#TeslaModel3

The automaker may have worked out production bugs and finally turned a profit late last year, but 2019 is off to a rocky start for Tesla. In an email to employees Friday, CEO Elon Musk said he’ll thin the company’s full-time ranks by 7 percent, warning of a “very difficult” road ahead.

The news comes hot on the heels of a slew of cost-cutting measures, including the elimination of various trim configurations and this month’s culling of 75D base models — a move that leaves only the top-flight 100D versions of the Model S and X in Tesla’s stable. Thursday brought word of the scrapping of company’s long-running customer referral program, prompting tears in the Tesla-boosting blogosphere.

All of this throws Musk’s promise of a true “people’s car” by this summer into doubt.

The calendar reads 2019, meaning new Tesla customers can’t hope to wrangle more than $3,750 in EV tax credits from the feds — a figure that’s half as much as the incentive enjoyed by buyers up until New Year’s Eve. Of course, you may find yourself living in a state that’s happy to hand out some of its own cash. If so, lucky you.

Looking to soak up some of the difference, Tesla announced a price cut on all models Wednesday. Going forward, or at least until CEO Elon Musk decides otherwise, Tesla is shaving $2,000 from sticker prices across the board — including on the current cheapest model, which recently saw a price bump.

Having rung the bell on 200,000 electric vehicle deliveries in the U.S., Tesla will enter 2019 without the ability to offer a full $7,500 federal tax credit to would-be buyers. While not nearly as attractive an incentive as the same amount applied to a lower-priced EV, it’s still free public dollars. And it’s better than $3,750.

Twice this past fall, Tesla CEO Elon Musk warned customers they’d need to order by a certain date in order to ensure a delivery date prior to January 1st. After receiving a holiday earful from dutiful customers now facing late deliveries, Musk put on the Santa suit.

Due to China’s increased tariffs on U.S.-manufactured vehicles, Tesla’s sales have taken a moderate beating there. Like any automaker hoping to move metal within the region, it wants a solution and seems to have come up with one. While there appears to be little hope of the brand’s larger vehicles circumventing the nation’s 40 percent import duty, there’s still hope for the Model 3.

The plan is a familiar one.

For only the third time in the company’s history, Tesla reported a quarterly net profit on Wednesday, though this time the automaker says it’s back in black for good.

Third-quarter GAAP net income was $312 million, Tesla revealed, with the company’s performance fulfilling CEO Elon Musk’s earlier promise to become cash-positive by Q3 2018. The automaker’s free cash flow was $881 million for the quarter.

Give thanks to the tent.

How quickly things change. In today’s era of #disruption, standing still equates to certain death, but pricing isn’t normally the thing seeing the greatest change.

Not at Tesla. Less than a week after the automaker announced a new Mid Range Model 3 that splits the difference between the Long Range variant (now available only in dual-motor guise) and the still-unattainable $35,000 base sedan, the model’s price has undergone a refresh. Musk Math must be at work.

Tesla’s Model 3 line as evolved once again, this time adding a new model closer to the bottom of the range while eliminating the second-cheapest configuration (and currently the cheapest Model 3 you can actually get delivered).

Announced Thursday night, the rear-drive Model 3 Long Range — which started at $44,000 but required the addition of a $5,000 premium package — is gone from the lineup, replaced by a Mid Range sedan with two driven wheels and a lower-capacity battery. The price for 50 fewer miles of range? $45,000.

Following the release of crash test results in 2013, Tesla claimed the Model S earned more than five stars on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s ranking scale. Nuh uh, said the NHTSA. There’s only five stars to hand out. No one gets more than that.

Fast-forward five years and the exact same thing is occurring, this time centered around the just-tested Model 3. That sedan, which still isn’t cheap, earned five stars in all NHTSA crash categories. Kudos to Tesla engineers. However, the NHTSA isn’t happy with Tesla’s weekend boast that suggested the Model 3 is the safest car ever tested by the federal agency.

If that headline was a tweet, it would certainly qualify as “evergreen.”

With Model 3 production having ramped up towards the very end of the previous quarter, Tesla production in the third quarter of 2018 totalled 80,142 units, some 53,239 of them Model 3s. Compared to the 53,339 vehicles built in Q2 2018, it’s a hefty increase in output.

However, lost in the megaton-yield controversies that follow Tesla CEO Elon Musk like a stray dog in search of a home is the fact that Q3 production didn’t quite make it to an oft-promised target.

Saying the Tesla Model 3’s interior is polarizing would be a massive understatement. While some absolutely love the minimalist design and singular, tablet-like interface, others criticize it for being too barren to be considered interesting. The vehicle also saw some blowback over its centrally mounted 15-inch display, which, for several reasons, can serve as a potential distraction to drivers.

In fact, it’s so big that one Washington resident found himself pulled over by a motorcycle cop for having what was presumed to be a computer attached to his dashboard.

Tesla’s latest over-the-air update appears to have caused at least a few drivers to lose all Autopilot functionality. While the vehicles seem otherwise intact, the semi-autonomous driving mode that was supposed to be improved by the latest firmware installation ended up a little buggy. That’s unfortunate for Tesla — a company that could do without additional bad publicity.

Luckily, minor software issues are exactly that — minor. This isn’t on the same scale as Tesla’s CEO promising to go public or pretending to smoke weed online. It isn’t even as big of a deal as the company losing another high-ranking executive, which also happened this week.

Tesla’s Elon Musk announced Tuesday that the automaker will limit its paint options to simplify production and, hopefully, improve volume. “Moving [two] of [seven] Tesla colors off menu on Wednesday to simplify manufacturing,” said the CEO via social media. “Obsidian Black and Metallic Silver will still be available as special request, but at higher price.”

The announcement comes after a busy press week for Tesla. Musk lost his chief accounting officer after a comically brief tenure and was lambasted for smoking marijuana on Joe Rogan’s podcast. However, the real crime was how much of it Elon wasted by puffing on the monster wrap in an attempt to appease the host, without ever inhaling any smoke. That’s no way to get high.

The Model 3 was intended to be Tesla’s affordable alternative for the mass market and, for the most part, that’s what it has been. Granted, the automaker did opt to prioritize the production of higher trim levels as a way to maximize profitability. But, given its financial situation, it was an understandable strategy. The Model 3 is still the cheapest way to get into a Tesla. However, it’s not the cheapest vehicle to own — especially when it comes to insurance rates.

Last year, AAA said premiums on Tesla vehicles would likely go up 30 percent after reviewing data from the Highway Loss Data Institute. At the time, Tesla said the analysis was “severely flawed and is not reflective of reality.” But the auto club stated the HLDI’s findings matched its own research, as well as numerous other sources.

“Looking at a much broader set of countrywide data, we saw the same patterns observed in our own data, and that gave us the confidence to change rates,” said Anthony Ptasznik, chief actuary of AAA.

Not without a profitable company, anyway. And Tesla, despite its promise to end the year in a cash-positive state, is not that company. Not yet.

After rolling out a dual-motor Model 3 and its Performance sibling in July, the average retail price of Tesla’s “most affordable” electric car is only going up, frustrating would-be owners waiting for the $35,000 base model. That stripped-down trim won’t appear until the beginning of next year.

When it does, however, Tesla stands to lose nearly $6,000 per vehicle, one investment bank claims.

Tesla announced Wednesday that it lost $743 million in the second quarter of 2018, instantly pushing the automaker’s stock up by nearly double digit figures. No, this particular tidbit isn’t what investors hoped to hear, but CEO Elon Musk, who, unlike in past weeks, made it through the day without saying something overtly controversial, told them enough of what they wanted to hear.

The company’s revenue is up by over a billion dollars compared to the same quarter a year ago — $4 billion as a pre-tax total. Cash on hand was the lowest Tesla’s seen in two years ($2.2 billion), but the automaker’s reduced cash burn impressed some skeptics and reassured believers in Musk’s pledge to return to a positive cash flow in the third and fourth quarters. Having achieved its 5,000-Model-3s-per-week production goal, Tesla claims volume will crank up to 6,000 per week by late August. 10,000 per week comes in 2019.

There was even an apology from Musk for his bizarre behavior during a May earnings call, in which he snubbed analysts while acting like a bored teenager.

And did you know the Model 3 outsells all premium midsize sedans combined? Yeah, about that…