Tesla’s Elon Musk: ‘I Ran Out of Cash’ - DealBook Blog - NYTimes.com
Elon Musk admits in a court filing that he's dependent on loans from friends for his personal finance, and taxpayer money for Tesla:
According to the filing — part of his pending divorce case from sci-fi novelist Justine Musk — Elon Musk has been living off personal loans from friends since October 2009 and spending $200,000 a month while making far less. He is now running out of even those borrowed funds, Musk confirmed in an interview with VentureBeat.
Tesla, likewise, is dealing with its cash flow problems by borrowing money from a friendly source — the United States government, which has eagerly backed cleantech startups through a Department of Energy loan program. Tesla burned through $37 million in cash in the last three months of 2009, according to amended S-1 documents, filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission in preparation for its IPO.
Tesla slowed this burn rate in the first quarter of 2010 to $8.4 million, but only by drawing down part of a $465 million loan from the DOE, while reporting a net loss of $29.5 million. Tesla’s sales were flat year-over-year in the first quarter, but declined precipitously in the U.S., according to a former Tesla executive.
I'm frankly not that surprised...Teslas are way cool, but they're ridiculously expensive, and my impression of Musk is that his approach to Tesla has been that of a carnival barker hoping for a big payout from some suckers (i.e., taxpayers,) than that of a serious businessman.