All the bad luck has come at once. Can Tesla survive the Mercury retrograde period safely?

Leifeng.com: The last ten days of March can be called the Mercury retrograde period for the technology industry. Uber's self-driving car encountered a fatal accident, Facebook was involved in a data leak scandal, and Amazon, which had just surpassed Google to become the second largest company in terms of market value, saw its stock price plummet due to Trump's "attack". However, the most serious Mercury retrograde is probably Tesla, and Wall Street analysts even believe that the company of Silicon Valley Iron Man will not survive the next six months.

On March 27, Tesla's stock price plummeted. The electric car giant's stock price closed at $279.18 that day, a single-day drop of 8.22%, and its market value has fallen below $50 billion. However, this is not the end. As of press time, Tesla's stock price has fallen to $266.20, and its market value has once again fallen below the $45 billion mark.

Is this the same Tesla that won the title of the most valuable auto company in the U.S. last year? It has surpassed Ford (market value of $44 billion) and GM (market value of $50.9 billion) in less than a year, so how come analysts say it is on the verge of bankruptcy?

When talking about Tesla's Mercury retrograde period, we have to mention the fatal Model X accident not long ago. At that time, the Model X was driving south on California Highway 101 when it crashed into the median strip in the middle of the road, causing the front end of the vehicle to tear and catch fire. Although the driver was sent to the hospital, the doctor was unable to save his life.

Fires that occur after electric vehicle accidents are indeed very scary, because inexperienced firefighters have no idea how to put out fires, and firefighters who rashly use spraying to extinguish fires may also be injured.

Tesla responded to the accident in a blog post on Tuesday, saying, "The severity of this accident is unprecedented, and they have never seen a Model X with such serious damage." Because the police are still investigating the accident, it is not yet known whether Tesla Autopilot is to blame for the driver's death.

However, Tesla said that since its official launch in 2015, Autopilot has been used about 85,000 times on this road, and this is the first time an accident has occurred.

The latest news shows that the driver Walter Huang who died in the car accident was an Apple engineer. Before his death, he had complained to dealers about the Autopilot system many times, saying that it was common for the system to make mistakes.

Tesla, which had not yet recovered from the car accident, was hit hard by Waymo.

Waymo, which has mastered the core technology of autonomous driving, is teaming up with Jaguar to create a high-end fully autonomous driving taxi service. The car used this time is not the boring Chrysler Pacifica, but the Jaguar I-Pace, the only electric car in the industry that dares to challenge Tesla.

The most important thing is that Waymo purchased 20,000 vehicles at a time, which made Tesla, which has been slow to update Autopilot, extremely embarrassed.

John Thompson, chief investment officer of Vilas Capital Management, is shorting Tesla aggressively. He believes that Tesla is on the verge of bankruptcy and will have to raise at least $8 billion in the next 18 months. If it does not receive support from Wall Street banks or private investors, it may not survive more than half a year.

However, since Tesla has been under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, it is not easy to raise funds from the public market. I am afraid that its savior will be born in China or other markets.

In addition to being shorted, Tesla's credit rating was also downgraded from B2 to B3 by Moody's. And don't forget, Tesla is a company that has never made a penny of profit since its IPO in 2010.

On the contrary, General Motors, which suffered a setback in the 2008 financial crisis, has made $70 billion since 2010.

Although delaying delivery has become a tradition for Tesla, the electric car giant, which has been unable to digest more than 400,000 Model 3 orders, has still been questioned by investors. Some analysts even believe that excessive superstition about automation is killing Tesla. In other words, the innovation and competitive advantage in Musk's eyes have actually become a stumbling block to Tesla's rapid expansion.

Bernstein analysts Max Warburton and Toni Sacconaghi pointed out that robots are hindering the production progress of Model 3. Musk's production plan is too ambitious, not only complex, but also has huge risks.

The two analysts stressed: "Tesla has tried to automate the final assembly. It is true that production efficiency will be improved after skilled cooperation, but the new production method costs twice as much as other OEMs, and it takes a lot of time to streamline the process."

Warburton was no layman. He had been working on automotive-related projects before coming to Wall Street. When he was working on a project at MIT, he also wrote a paper titled "Automation in Final Assembly Is Not Feasible at All."

In his opinion, even the Japanese manufacturers, who are the most proficient in vehicle production in the world, dare not automate the entire production line because it is expensive and prone to quality problems. The Japanese manufacturers' path to automation must first sort out the process and then use robots, but Musk reversed the process.

For Tesla, which lacks experience and is heavily in debt, full automation is almost an unbearable burden.

In the fourth quarter earnings conference call, Musk moderately sold out his misery, saying that assembly was the biggest stumbling block in Model 3 production. Model 3 has tens of thousands of parts, and Tesla employees can only solve assembly problems one by one. However, in the view of Bernstein analysts, Tesla's slow progress is due to its superstition of automation. Fiat and Volkswagen have made similar attempts, but they have all failed.

Bernstein analysts also did some calculations for Tesla. The automation level of the assembly line in general automobile factories is only 5%. If Tesla increases it to 50%, each car will save $50 compared to manual assembly. However, the introduction of automation will increase the cost of each car by $4,000, and there will be depreciation losses of robots. Overall, Musk's exploration of automation is just throwing money away, and he doesn't have that much money to waste.

On Thursday, Tesla had another bad luck. They announced that they would recall 123,000 Model S vehicles worldwide. These vehicles had power steering problems. Previously, Tesla also recalled 90,000 Model S vehicles due to safety failures, but this was the first time such a large-scale recall had occurred.

Tesla said in a statement: "If the bolt fails, the driver can still drive the car without any substantial impact on vehicle control, and this power steering problem does not involve other vehicles." However, it is inevitable that some people will link this problem to the fatal Model X accident last Friday. After all, hitting the roadside divider will make people think of steering problems.

Auto manufacturing is a typical capital-intensive industry. Tesla spent $3 billion last year. If it fails to get financing this year, its cash pool will be exhausted. In contrast, traditional car manufacturers will spend three years to accumulate war chests. In addition, traditional car manufacturers do not have production capacity problems.

If GM could get 400,000 orders at once, it could quickly complete the production task by freeing up some production capacity. However, Tesla cannot do this because its production capacity is not high to begin with. Even if it stops the production of Model S and Model X, it cannot meet user demand.

Tesla's inability to expand quickly is also a chronic problem. Although its sales have reached tens of millions, manufacturers such as Renault, Nissan and Volkswagen are still competing for market share. After all, the bigger the plate, the more beneficial it is for the company's subsequent development. Tesla, with annual sales of only 100,000, is simply not worth mentioning in front of these giants.

Judging from Twitter, Musk's main platform for speaking, the Silicon Valley Iron Man remains quite calm in the face of the current situation, but in fact he has already taken action.

This morning's news showed that since the production targets for Model S and Model X have been met ahead of schedule this quarter, the production lines for the two models will be shut down for two days on Thursday and Friday. In this way, production line employees can support the production of Model 3. Doug Field, the company's director of engineering and production, pointed out that Model 3 production exceeding 300 units per day is a "great victory."

However, Barclays analyst Brian Johnson warned that the recent acceleration of Model 3 production may only be a short-term phenomenon, and whether it can last is still in doubt. As for whether Tesla can digest the Model 3 orders before "falling", only God knows now.

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