Tesla Dead?

We have seen this story before (see above).

It appear Tesla Motors, the brightest hope of Silicon Valley's nascent clean-automotive industry, has only $9 million in the bank, says ValleyWag.

The company, which recently laid off dozens of employees and announced the closing of its Detroit office, called an all-hands meeting yesterday evening to inform employees of its financial state. What makes the company's low cash balance especially scary, our tipster says, is that the company has taken "multiple tens of millions" of dollars in deposits from customers ” anywhere from $5,000 to $60,000 per vehicle ” and has only delivered 50 of them (out of 1200). The obvious conclusion: Having already spent its customers' deposits, it may run out of money before it delivers the cars they have paid for.

The Tesla CEO Elon Musk then admitted that they only have $9 mil left. However, he notes, importantly that cash on hand does not equal liquidity and that they are looking for a new infusion of $20 million. In today's market environment, one doesn't want to be raising cash right now. Ugly.