I’m no accountant but with my knowledge from my college sophomore year semester of Managerial Accounting 101 many years ago when these two separate lines jumped out at me from the article:

Lessons below, including kind words from one of the expert correspondents who got in touch to say that “reconciling accrual-based accounts with cash accounts (especially with the cash flow statement in its indirect form) is always difficult.” Indeed.

Accrual based accounting recognizes a loss (liability) when the transaction occurs. Cash accounting only recognizes the loss when the cash leaves your account to pay for it. So it sounds like Tesla accounting is using cash accounting instead of accrual accounting. To highlight the difference, compare to a credit card transaction. If you use your credit card to buy a shirt for $100 then accrual accounting would say you’ve spent $100. Cash accounting would say you’ve spent $0 because you haven’t paid your credit card bill.

Couple that with this line from the article:

“The line suggests that even though Tesla sales shrank last year, it improved its cash position in part by taking longer to pay suppliers.”

This suggests to me that Tesla is “artificially” pumping up its claimed cash position (meaning against the view most people use) because they are simply not paying people who they owe money to until later.