But it's not even legal problems that are going to push Tesla (and, let's be honest, Musk) over the precipice. The problem is pure and simple: they have no money. In fact, they have a massive pile of growing debt, and the lenders are going to want that money back.
Recently, hedge fund manager (and Musk antagonist) David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital wrote to his investors that Tesla right now bears a grim resemblance to Lehman Brothers before its 2008 bankruptcy (a collapse that Einhorn predicted months earlier, and that helped tilt the planet into a catastrophic all-hands “correction”). For Tesla, as for Lehman Bros., a mixture of emboldened deception, arrogance, and desperation have turned the Muskman into a monster.
“There are many parallels to TSLA,” Einhorn wrote to his investors. “In 2013, TSLA was on the brink of failure as customers who had paid deposits weren’t taking delivery of the Model S. TSLA’s cash reserves fell to a dangerously low level and CEO Elon Musk secretly and desperately tried to sell the company to Google. Rather than communicating truth to shareholders, Mr. Musk bluffed his way through the crisis. There were no regulatory, legal or market consequences for failing to own up to reality. The business survived, and Mr. Musk was celebrated for his successful bluffing.”