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Comment by johnm1019 | Hacker News Reader

Excuse my ignorance, can someone explain how they are going to pay for this? My internet experience in the last months has been mostly articles about how they would keep enough cash with one factory? Then others about Elon said no more cash raises, etc... Even if they start turning a profit on their cars, that isn't going to magically give them the millions (billions?) needed for a new factory.

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It’s a preliminary plan to build something... so basically a fantasy at this point. It’s also an old fantasy, he’s been saying this for at least two years.[1] Mind you...

Musk said in May 2016 that he expected Tesla would produce 500,000 vehicles a year in Fremont by 2018, but the company has repeatedly fallen short of his manufacturing goals with the Model 3 sedan. Tesla built about 88,000 cars in the first half of this year.

With Musk and claims YMMV, and it pays to believe it only when and if he delivers. In this case there is no reason to believe it isn’t what he does best: PR.

[1] https://mashable.com/2016/06/24/tesla-factory-china-9-billio...

By issuing the debt and new shares that Elon swears he's not going to do.

You're misconstruing what Musk actually said. He said they're not going to need to issue / raise in 2018. They're not going to begin building a factory in China this year and won't need financing for it in the next five or six months.

Edit: for the anti-Tesla downvoters -

"CEO Elon Musk has said that Tesla wouldn't require new funding in 2018, in either equity or debt. On a call with investors, in response a question from Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas, Musk said that when it comes to raising new money, "I specifically don't want to." "

http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-on-raising-more-mon...

The year doesn't matter, I have full confidence he'll keep saying they don't need to raise money right up until the day they raise money.

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