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Comment by calvinbhai | Hacker News Reader

This point about dealer shipments and number of vehicles in the lots, is conveniently skipped by many reporters reporting to feed the "Tesla is dead" hype cycle.

In terms of whats happening with the teams at Tesla, it certainly looks like a lot of churn, but it's hard to know the real severity of it because of the over reactions by the press.

4 years at a company is a good amount of time. I'd be worried if the Head of Battery at Tesla was a super star engineer who joined with a lot of fanfare and then left the company in less than a year or two (e.g. Chris Lattner joining Tesla and leaving after a very short stint).

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No one is saying TSLA is dead, this is the most annoying argument from fan boys, they have a market cap over 50 Billion dollars and ship Cars in only thousands. So, here is the point, a significant part of their valuation is scaling up from thousands to half a million to million in immediate future. That is the real bet.

Scaling up in Auto-industry is not an easy one, and they are having tough time, also not being highlighted is that the base price of $35,000 is not realistic and every thing is said and upgraded the Model 3 averages in high 40s or low 50s. These are important factors esp. when Model 3 is supposed to the Model T of 21st Century.

TSLA currently is in a bad situation and they have to turn around swiftly, because their stock-price assumes they will hit home runs in perpetuity, while they are struggling to get their Second home run.. That is the point of discussion.

The Model T was $575 in 1912, when the average salary was ~$600/year.

...and there weren't cheaper cars than the Model T. There are cheaper cars than the Tesla Anything. Your comparison is meaningless.

But there were not extremely-reliable, well-marketed, mass-produced alternatives to the Model T available for 1/3 the cost...

Tesla is about to ship 100k electrical cars this year, not counting in the Model 3. So they are the largest producer of electrical cars by a large margin.

TSLA is bleeding talent all over. Your allusion to Lattner is just one example out of many.

Their CFO churn is one great example. I’m surprised they can find anybody to happily sign off on Musk’s borderline fraudulent activity.

People will be poached in a hot market, people will burn out, people's job will outgrow their ability to perform it. That's just the way it is in a high growth company.