For a guy who grew up in Michigan, Mitt Romney sure hates auto manufacturers. He would have killed off Detroit, and now he uses Elon’s Musk’s Tesla Motors as a curse word. Anyone who is rooting against Tesla for political or other reasons–an American company that provides really good jobs and a cleaner future–is dead wrong. I assumed Musk would push back after last night’s debate and recent negative news stories about his electric car company. From his new release:

“Most importantly, what did not come across well was that we raised the funds simply for risk reduction. Barring any disasters internally or with suppliers, Tesla is actually on the verge of becoming cash flow positive and will not have to spend any of the money raised, at least until we embark upon a major new vehicle program. In the public call with investors, I tried to make this point, but perhaps should have emphasized it more: we expect Tesla to become cash flow positive at the end of next month.

However, given that we do have a global supply chain and that floods, fires, hurricanes or earthquakes can cause supply chain interruptions and halt production, we thought it would make sense to raise capital to protect against such an event. In fact, an important consideration in doing this financing round was that we went through just such a crisis recently with a supplier that had a flood in their factory. This caused a shortfall in shipments and delayed production until we could find another solution.

As for the reduced vehicle delivery guidance in Q3 and Q4 of this year, it is unfortunate that we are at the steepest portion of our production ramp. This gives the appearance of being much further behind than we actually are. Our production rate in the last week of September was roughly 100 vehicles, four times greater than our production in the first week of September as we overcame supply constraints. If the calendar were simply shifted a few weeks to the right, Tesla would have exceeded the 500 vehicle delivery target for the third quarter. In fact, I am pleased to report that we completed production of 359 vehicles last quarter (delivering over 250 of those to customers) and have already made our 500th vehicle body. While we are indeed a few weeks later than we would like, this is perhaps not a terrible outcome for a product as advanced and complex as the Model S, particularly given that Tesla is doing manufacturing of full vehicles for the first time with a new team and new suppliers.”