Tesla's $250 Million Interest Free Loan

At Tesla’s semi-truck announcement Elon Musk pulled a Steve Jobs saying there was one more thing, which was the company’s new Roadster. It has very impressive performance metrics going 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds, 0 to 100 mph in 4.2 seconds, has a top speed of over 250 mph and has a range of 620 miles on a single charge. Since Tesla is burning through cash as it ramps the Gigafactory and the Model 3 by announcing the second version of the Roadster it will be able to generate at least $250 million more in interest free deposits.

Tesla needs the cash

Tesla had more than $3.5 billion in cash at the end of the September quarter and it used over $1.4 billion during the quarter. It is on track to use a similar amount in the December quarter, which would drop its cash to around $2 billion. Tesla will need to raise more money unless it can get the Model 3 production to ramp (which it under-delivered on in the September quarter) and do so at a decent profit (which may be more of a challenge than Musk has promised).

By offering a Founder Series version of the Roadster and asking (some could say forcing) them to fork over full payment of $250,000 Tesla will be able to generate $250 million in interest free customer deposits until at least 2020 when the car is supposed to be available.

Customers who want to order a limited edition Roadster can start with a $5,000 credit card charge but need to wire $245,000 within 10 days to insure their reservation. Hopefully for those putting down the money Tesla will come through at least close to the timeframe Musk talked about. You do have to give Musk credit for pulling this off as not many people could.

Link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2017/11/18/teslas-250-million-interest-free-loan/

Smiley