If you've been paying attention, you might've noticed that there have been less and less stories recently about Tesla's car-making, money-making plight.
These stories peppered the airwaves earlier in the year, with tales of 'production bottlenecks' with Model X and Model 3 production, and the subsequent impacts that had on output and quality control.
It got to the point where Bloomberg wrote in May that Tesla were on target to be bankrupt by December; blowing money at a rate of $10,000 a minute.
Photo / Getty Images
But since then, Tesla's financial matters seem to have improved. Production has ramped up in the midst of being 'simplified', and the company registered a profit in the third quarter of the year — a "truly historic quarter" according to CEO Elon Musk.
Click here for our road test of the Tesla Model S P100D
Indeed, Musk hasn't agreed with much of the media's coverage of the brand's financial struggles throughout the year. In an interview with The Washington Post three months ago, queried on the situation, he stated; "Are we running low on money? The answer is no."
Well, in an emotional interview with Axios on HBO, Musk has done a bit of a 180.
“Essentially the company was bleeding money like crazy,” he said.
“And just if we didn’t solve these problems in a very short period time, we would die. And it was extremely difficult to solve them.”
Yes ... Tesla hasn't just been struggling, but according to Musk this year it bordered close to death. You can see Musk's interview in part below:
Click here for our first local look at the new Tesla Model 3
Musk goes on to say that Tesla came within "single digit weeks" of dying, in the midst of its financial problems. And that was when his workload increased to include numerous all nighters — as was highly publicised at the time.
Three much hyped new models are scheduled to enter production before the end of the decade; the 400km/h Roadster, the Semi, and the Model Y SUV. Time will tell whether those productions will learn from these previous lessons.