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It actually seems like a pretty good understanding of Musk's track record to me. They're obviously not going to go out of business as a result. But considering

It actually seems like a pretty good understanding of Musk's track record to me. They're obviously not going to go out of business as a result. But considering Tesla has already had earnings calls pretty much exactly like that with respect to slower than expected Model S production, yes I would expect Tesla in 2018 to admit that most people on the pre-order list are going to be waiting a very long time. That leaves Tesla in the awkward position of either needing to massively ramp up every aspect of its production pipeline now (which is a HUGE undertaking) at the cost of not producing Model S and Model X on schedule, or facing a significant number of pre-order people giving up on waiting, and a constrained production capacity well into 2020. The OP's comment was with respect to shareholder confidence, which is currently propping up the stock price based on future expectations. I believe the point was that if Tesla can't come even close to meeting the market demand for its vehicles, that's a signal of weakness on several fronts that would need to be priced into the stock. I'm also not sure what landing rockets has to do with mass-producing cars. SpaceX's achievements are indeed amazing and I watch all of their launches, but figuring out how to land a first stage is an engineering challenge. Figuring out how to produce 300,000 cars in a short time is a logistics challenge. Not to mention no one yet knows how Tesla's model will scale to the larger market with respect to service, support, parts replacement, etc. Scale in the automotive market just brings with it a huge number of issues to tackle that don't exist in smaller volumes.

aerovistae 11y ago
Most of your post there is valid. But for the record, if they meet their goal of delivering ~85,000 cars this year and can sustain the previous growth from 25k->50k->85k, then 2017 would see deliveries of ~100-110k and 2018 would see ~130k-150k, and 2019 ~160k-185k, which puts them very on track. That's assuming continued linear growth of adding 20-30k per year. Musk has said repeatedly he is aiming for 500k by 2020. While I don't doubt that will be missed, it implies we'll see more than linear growth. I understand there will be challenges -- I just have strong faith in their ability to surmount them.
- mdorazio 11y ago
  Good point. However, Tesla also missed its 2015 production target because retooling the factory to produce Model X and to produce more Model S took longer than expected and impacted the existing production line at the same time. I think the exact same thing will happen with Model 3, only moreso given the huge ramp-up needed. Rather than linear growth it's probably going to be more like big staggered increases.

aerovistae 11y ago

Most of your post there is valid. But for the record, if they meet their goal of delivering ~85,000 cars this year and can sustain the previous growth from 25k->50k->85k, then 2017 would see deliveries of ~100-110k and 2018 would see ~130k-150k, and 2019 ~160k-185k, which puts them very on track. That's assuming continued linear growth of adding 20-30k per year. Musk has said repeatedly he is aiming for 500k by 2020. While I don't doubt that will be missed, it implies we'll see more than linear growth. I understand there will be challenges -- I just have strong faith in their ability to surmount them.

mdorazio 11y ago
Good point. However, Tesla also missed its 2015 production target because retooling the factory to produce Model X and to produce more Model S took longer than expected and impacted the existing production line at the same time. I think the exact same thing will happen with Model 3, only moreso given the huge ramp-up needed. Rather than linear growth it's probably going to be more like big staggered increases.