Reports surfaced early Monday morning that Tesla had raised $680 million for its Gigafactory 3, soon-to-be located in China – but just as quickly as the news broke, it looks as though the reality of the situation may be vastly different. Instead of actually raising $680 million, it appears that a Chinese Tesla subsidiary simply raised their authorized registered share capital in an administrative filing with the SAIC, a step that doesn't necessarily denote that cash has been secured by the company. 

The Tesla friendly bloggers over at electrek were out early Monday with a rosy sounding story. "Tesla raises $680 million for Gigafactory 3," they Tweeted at 5:36AM eastern time, with a link to a story. 

But a closer look reveals that things may not be exactly what they seemed.

Even though the headline stated that there was "still a lot more to go", the reality of the situation is that there may be even more than "a lot" to go, as numerous Tesla skeptics on Twitter pointed out to electrek.

1/ $TSLA most certainly did NOT raise $680M for Giga 3 as reported here by @ElectrekCo. That number is simply the authorized capital that has been set as a placeholder in the formation documents pic.twitter.com/Zf2aDywPvY

— Investor Gator 🇺🇸 (@GatorInvestor) September 10, 2018

$TSLA did not raise $680M for a factory in China.

Its directors merely voted to increase "registered share capital" to $680M

This is an administrative step with no economic significance.

You could do the same thing with a lemonade stand.https://t.co/nZ3FCb9keF

— "Elon Says" (@ElonBachman) September 10, 2018

And just as quickly as these astute Tesla skeptics pointed it out, electrek's headline magically changed to "Tesla reportedly raises registered capital to $680 million for Gigafactory 3 in China, still a lot more to go".

The new article more accurately notes that the company has "raised their registered capital to around $680 million", which doesn’t necessarily indicate that the company has taken possession of $680 million. As a reminder, Elon Musk recently stated on a conference call that the factory could wind up costing $2 billion to get up and running at a rate of 250,000 vehicles per year. 

“So with respect to Gigafactory CapEx, I think we learned a tremendous amount with Gigafactory 1, and we’re confident that we can do the Gigafactory in China for a lot less. I think it’s probably closer to, this is just a guess, but probably closer to $2 billion, and that would be sort of at the 250,000 vehicle per year rate,” Musk stated.

So instead of having to raise $1.32 billion more, it appears as though Tesla still needs the full $2 billion. 

electrek qualifies their original headline further by stating that this $2 billion would only be for "sort of the 'first phase' of the Gigafactory 3" and would not include battery cell production and a 500,000 car per year capacity, both of which the company reportedly wants to add.

electrek noted their error in an update, stating that the registered capital increase may only be to "prepare for the cash injection".

Tesla has stated that it expects that it’ll take 2 to 3 years before the factory is fully ramped up and producing about 500,000 vehicles per year. We'll take the "over" on that bet.