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The long, strange decline of one of America's most influential brands

<p><strong><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Daniel Roland/Stringer/Getty Images</span></p><p class="caption">GM CEO Mary Barra, with the Opel logo in the background.</p></div><p></p></div></div>•The GM CEO has enough strength to execute a major deal by selling Opel.</strong></p><p><strong>•GM's overarching agenda now is to maximize its return on invested capital.</strong></p><p><strong>•Barra is in a position to be the best GM leader since Alfred Sloan.</strong></p><p>Since the news broke last week that General Motors is pursuing a sale of its European division - Opel in Germany and Vauxhall in the UK - to France's PSA Group, the deal has rapidly accelerated.</p><p>It now looks as if GM will be shedding Opel/Vauxhall, a move it contemplated and rejected in 2009, when the automaker was coming of bankruptcy and streamlining its operations.</p><p>The deal died back then not because it wasn't a good idea - GM has been struggling to make Opel, a brand it's controlled since before World War II, profitable in Europe's messy auto market. Rather, the GM board was concerned that an acquisition by Magna, a part supplier and contract car manufacturer, alongside a Russian bank would compromise GM's technology.</p><p>It's possible that GM wanted to make this move sooner, but CEO Mary Barra took the reigns at the automaker just as a massive and deadly ignition-switch recall was roiling the company. The time simply wasn't right for a major deal.</p><p>But Barra is now firmly ensconced in her leadership role, having negotiated the recall and assembled perhaps the best management team GM has ever had. The company has made bold moves under her direction including GM exiting the Russian market, pulling the Chevy brand out of Europe, and winding down Australian manufacturing.</p><p>During her tenure, GM has also forged ahead with a strategy to transform mobility. In 2016, GM launched its <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/r-gms-car-sharing-play-maven-expands-to-san-francisco-2016-10" target="_blank">ride-sharing service Maven</a>, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/gm-is-buying-cruise-automation-and-taking-the-lead-on-driverless-cars-2016-3" target="_blank">acquired Cruise Automation</a>, made a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/gm-is-giving-lyft-500-million-to-help-the-uber-competitor-develop-self-driving-cars-2016-1" target="_blank">substantial investment in Lyft</a>, and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ap-gm-starts-producing-200-mile-electric-chevrolet-bolt-2016-11" target="_blank">launch of the all-electric Chevy Bolt</a>. </p><p>As if that wasn't impressive enough, Barra has presided over years of consecutively profitable quarters and transformed GM's balance sheet into a fortress. And as of late, the carmaker's stock price has even seen a modest uptick, which has largely disappointed investors since a 2010 IPO.</p><h2>The legacy of Alfred Sloan</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_left"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Screenshot via Amazon</span></p><p class="caption">Sloan created the modern American corporation.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>She was up against unprecedented challenges as the first female CEO of a major automaker, but Barra has been so effective that you have to go back to 1950s to find a leader of similar capability: GM's legendary midcentury President, Alfred Sloan, when effectively created the modern American corporation.</p><p>Barra doesn't have the 50% US market share that Sloan did, but she has considerable vision - and the capability to execute on the two major pieces of her strategy.</p><p>The Opel sale forms an integral part of this. For several years, Barra has stressed that GM will be ruthless about maximizing its return in invested capital. If there's an overarching message at the company now, that's what it is, and it's been echoed by everyone I've talked to at the carmaker. </p><p>Wasting money isn't in the playbook, and that's why GM has been making big moves in Europe and Russia, with Opel just the latest example. The moment is also ideal to sell Opel to PSA, which was bailed out by the French government and Chinese investment and needs to drastically increase its market share in Europe. The European market has also probably recovered as much as it reasonably can at this point, and the last thing Barra wants is to manage Opel through a downturn.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Bill Pugliano/Getty Images</span></p><p class="caption"> Barra and GM VP Mark Reuss unveil the Chevy Bolt EV. </p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2>Losing money becomes investing money</h2><p>GM has by all accounts enjoyed a happy collaboration on several vehicles with PSA and CEO <span>Carlos Tavares, so the French automaker makes for buyer ready to deal, with only the intricate politics of German and British approval to contend with (no mean feat, and Barra has been on deck with this issue, traveling to Europe this week).</span></p><p><span>Losing money in Europe can now be transformed into <em>investing</em> money in the US and China, which together could account for something like 40 million in annual vehicle sales in total, with GM capturing 30% and bolstering the bottom line by selling profitable trucks and SUVs.</span></p><p><span>Investment could also flow to new opportunities in ride-hailing, self-driving vehicles, and new connectivity technologies that will tap the flow of data that GM can collect with its vehicles.</span></p><p><span>Unlike the last time around, there now appears to be will at GM to say goodbye to Opel after almost a century. Barra has provided the backbone. Now all the automaker has to do is execute.</span></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/drive-chevy-tesla-killer-bolt-ces-2016-1">This is what it's like to drive Chevy's Tesla-killer</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="w2azY2MDE6jevu96_5PjRoz4j9PcxEbo" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Mary Barra is about to become the most influential CEO in GM history

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Lianna Brinded/Business Insider</span></p><p class="caption">Bill Veghte became the CEO of SurveyMonkey in August this year.</p></div><p></p></div></div>Change might be part and parcel of any new executive's job but Bill Veghte, CEO of SurveyMonkey since August, has had to more of it than most. </p><p>His predecessor,<span> David Goldberg, a well-liked and much-respected figure in Silicon Valley, </span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/dave-goldberg-cause-of-death-2015-5">died unexpectedly while exercising on vacation</a><span> in Mexico in May this year.</span></p><p><span><span>"Dave was a close friend of mine and part of the journey [as SurveyMonkey's CEO] was making sure that was a mantle I could carry and his value systems were the same as mine. It is - to care about employees, to create a durable business, and be part of a role that impacts and disrupts technology," Veghte told Business Insider, in an exclusive interview in the group's new London headquarters.</span></span></p><p>Goldberg, who was married to Facebook's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, grew SurveyMonkey from a staff of 14 to more than 500 employees with a valuation of roughly $2 billion. </p><p>Following his death, the o<span>nline survey development cloud-based company s</span><span>napped up </span><a href="took over July http://uk.businessinsider.com/surveymonkey-names-former-hp-exec-bill-veghte-its-permanent-ceo-2015-7">Veghte</a> from Hewlett-Packard where he served as COO and led the company's enterprise group.<span> </span></p><p><span>A Silicon Valley veteran, Veghte had worked at Microsoft for 20 years, focusing on Office and Windows. who previously worked at Hewlett-Packard. <span>He was also college buddies and close friends with Goldberg for 30 years.</span></span></p><p>Any CEO taking over the role would have a tough act to follow.</p><p>"On a personal level because of the culture and people at SurveyMonkey, I instinctively felt comfortable from week one to week 16 where we're at now. It's a great group of people and I feel privileged to be part of it. The trickiest thing is grieving and that doesn't stop. But it's all about translating that grief into productive and constructive outcomes."</p><h2>'Filling Dave's shoes'</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Lianna Brinded/Business Insider</span></p><p class="caption">SurveyMonkey only moved into it's London headquarters, in the Heron Tower, in August.</p></div><p></p></div></div>Since he took over the helm at SurveyMonkey, there have been some seismic shifts in the board.</p><p>Facebook COO <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/sheryl-sandberg-joins-surveymonkey-board-of-directors-2015-7">Sheryl Sandberg joined the board of directors of SurveyMonkey in July</a> and HP CEO Meg Whitman <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/meg-whitman-joins-surveymonkeys-board-2015-9">joined just two months after that</a>. David Ebersman, the former CFO of Facebook, also hopped on board, bringing the company's board member total to 9.</p><p>"Sheryl and Meg are both incredible people. Sheryl is incredible, not just as a business leader but as a person," said Veghte to Business Insider. "It has helped having Sheryl and Meg's experience on the board while I figure out the next steps at SurveyMonkey."</p><p>In the short space of time that Veghte has been CEO, it's clear those "next steps" have evidently been to forge ahead with expanding the company in the <keyword id="6354868" type="COUNTRY" weightage="60" keywordseo="UK">UK</keyword> and of course making sure all this employees are happy and that the period of transition is as smooth as possible.</p><p>Veghte has a lot of energy. Sitting down with him, it's clear he's passionate about pushing the company to continue to disrupt existing tech structures with its low cost services, fulfilling Goldberg's legacy, and making sure the group's transition under his leadership is as smooth as possible. </p><p>The latter goal is tricky, so he used a video message and a survey to connect with SurveyMonkey's employees.</p><p>"One of the first things I did was to send out a video message to everyone in the company, I now send one out on a weekly basis. There are lots of types of communication, like emails and phone calls, but more of the effective types of communication is visual and not necessarily just words," said Veghte.</p><p>"Employees are dispersed geographically and I came in, filling the shoes of a remarkable person, and the staff didn't know me - so a video was a good way to communicate to them. The feedback has been tremendous and positive."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Lianna Brinded/Business Insider</span></p><p class="caption">A SurveyMonkey London office wall has inspirational quotes, including that of Dave Goldberg, etched in chalk.</p></div><p></p></div></div>He added that it's not just about serious business, sometimes his video messages are "goofy stuff." He wants employees to get to know him and vice versa and to fill part of one big team. For example, when SurveyMonkey employees were having a Halloween party, Veghte dressed up as a monkey and his assistant was a zoo keeper for his video message. Unfortunately, Business Insider wasn't able to get a screenshot of that. </p><p>Another step Veghte took to make sure he was on the right track at the company was by putting his money where his mouth was about the company - he sent out a survey.</p><p>"One of the things that any great organisation would do is ask questions to staff and in turn you get back homework assignments. I asked them what do you love, tell me about the culture, where do you see the biggest growth opportunities, what's standing in our way, what coaching and advice do you have for me, and where do you see my time best spent? Two weeks into my tenure and I had a range of homework assignments."</p><p>He said that the results really helped him understand how he can make sure the company's transition into his leadership run more smoothly and where the company could be best placed in the future.</p><p>"Employees said they loved the mission but there wasn't as much clarity around our strategy. They saw lots of growth but didn't know where to prioritise tasks or what was the most important to achieve the strategy," said Veghte. "So, I took all the feedback away and communicated back 60 days later answering all their questions in a hands on meeting. When I went out with the UK team for dinner, I knew staff would study the video and the memo about the survey, but it was really fulfilling to hear them tell me exactly why the points were made."</p><p>"It's a very warm, friendly place - a place that people love the people they work with and with that comes an affinity with respect. Everyone has a common value system and are very much a team. We're not mano a mano here."</p><h2>'The UK elections? Oh, by the way, we were right!'</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Lianna Brinded/Business Insider</span></p><p class="caption">The SurveyMonkey logo mixed with the Union Jack flag in the group's new London offices.</p></div><p></p></div></div>The strategy for SurveyMonkey in 2016 is clear - expansion.</p><p>The group, which went into the year with 415 employees and is entering the next year with nearly 700, has its eyes firmly set on the UK. </p><p>At the moment SurveyMonkey has 10 employees in London but Veghte points out the rows and rows of empty seats in the office shows how "committed" he is to Britain, in what he says is the second most important market for the group behind the US.</p><p>"The UK critical market in for us as over 2 million users are in Britain," said Veghte. "In reality, when you saw what we did during the UK elections, it demonstrate what an incredible technology platform we have and what opportunities this could present to individuals, politicians, and businesses ."</p><p>"We are big disruptor. We have a high quality, much faster product at a much lower cost. It's extremely competitive. We want to show people that it's a good investment as the UK is under penetrated. It's great for individuals, financial services, and for huge companies, it's a great way to do brand tracking and concept testing. While I am pleased for our progress in the UK, it whets my appetite for so much more for businesses and individuals."</p><p>"Oh, by the way, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/cameron-expected-to-emerge-victorious-survey-finds/2015/05/07/e745447c-f4cd-11e4-bcc4-e8141e5eb0c9_story.html?sf9055720=1">we were right when everyone was wrong</a> [when it came to predicting who would win the general election]. [All the other polls] led to people making a lot of decision on inaccurate data and cost the UK taxpayers a lot of money."</p><p>SurveyMonkey experienced a surge of acclaim as one of the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/cameron-expected-to-emerge-victorious-survey-finds/2015/05/07/e745447c-f4cd-11e4-bcc4-e8141e5eb0c9_story.html?sf9055720=1">only sites to successfully predict the Tory victory in the UK general election</a> in May this year. Last month, the group hired Mark Blumenthal, the senior editor of The Huffington Post, to become <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2015/10/survey-monkey-blumenthal-polling-2016-huffington-post-214986#ixzz3rpbY3YZc">SurveyMonkey's first head of election polling</a>.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Lianna Brinded/Business Insider</span></p><p class="caption">SurveyMonkey's new CEO counts London as one of the company's most important markets.</p></div><p></p></div></div>But Veghte says that the adoption by businesses is also big draw for the company, not just being big in political research in Britain.</p><p>"The thing is, our company is so interesting because we are a bundled solution that is self-service. We just need individuals within big company's that have a light bulb moment and use our product - that's what we're taking advantage of. We already have users embedded in huge organisations in the UK," said Veghte. "I went to lunch with a good friend who is friends with the CEO of a large UK bank and apparently there are 253 people using and exploiting our tools already to get better service and experience for their customers."</p><p>Naturally, when companies like SurveyMonkey grow and expand rapidly, market players start wondering when they'll list on a stock exchange. The group last raised <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/surveymonkey-valued-at-2-billion-as-some-investors-sell-shares-1418619841">$250 million in cash in December last year, sealing its $2 billion valuation</a>. </p><p>But regardless of whether the markets think SurveyMonkey is ready to IPO, it looks like the group won't do it any time soon.</p><p>"I don't think myself or Dave would think an IPO is a natural step for the company. There are a variety of ways to raise capital. SurveyMonkey is a durable business that generates cash. We're durable for the long haul and we've got the cash and the balance sheet already. If we need the cash, we will think about what is the best way to go about it, but an IPO isn't necessarily the best way."</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/solve-monty-hall-problem-right-answer-math-game-show-2015-11">The Monty Hall Problem: There's a right answer but even genius math geeks get it wrong</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="pucnNxazrOZJihAvh0nIPZwytg7Xre9r" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

'Grieving doesn't stop' - the new CEO of SurveyMonkey tells us what it's like following his predecessor who died in May

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Rebecca Cook / Reuters</span></p><p class="caption">Tesla CEO Elon Musk.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul><li><strong>The reality of <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/category/tesla">Tesla's</a> business is far more modest than the war over its stock price and market cap would suggest.</strong></li><li><strong><a href="http://markets.businessinsider.com/stocks/tsla-stock">Tesla</a> is ultimately a small car company operating in a small market for electric vehicles.</strong></li><li><strong>It's possible that business boredom is driving the up-and-down Tesla story.</strong></li></ul><p>In over a decade of covering both Tesla and the auto industry, I've never seen anything like the past 12 months. </p><p>The feeding frenzy around Tesla has been unreal: Wall Street longs and shorts fighting it out; an intense focus on the 15-year-old company's ability to execute on the fundamentals of making cars; CEO Elon Musk flipping out on earnings call and taking to Twitter to engage in extended fracas with anybody and everybody.</p><p>At times like this, it's worth it to step back and consider some actual numbers. </p><p>For example, Tesla delivered about 41,000 vehicles worldwide in the second quarter. I'm not even going to worry about whether they were Model S's, Model X's, or the much-vaunted and obsessively scrutinized Model 3. At this rate. Tesla should post a somewhat better year in 2018 than it did in 2017.</p><p>Tesla has also added about $200 million in revenue growth every quarter, although it shifts around; in the first quarter, the topline was $3.4 billion. There have rarely been quarterly profits, but the trendline is obvious and should continue to ascend until Tesla maxes out its existing production design (at its single assembly plant in California). If you build more cars and sell more cars, it follows that more money will flow in.</p><p>In the same period, an established automaker - General Motors - sold 760,000 vehicles in the US alone and globally brought in $36 billion in revenue. And that's just GM. The rest of the industry also moved a staggering amount of product and raked in billions in cash. </p><p>One more data point: electric-vehicle sales increased by 50% in early 2018, bringing the EV share of the market up to a <a href="http://evadoption.com/the-1-ev-sales-market-share-fallacy/">still thoroughly unimpressive 1.6%</a>.</p><h2>The numbers don't add up to what Tesla is worth</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Andy Kiersz/Business Insider</span></p><p class="caption">Big market cap, small sales.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Now let's add it all up. Tesla's global sales in the second quarter were 5% of GM's sales in the US alone and a tiny fraction of overall US sales. Tesla had a nice quarter by its standards, but in the US it's moved only around 200,000 vehicles in a decade and a half (once it sells vehicle number 200,000 in the US, a $7,500 federal tax credit will begin to phase out).</p><p>On the revenue side, as long as Tesla continues to make more cars than it did in the previous quarter and sell them, it will continue to see revenue growth. The ceiling is limited only by sustainable demand for its vehicles and Tesla's production capacity.</p><p>And as far as market share goes, Tesla holds something like 30% of that quite small pie. </p><p>You'll note that I haven't addressed the profit challenge or the cash-burn, the former being zero and the latter being in the billions. These are distractions for the more important numbers because they're givens: if you're selling 100,000 Model S and Model X luxury vehicles for an average price of $100,000, then you should be able to find a path to a margin above 10%. </p><p>But if you aim to add something north of 200,000 in new annual production and charge less for those Model 3's, it's going to degrade the net margins and, in the short term and probably the medium term, consume billions in capital. If Toyota wanted to roll out a new affordable SUV and manufacture it at a new plant, it would be up against the same math.</p><p>OK, let's now consider Tesla's market capitalization: $53 billion. GM's is $55 billion. For what it's worth, Ferrari, which sells less than 10,000 cars a year, has a market cap of about $25 billion. If you follow my numbers, then you would logically conclude that Tesla's market cap is completely ridiculous: minuscule production plus tiny overall market doesn't compute. </p><h2>Cutting Tesla down to size</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Hollis Johnson/Business Insider</span></p><p class="caption">The Tesla Model 3.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Now for the really big BUT: revenues don't look bad at all. This is all very back-of-the-envelope, but Tesla could start to see some acceleration there and get $20 billion in the yearly take in its sights by 2019. The trick would then be to flip the massive losses to at least periodic profits, but the topline expansion could be achieved without spending a lot on additional factories. </p><p>What we're left with is a company that, by this analysis, doesn't look to be in awful shape (although I also haven't deeply considered some balance-sheet issues, such as debt and the burdens of developing the solar and energy-storage businesses). But we're also left with a company whose stock price, although a delight for early investors, doesn't make any sense at all.</p><p>It does make sense if Tesla could somehow capture a titanic share of the existing car market. But Tesla just can't build enough vehicles to do that, and the market that it has captured a large share of could require decades to scale to a level at which EVs displace internal-combustion-powered cars. </p><p>At root, the evident disconnect between Tesla's business, which is decent, and its stock valuation, which is silly, is simply a sign of the times. Since the financial crisis, too much easy money has been chasing too few market-beating returns. Tesla conveniently staged an IPO in 2010 and has ridden this wave. </p><p>Bullish investors see Tesla as the next Apple (or perhaps even more) and bears think the company is a doomed quasi-Ponzi scheme that's headed for liquidation (oddly, the bankruptcy predictors never talk about Tesla going bust and then restructuring). But both camps are trapped in investor land and aren't really considering Tesla in terms of the right analogies. </p><h2>Tesla looks a lot like Saturn</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>GM</span></p><p class="caption">A Saturn vehicle.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>As a company, Tesla actually reminds me of Saturn, a GM division launched in the mid-1980s that sold cars via an innovative dealership channel. Saturn delivered between 200,000 and 300,000 vehicles annually from about 1993 until the years just before the GM bankruptcy.</p><p>GM's notorious, ill-fated, yet much-beloved electric car, the EV-1, was leased through Saturn stores. In the beginning, Saturn attracted a cheerfully cultlike following and minted loyal, happy owners who forged an identity not unlike what we now see among Tesla customers, minus the Musk factor.</p><p>Saturn also never made any money for GM. But for much of its existence, while it lost money it didn't lose anywhere near as mush as Tesla. Nobody ever scrupulously parsed Saturn production, either. The brand had its own factory in Tennessee and controlled between 1%-2% of US market share up until 2007.</p><p>For Tesla to live up to financial expectations, it needs to get much bigger than it now is, in terms of production and sales. This could happen if it achieves massive scale in China, where the auto market could conceivably double in size, from 20 million to 40 million in annual sales, by the middle of the century.</p><p>The rest of the world is dicier because in developed markets, sales growth is already tapped out - Tesla would have to displace numerous established players, a costly undertaking that would require even more capital spending than Tesla is already up against to expand its manufacturing capacity. </p><p>Never say never, but I don't think this is going to happen. So somewhere between absolute failure and taking over the world, we have the Tesla reality. A small carmaker, a small market, but with the kind of historic access to capital that's created a highly fraught, financial reality-distortion field. (Musk's new pay package, more than the elevated stock price, is Exhibit A: it proposes a market cap of $650 billion, making Tesla eventually more valuable than the Detroit Big Three, Toyota, and Volkswagen combined, by a wide margin.)</p><h2>Tesla madness</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Benjamin Zhang/Business Insider</span></p><p class="caption">Tesla's factory.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>So there: I've lightly crunched some numbers and offered an automotive history lesson. It wasn't necessary to muster spectacular industry flame outs, such as Preston Tucker or John DeLorean. So why the Tesla feeding frenzy? </p><p>A big part of it is that no new car company has come along in decades, so nobody knows what's the wild, wild early days look like (although back to Saturn, which was pretty low drama by contrast). But business boredom is also a factor. The auto industry is doing great, with record sales and profits. The banking system is stable. The giants of Silicon Valley are more giant than ever. Unemployment is low. Corporations just got a huge tax cut. Tesla is the only crazy thing in this landscape, the equivalent of the Trump story in politics. </p><p>For most people these days, automakers are also black boxes. Folks buy and lease cars all the time, but unlike with older generations, they don't much interact with vehicles outside of driving them (cars aren't designed to be tinkered with in the ways they once were, either - car companies would almost rather than owners avoid getting under the hood).</p><p>I won't say we're beset with manufacturing illiteracy because that would be too extreme, but as the car business has become more technologically advanced, a broader understanding of how the industry works has eroded. And this has happened at the same time that Tesla arrived on the scene. That, in turn, has distorted expectations for the company because being a new player and going from zero cars built to over 100,000 every year is incredibly difficult. </p><p>Basically, nearly everybody who has tried to do what Tesla is doing has failed. So it's understandable that the debate and discussion around the company has become unreal. Tesla's ongoing existence, to put it bluntly, defies reality. </p><p>But that isn't an excuse for allowing Tesla to become a subject of fantasy or baseless speculation. There is actually a middle ground, and that's where Tesla should rightly be.</p><p class="tagline">Get the latest Tesla stock price<a href="http://markets.businessinsider.com/stock/TSLA-Quote"> <strong>here.</strong></a></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-model-3-best-worst-features-elon-musk-2018-2">The best and worst things about the Tesla Model 3</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

You Searched For "Happy Forgings IPO" and got 4 results

The long, strange decline of one of America's most influential brands

Amanda Chicago Lewis

Mary Barra is about to become the most influential CEO in GM history

Matthew DeBord

'Grieving doesn't stop' - the new CEO of SurveyMonkey tells us what it's like following his predecessor who died in May

Lianna Brinded

Tesla fans and critics both need a reality check

Matthew DeBord

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