yes, I understand that. But
yes, I understand that. But short sellers do what they do because they believe a company is overvalued. The large short interest in Tesla indicates a lot of people believe the company is overvalued, and some take this as another sliver of proof that the whole green electric vehicle thing is nonsense, etc. If we were to believe the short sellers, Tesla will stumble and fail. Musk was instead promising the company has enough sales on hand to reach cash flow positive, and projects significantly more sales than that. While short sellers don't directly influence sales, as you so rightly say, they indicate a belief Tesla will fail, while Musk says otherwise.