It’s all so exasperating. As I’ve said privately, if firefighters placed Tesla CEO Elon Musk next to any one of California’s devastating wildfires, he’d have immediately sucked up all the oxygen in the area, smothering the flames in an instant.

Is it any wonder why investors, analysts, and Tesla board members are reportedly bothered by CEO Elon Musk’s tweeting? While a recent New York Times interview provided an interesting, if troubled, glimpse into Musk’s life of late, the magic of social media provides a portal through which the entire globe can view Musk’s inner machinations.

Last night, Musk made the brilliant decision to tweet further (potentially libelous) speculation about a man he’s never met, but did once apologize to after calling him a pedophile on Twitter. Of course, this all came about after that man — Vernon Unsworth, the architect of a life-saving Thai cave rescue — dissed Musk’s homemade submarine and essentially told him to stuff it up his ass.

Hey, it’s not like Mary Barra, Jim Hackett, Mike Manley, Carlos Ghosn, Takahiro Hachigo, and Akio Toyoda don’t do the exact same thing in their off hours… Read More >

We told you earlier this month that Tesla’s Canadian arm was suing the Ontario government for access to big rebates for some of its vehicles. For years, Ontario, located north of Erie, Pennsylvania, handed out up to $14,000 in taxpayer cash to electric vehicle buyers, part of its effort to support green living.

Over the years, the ceiling of eligible MSRPs varied — from unlimited, to $75k, to $150k, and back to $75k, shortly before the ousting of the previous government in this June’s election. This writer made his feelings on lofty EV subsidies quite clear.

While the cancellation of the province’s Electric and Hydrogen Vehicle Incentive Program (EHVIP) came with a grace period for buyers awaiting delivery that runs out on September 10th, it didn’t include Tesla buyers. Thanks to the automaker’s lawsuit, Tesla buyers can now grab back that $14,000. Read More >

The Model 3 was intended to be Tesla’s affordable alternative for the mass market and, for the most part, that’s what it has been. Granted, the automaker did opt to prioritize the production of higher trim levels as a way to maximize profitability. But, given its financial situation, it was an understandable strategy. The Model 3 is still the cheapest way to get into a Tesla. However, it’s not the cheapest vehicle to own — especially when it comes to insurance rates.

Last year, AAA said premiums on Tesla vehicles would likely go up 30 percent after reviewing data from the Highway Loss Data Institute. At the time, Tesla said the analysis was “severely flawed and is not reflective of reality.” But the auto club stated the HLDI’s findings matched its own research, as well as numerous other sources.

“Looking at a much broader set of countrywide data, we saw the same patterns observed in our own data, and that gave us the confidence to change rates,” said Anthony Ptasznik, chief actuary of AAA. Read More >

Friday night’s not-so-surprising move by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, in which he wheeled around his plan to take the company private like an angry father cutting short a family vacation, has many angles.

First and foremost is the money factor, which matters more than anything else in this drama. According to two new reports, money eventually became available, just not from the sources we were led to expect. And not from sources Musk wanted. Read More >

Fear not, there’ll be plenty of moaning about short sellers in the weeks and months — and probably years — to come. Late Friday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk pulled an about-face, issuing a blog post in which he claimed a couple of weeks of study revealed he shouldn’t take his publicly traded automaker private.

Apparently, the trip from “funding secured” to “the funding totally would have been there”* (not a direct quote) takes 17 days. Read More >

Not without a profitable company, anyway. And Tesla, despite its promise to end the year in a cash-positive state, is not that company. Not yet.

After rolling out a dual-motor Model 3 and its Performance sibling in July, the average retail price of Tesla’s “most affordable” electric car is only going up, frustrating would-be owners waiting for the $35,000 base model. That stripped-down trim won’t appear until the beginning of next year.

When it does, however, Tesla stands to lose nearly $6,000 per vehicle, one investment bank claims. Read More >

The correct ending to this headline should read “…We’d All Lose Our Lunch.” Especially this month.

Tesla investors are taking a wild ride of late, with CEO Elon Musk’s Aug. 7th “secured funding” tweet and subsequent stock spike giving way to a hands-in-the-air plunge as the funding for his go-private plan remains on the missing persons list. Couple that with a very concerning New York Times interview and increasing skepticism from analysts, and you’ve got the makings of a standout attraction at Six Flags. Read More >

It’s a portrait of a man who’s gone past fraying at the edges. In an hour-long interview with the New York Times, Tesla CEO Elon Musk appears as a man threatening to come apart — and it’s not a joyous sight.

Despite the frustration stemming from Musk’s actions and pronouncements, and the aggravation born of his cheerleading, conspiracy theorizing fan base, it’s difficult to watch a man’s ambition and drive spiral into self-destruction.  Read More >

In June, Ontario — the place just over yonder from Detroit and Buffalo — switched governments for the first time in 15 years. As part of his planned overhaul of the province’s finances, newly minted leader Doug Ford announced the cancellation of an electric vehicle rebate program that handed up to $14,000 to buyers of green cars.

Hardly an appropriate use of taxpayers’ dollars in a place where the debt’s approaching a third of a trillion dollars, the government implied. Ford axed the rebate last month, with buyers allowed to accept the former perk until Sept. 10th. Sorry — almost all buyers. Read More >

While the U.S. and now Canada enjoy carrying out international diplomacy via tweet, the business world lays out a few ground rules. If you’re the head of a multi-billion dollar publicly traded company, maybe it’s best to not announce your intention to take the company private — while stating there’s funding on hand to pull it off — in a tweetstorm, especially if there aren’t details to back it up. Dry, boring, but concise media releases or regulatory filings alerting shareholders usually do the trick.

After looking into Tesla’s going-private plan, announced August 7th by CEO Elon Musk over Twitter, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission now wants hard answers. While it might be willing to overlook the tweet (Musk, a prolific tweeter, previously told investors that announcements could happen this way), the SEC wants Musk to back up his “funding secured” claim. What person, persons, or entity made this deal possible?

Maybe a round of subpoenas will clear things up. Read More >

A truly bizarre rumor is just one of the issues facing Tesla CEO Elon Musk as questions swirl following the August 7th announcement that he wants to take the publicly traded company private.

As the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission looks into Musk’s claim that there’s “funding secured” for the potential buyout, Musk was forced to confront a claim involving, of all things, a rapper, drugs, and spontaneous tweeting. Always a sideshow with this company…

The financial world, on the other hand, wants to know more about this Saudi business. Read More >

Last week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced his intention to take the automaker private. But speculation quickly arose that the claim was just a clever ploy to drive up the company’s share price and burn short sellers, a group Musk seems to have a particular disdain for. This resulted in a shareholder complaint, filed Friday as a securities-fraud class action in federal court in San Francisco, alleging he lied to manipulate shareholder prices.

However, the Securities and Exchange Commission was already investigating the matter at the time of the lawsuit’s filing. While the bulk of the initial investigation involved asking Musk if he was lying, it’s presumably advanced in scope and complexity since then. The lynchpin to the whole issue is whether Tesla actually secured the billions in funding necessary to go private. Even though the CEO said the money is real, he did not specify who would provide it.

That changed on Monday morning, when Musk pointed to oil-rich Saudi Arabia. But it’s not as simple as it sounds.  Read More >

Like a Netflix original movie with lots of action but a threadbare plot, Elon Musk’s plan to take Tesla private has some glaring holes. The largest of which is how he’ll finance the buyback of stock (at $420 a share) to make his dream possible.

The list of people who’d like to know where exactly the money’s coming from is a long one, but at the top of the list is the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission — followed, apparently, by Tesla’s own board of directors. Read More >

Six members of the Tesla board of directors issued a statement Wednesday, claiming CEO Elon Musk spoke to them last week about his plan to take the publicly traded company private. Musk shocked investors and analysts Tuesday after he tweeted his vision of the automaker’s corporate future, claiming funding existed to pull it off. He later shared an internal email to employees on the company’s blog.

Though Musk’s blog post doesn’t mention how he’d bankroll such a massive buyout, the company’s board says he discussed the funding issue with them. Read More >

After igniting a blaze of speculation via Twitter and halting the trading of Tesla stock, CEO Elon Musk made public an internal email sent to employees. In it, he lays out his reasoning for taking the publicly traded automaker private.

While there’s no mention of the secured funding mentioned in his earlier tweets, the desired share price — $420 — remains. And Musk seems quite confident that shareholders will see things his way. Read More >