Tesla said on Wednesday that one of its cars had crashed in Beijing while in “autopilot” mode, with the driver contending sales staff sold the function as “self-driving”, overplaying its actual capabilities.
Advertisement
Tesla chief executive officer Elon Musk had warned the combined companies might need “a small equity capital raise” in 2017. The company’s payment of around $420 million for redemption of convertible notes, and another $680 million towards repayment on a credit line in July, leaves it with around $2.15 billion in effective capital.
In the first half of the current year, Tesla burned almost $611 million in cash, while it spent $2.2 billion during last year, according to Bloomberg.
Earlier this week, in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Tesla said that it plans to raise funds through issuance of shares and debt.
The solar-panel installer’s adviser, Lazard, discovered the error on August 18, two-and-a-half weeks after the $2.6 billion deal was announced and nine days after SolarCity reported second-quarter earnings.
Today’s losses symbolize how little trust both investors and analysts have in Musk and his master plan to combine both companies into an alternative-energy powerhouse.
Elon Musk has said that USA carmaker Tesla will outline upgrades to software for its Autopilot system on Thursday, in changes which could be applied within the next few weeks.
In the email, Musk urges employees to deliver as many vehicles as possible by the end of the quarter – September 30.
Tesla’s shares haven’t seen a decline this large since the SolarCity merger was first announced in June. The cash held by the company has declined to $146 million by June 30, compared with $421 million by the end of the same period a year ago.
This was the result of a computational error “in certain SolarCity spreadsheets setting forth SolarCity’s financial information that Lazard used in its discounted cash flow valuation analyses”, according to the filing.
Advertisement
Musk holds more than 31 million shares in Tesla. It would then be left with only around $400 million in cash.
