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1/ @alexandriasage of @Reuters is up with a $TSLA story and, wow, is it good. And by no means the first time she's done original, powerful reporting on Tesla. Link at the end of this short thread, but first let's take a look at what makes her reporting so superb.
2/ Everyone knows $TSLA laid off a big chunk of its workforce a few weeks ago. So, for the intrepid reporter, the magic is to go find these employees and talk to them. Not as easy as it sounds, given Tesla's threat in severance agreements that if you talk, we'll punish you.
3/ First task for Ms. Sage: identify a meaningful cohort of fired $TSLA employees. And that she did. I'm guessing she sifted through WARN Act documents and interviewed employees to come up with this nugget: 
4/ Okay, she has just established that $TSLA has drastically slashed the employees responsible for US deliveries. Now let's remind everyone why that's important:
5/ That's right. Demand. The U.S. has been about 50% of $TSLA's overall market. If it can't sell these cars here, even still enjoying a $3,750 tax credit, then things do indeed look bleak.
6/ Whoa. Focus. The U.S. market has been "picked clean" of anyone willing to pay a premium price for this car. What a great sentence. Change one word and it becomes a lesser thing.
7/ Any chance those $TSLA employees simply didn't try hard enough? Did they look high and low? Oh, yes they did, and please read the entire article for much of the detail I can't include here.
8/ Of course, there's one thing that would perk up demand. The $35,000 $TSLA Model 3 Musk originally promised back in 2016. Except, now that I think about it, that car came with a full $7,500 federal income tax credit. So, between us, I'm going to make that a $31,250 Model 3.
9/ Now, let's have just a bit of fun with Elon Musk. A by have fun, I mean, let's quote him. Ms. Sage was too polite to include the part where he said that even though demand is insane, people can't afford it. Why rub it in?
10/ A final note, and then the link. Musk predicted the $TSLA Model 3 would find a European market that's 2.5 times larger than the US market. So far, it appears it's about one-half the size of the US market.
11/ At the recent conference call, though, Musk swore to Goldman Sachs' David Tamberrino that the European order book was greater than 20k and the China order book greater than 2k. "Absolutely. Yes." Over to you, SEC.
Oops. "Plucked clean" Even better than picked clean!
