> Tesla is operated very much like a silicon valley startup. They're growing rapidly in the hope of becoming profitable when they reach scale. But they sure as heck aren't profitable right now.

They have already reached scale, and are already profitable. They're just pouring their profits back into further growth. Yes, they're spending a lot on R&D, but that's not sending money into a vacuum, that's investing in the future expansion of the company. The article you link even admits this: "Would it be fair to include the billion-plus dollars spent to bring the Model 3 to fruition in a few tens of thousands of Model X and Model S gross margins? Probably not."

Incidentally, I would take anything from Seeking Alpha with a huge grain of salt. Anyone can post an article on there, and people often try to use that site to skew investor perceptions in their own favor. In fact, the author of the very article you link openly confesses at the bottom that he "may initiate a short position in TSLA over the next 72 hours." Conflict of interest, anyone? If you want to see how profitable Tesla is, I would recommend the GAAP numbers from their last quarterly report, rather than some Seeking Alpha author's selective reinterpretation of the facts.