I guess I'm just wondering what fraction of investors decision to hold TSLA is "We never believed Musk's deadline to begin with" and what fraction is "It's only a 6 month delay, so not a big deal"
From my point of view it looks like they are trying to do something that would normally take 5 years in 2. Even if they "fail" and it takes 3 years, that's still faster than the "normal" way.
That's assuming that they take longer than they said, but still get a functioning plant. They could, alternatively, after 3 years, end up with a plant that doesn't work, and won't work in another three years. Manufacturing is difficult, and "delayed" isn't the only failure mode.
Yes but that's always a risk, and I don't think that's any more of a risk with Tesla than it would be for any other manufacturer.
We know that manufacturing can be done at the scale they need, because many others do it at that scale. So in my mind, the odds that they end up with a non-functioning plant is pretty small. They have a lot of capital, and no shortage of people willing to invest.
Compare that with SpaceX. They tried to do something that only a few others have ever attempted (reuse rockets reliably and inexpensively) and the US government had basically failed at (with the shuttle not being inexpensive by any means). This was coming from a rocket company that had just had their first 3 launches end in failure, was nearly broke, and was the laughingstock of the industry.
But Musk doubled down, and poured a ton of his own money into the company and they were eventually able to achieve their goals (more honestly, i'd say they have currently achieved about 70% of what they wanted, but most of the other 30% is still possible, just taking a lot longer than they though). And while you could make the argument that Musk wouldn't do something like that with Tesla, I think it at least shows that he's not one to give up when things start looking really really bad.
