In a rather scathing critique of Tesla's potential for future success, Eric Jackson, founder and president of Ironfire Capital, has concluded that Tesla will end up as the next Webvan—the most spectacular of dot-com busts at the end of the 90s. Webvan was a grocery delivery company that sank about a billion dollars into building infrastructure over the course of 18 months, and then collapsed into bankruptcy in 2001, setting 4,500 employees to the curb. Most analysts now agree that Webvan's major weakness was its lack of industry-experienced management.
Jackson says that Tesla's current trajectory seems to eerily mimic that of Webvan... so much so that he has no hope for Tesla's future. Using information buried in their recent pre-IPO SEC filing, Jackson says that the fact that Tesla has chosen no experienced auto industry executives for its senior management team is its major weakness. This is typically something that Elon Musk, Tesla's CEO, touts as an advantage, saying that they are trying to change the auto industry by reinventing it and have no need to rely on tired old schemes.
But Jackson thinks that this reliance on Silicon Valley innovation without actually having any manufacturing experience is an Achilles heal. At the same time Jackson thinks that this typical narcissism that Musk displays when he appears in public indicates that Musk isn't really focused on the job at hand. Couple that with the fact that Tesla is only one of the three CEO positions that Musk has and a picture begins to resolve of an individual who may be spread too thin.
In addition to his issues with Musk and the lack of auto industry experience within the company, Jackson fears that Tesla's complete reliance on one product that won't be released until 2012—the Model S—to actually turn a profit is an extreme weakness. To this point, and for the foreseeable future, Tesla has not made one cent of profit. Musk says that this is because they are in a phase of aggressive growth and are burning capital to build infrastructure and get the Model S ready for production (sound familiar, Webvan?).
Interestingly enough, Jackson concludes with hopeful thoughts on electric cars in general, saying, "The bottom line is that Tesla is going to bleed cash from now until it starts selling its Model S in 2012 or later. It will need to raise money, with a high chance of launch delays. Electric cars will be the future, but I'm betting they won't be Tesla's electric cars."
I recall from Tesla's own webpage that much of the current management in Tesla are from the auto industry.