There's no way that team can likely ever be recovered, and the goodwill between Supercharger and all of their installers has been destroyed. (Its risky for a company to invest $10,000+ per supercharger on their property, only for them to be Ghosted on an Elon whim). That's permanent damage to the brand, I don't think anyone would want to build superchargers after hearing the horror stories of these ghosted businesses.
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Remember: bankruptcy is a cash-flow issue. Not a profitability issue. If you run out of cash, that's it. You can't pay suppliers and thus they'll force you into bankruptcy (eventually).
> low debt, lots of cash equivalents on hand
Then why fire 20% to 40% (as some rumors are pointing out today) of your staff? Why get rid of the supercharger team? Why get rid of the new vehicles team?
If they really were "low debt" and "lots of cash" on hand kind of company, then there's no reason for huge cuts.