No, learn to read, you fool.  They offer leases all the time where the buyout price is below the fair market value of the vehicle at the time of the buyout.  All they do is price that into the lease price.  It’s actually in their favor to convince people to buyout rather than saddle their dealers with a low-mileage…

Washing machines are already up 17% year-over-year in price thanks to his tariffs...  and no new jobs to celebrate, either.

Inconvenient? Automakers offer leases ALL THE TIME where the buyout at the end is below the fmv of the vehicle. That is completely irrelevant to whether the accounting was a shady violation of GAAP principles. When the SEC, which lets companies practically get away with murder, agrees with me, you’re definitely on the…

This is but ONE case where they fiddled with numbers so badly to make the non-GAAP look artificially good.

And, yes, it is effectively the same as a lease.  Even the SEC came down on them for this.  When you give someone a sale with a fixed price resale guarantee, there’s ZERO effective difference between that and…

So every other company is just stupid, then, according to you?

Semis dragging cars on a carrier will NEVER beat the transportation costs of rail, and they subject the vehicles to more damage, on top of it.

Let’s look at every other assembly plant in the US, shall we? Do they have vehicles shipping from the plant by rail?

…

No sane company would experiment on a working line without a basis for believing the experiment would work.

BTW, Ford is one of the leading sellers of electrified vehicles in the world, despite what people may believe.

So they removed a rail spur to make things less efficient by then requiring loading the vehicles onto semis, off to a rail yard, then onto another semi? Not only is it inefficient, but every single movement like that risks significant damage. There’s a good reason other factories load on site, not somewhere else.

So their non-GAAP accounting of lease payments wasn’t beyond shady? No other company dared try this.

You’re so desperate to defend a company’s fiscally irresponsible behavior you’re willing to deny all truth. Nice.

Note: I didn’t say they currently do that nonsense with lease payments. I said HAD. Past tense. Learn to read, moron.

And in GAAP accounting, you have to count the deposits as revenue, offset by an equal liability being created.  Tesla has a long history of pushing the bounds of credibility on their non-GAAP methods. …

Right - using GAAP methods you show the deposit as an in, but offset by an equal liability, hence no profit.

Tesla, in their non-GAAP methods, has been pushing the limits of credibility. They had a guarantee on residual value - buy the car for $x and you have the put option to sell it back to us for $0.5x after 3…

Talk about the fanboi approach.

What is it that Tesla has done that is so new? Electric vehicles? That’s been done before, and the major makers were mass-producing far more cost-efficient hybrids well before Tesla established itself.

Self-driving? Their system is actually one of the more primitive on the market.

The…

Remind me to never invest in a firm you run.

Innovation is good. Implementing an idea without any solid reason to believe it will work just because its different and you arrogantly believe you’re smarter?

That’s stupid.

Big difference between ignorance masquerading as science and decades of engineering learnings. They should be looking for a better way of doing things, but they should not be so stupid as to assume that there is without a sound basis for believing there is a better way that can be implemented now. And we shouldn’t…

Google maps shows a rail loading area off the tracks at the back of the plant.

Google Earth shows that Tesla decided to remove it entirely about a year ago. The last time it was used based on historic imagery was in late 2009 when Toyota still was operating there.

Unless all their sales are within a few hundred mile…

So are they not even being smart enough to use rail to transport finished vehicles? 

That’s why we pay attention to GAAP, not non-GAAP.  They’ve pulled this before to show a non-GAAP profit (briefly).  GAAP principles will let you recognize the deposit, but insist on creating a liability of equal value.  Non-GAAP methods let you get away with murder by comparison.  They’ve really gotten away with…

This deserves FAR more stars... :)

Well, Ford quite literally had to invent the entire process. Then they and numerous other makers figured out over the course of a century how to do things well.

Then Tesla comes in, insists on not listening to people who know what they’re doing and insisting they can do it better, and when they fail, we’re supposed to…

“And that’s also with Tesla’s factory appearing to be covered in the sort of grime and grit you wouldn’t see in, say, a McLaren factory:”

Forget McLaren. That’s hideously dirty for a Chrysler plant. The local Ford transmission plant looks dreary inside, but it is damned near spotless by comparison. 

Exactly - as long as there is backwards compatibility, there’s really no harm.  Why wait to fix a problem with a brake caliper for a new model year if you can do it now and it simply drops into place with the same mounts and all as the existing part?