12 ms·
Tesla aims to start pilot production of Model 3 cars on February 20
- aresant 10y agoThis is good news. Musks target of 500,000+ cars a year of velocity in 2018 is an insane goal! By the numbers: - They have just shy of 400,000 of the 3's on deposit, along with a backlog of other models. - Last year Tesla shipped about 76,000 cars. - Their Q4 delivery numbers were <25,000 cars and trailed expectations by about 5%. - They blamed last quarter on autopilot hardware issues, eg OEM supplier / component issues. - They made a significant uptick in velocity between Q2 (14,000 cars) and Q4 (22,200 cars). I can't imagine how hard Tesla is pushing - for any Tesla HN's good luck! We are rooting for you :) If, somehow, Musk reverses the chronic lateness and hits 500,000 in 2018 it's going to be quite the fireworks show. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-03/tesla-falls-as-quarterly-deliveries-trail-analysts-estimates https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-03/tesla-fal...
- thatswrong0 10y agoI would love a Tesla but man those numbers would be a bit frightening if I were planning on purchasing one soon.. I don't see how they could scale up like that for a brand new model and not have quality problems. Best of luck to them!
- vanattab 10y agoYou hit the nail on the head. It's the scaling/quality control problems that are the biggest risk. Also, from what I understand there have been quite a lot of problems with the different telsa models to date, but the top notch tesla service has been able to keep customers happy. That level of customer service is much easier to provide when selling a few $100,000 cars then when mass producing $30,000 cars.
- chiph 10y agoThe mechanics in /r/justrolledintotheshop complain about parts availability and the constant rolling changes. The door handles on the Model S are apparently up to revision "G".
- ovao 10y agoAssuming Tesla parts start with "A" or no letter suffix, that actually doesn't seem too bad, in my experience. The Ford Focus I owned several years ago had 34 revisions made to the door handle assembly by the time I had to replace mine.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- sundvor 10y agoYep agree 100% with you there. If anything I'd want a model revision coming a year or two down the track.
- gozur88 10y agoThis. I don't want the first model year of any brand new chassis. Problems inevitably crop up even for companies like Toyota and Daimler.
- fmihaila 10y agoIt's worth noting that the first production cars are to be delivered to the Tesla employees who reserved one. This should have a positive impact on quality, both in terms of motivation ("the car I'm working on is mine"), and by having a shorter debug-fix-test cycle. (I have no idea how many employee reservations there are.)
- Waterluvian 10y agoYou should see the Tesla employee parking lot. Most of the people working on these cars will never afford one.
- spectrum1234 10y ago?? Tesla Model 3 full cost of ownership, esp including tax incentives in CA (where factory is) literally is the cheapest car on the market.
- Waterluvian 10y agoI guess I'm jaded from my week spent there. It was a whole different world to me. One lady talked to me about how this is her second job today and that she can barely make it on time to today's safety training because of the bus schedules. The parking lot was an ocean of beat up cars. The perception I got was that nobody on the production floor would ever own these cars.
- snarf 10y agoI imagine there is a huge difference in the employee pool between their Fremont factory location and their Palo Alto office location. Of course, Tesla is not exactly known to pay even their engineers very well: http://www.autoblog.com/2016/03/08/working-tesla-meaning-stress-relatively-low-pay/ http://www.autoblog.com/2016/03/08/working-tesla-meaning-str...
- J-dawg 10y agoThat just seems really sad. I've read that Tesla doesn't pay exceptionally well, expects people to work really long hours, and doesn't offer an employee discount because Elon doesn't believe in it. Despite all this I've always imagined it to be a great place to work because of the world-changing potential of the work. But the idea of all these people toiling away on an amazing product they can't even hope to own just seems incredibly depressing. I guess it's no different to all the people making iPhones in China, it just hits closer to home.
- chemmail 10y agoThat number is insane, they work with many 3rd party suppliers and any one of those have issues can cause delays for any number of thousand reasons. Tesla also needs to expand their tech support/repair by many folds. Working on cars and computers, any issues is going to take a good amount of time to fix, not even thinking of backlogs. It helps that they literally only have 3 cars, meaning 3 sets of parts to inventory one whatever needs to break, but still the stories of how they handle repair is really amateur.
- Animats 10y agoWhen he first announced that goal, his two top production people quit.[1] Now he has a guy from Audi heading up production. Auto production lines usually produce about a car a minute. 500,000 cars a year is about two production lines running two shifts. In 2005, the NUMMI plant, which is where Tesla is now, produced 400,000 cars with 4,700 employees. Tesla is talking about reaching 9,300 employees. They do more than final assembly there, but still, that's a high headcount for an auto plant. Ford's Kentucky truck plant also produces about 400,000 units a year with about 4,500 employees. [1] http://www.autonews.com/article/20160504/OEM02/160509943/2-top-tesla-manufacturing-execs-to-leave-as-biggest-challenge-looms http://www.autonews.com/article/20160504/OEM02/160509943/2-t...
- Anchor 10y agoTesla does much more in-house when compared to other auto plants, they buy more individual components and raw material and less partially assembled parts. I'm told that many of auto plants that produce the complete vehicle do mainly integration work these days. Tesla's approach is different, so they require more hands, but pay considerably less for the upstream supplies flowing into the plant.
- Theodores 10y agoIn the UK we call this a 'screwdriver operation' where they don't 'really make cars' but they just put a few bits together, pre-assembled elsewhere. This started with the Japanese auto manufacturers wanting to compete in Europe, the UK government gave the incentives to Nissan and Honda but the factories were 'screwdriver operations' according to sceptics.
- cptskippy 10y agoIt's called an assembly plant in the US. There's nothing inherently wrong with this and it can actually afford greater automation and efficiencies in a number of ways. You have the option of receiving prefabricated components from multiple sources. If you're doing built to order manufacturing you can slot in variations more easily of they're complete modules assembled identically.
- dabeeeenster 10y agoAccording to Wikipedia, "As of May 15, 2016, Tesla had taken about 373,000 reservations" so I think the total number of reservations must be well north of 500,000 by now?
- agumonkey 10y agoA bit related, they started production of the 2070(0) battery too.
- rofrol 10y ago2170 - 21 mm by 70 mm dimensions https://qz.com/879121/teslas-tsla-cheaper-more-powerful-2170-battery-cell-is-the-perfect-embodiment-of-its-factory-model/ https://qz.com/879121/teslas-tsla-cheaper-more-powerful-2170...
- agumonkey 10y agoHeh, I thought it was 20x70mm ..
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- amelius 10y ago> Musks target of 500,000+ cars a year of velocity in 2018 is an insane goal! From a computing viewpoint, scaling a car production line is not a theoretically hard problem (it's very parallellizable, but you have to take supply chains into account).
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- modeless 10y agoI'm really hoping that Model 3 production is not delayed because every delay makes it less likely that I will get the full $7,500 federal tax credit. Once Tesla sells its 200,000th US car the credit will be cut by 50% to $3,750 after a period of up to two quarters. That puts the likely cut time at July 2018.
- artursapek 10y agoUnless Elon can cut a deal with Donnie. They have been pretty close, it seems.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- UnoriginalGuy 10y agoTesla themselves may be able to find cost savings further into production which could bring down the wholesale cost of the vehicle making somewhat up for the loss of the tax credit. Or if not maybe the "version 2.0" will. I will say I'm not sure what price segment Tesla's endgame for the Model 3 is. I assume somewhere in the 25-35K mark, but there's a lot of variance in that range and without seeing the Model 3's trims and features it will be hard to judge where it should fall compared to the competition. Tesla's site has impressively little basic information about the Model 3. Heck, I don't even know if it has electric windows (obviously it does, but my point is that Tesla's site lacks a 101 level spec sheet right now). Kind of ballsy to ask for a $1K downpayment for a vehicle they aren't telling you a darn thing about.
- sketchthat 10y agoIf they can hit 500,000 cars by 2018 would you assume they would be able to fulfil all world orders of model 3 by mid-2018? I'm in Australia and put a deposit on in the morning the day it came out, hoping I'll see the car this year but doubtful.. next year? Maybe.
- manicdee 10y agoWe will be getting ours in late 2018 assuming everything goes smoothly for Tesla. There is ramp-up, LHD priority, and shipping time to factor into the schedule.
- sketchthat 10y agoI'm thinking the same thing. Would love to see it earlier. At least by the time the right-hand drive market gets it all defects should be out of the car.
- will_hughes 10y agoThe one 'advantage' to buying Tesla in Australia is that even if you do get an absurdly long wait times, at least when they deliver you get all the newest fetures. eg Every Model S delivered to customers in Australia had the Autopilot hardware, because it took that long for them to build and ship them.
- sundvor 10y agoAnd by then, hopefully the worst initial bugs have been sorted too.
- joering2 10y agoHonest question. Its February 2017, you say "late 2018". Why would you be buying anything, including something so expensive as a car, and wait for it more than a year not knowing how much technology will progress in next 12-18 months?
- deepGem 10y agoGreat! and Musk hopes for a launch in India this summer. Bad news for $TSLA short sellers. They have piled up more than $9 billion. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/short-sellers-getting-steamrolled-tesla-160040922.html http://finance.yahoo.com/news/short-sellers-getting-steamrol...
- artursapek 10y agoIt seems like TSLA is one of the most tirelessly shorted stocks out there. Why are there so many people betting against them?
- Fej 10y agoTesla is going up against an old, entrenched industry. Competitors have been around for many decades. Their odds have been slim. They have made mistakes. But it's looking better for them as time goes on.
- 2curious 10y agoSomehow reminds me of Tucker Corp.
- sandworm101 10y agoBecause they are a fledgling car company. Those are generally doomed. A few wrong moves, a few bad models, and you disappear. Either that or one of the established companies uses their resources to launch at competing product. Frankly, the likes of Honda and Toyota are probably laughing at tesla. Once their ducks are all lined up their size will allow them to produce electric cars at an insane scale. Shortsellers bet on this happening sooner than later and have so far lost that bet. But that doesn't mean it cannot happen tomorrow. Telsa is still on a knife's edge, will be for a decade or more. Tesla knows this an so is trying to leverage its battery know-how into other fields, a hedge against a decent honda electric hitting the US market.
- deepGem 10y ago
- pfarnsworth 10y agoI'm a Tesla bear, I've shorted Tesla a few times over the last several years, but I've heard from insiders that they are going to hit their initial deadline, and they are already testing Model 3s on the roads, in a Model S form factor. That means I'm going to stay far away from this stock, at least as a short.
- pmorici 10y agoDid you just admit in writing on a public forum you have inside information on a company and trade their stock based on it?
- OriginalPenguin 10y agoActually I think he said he has inside information and wasn't going to trade their stock on it.
- hinkley 10y agoA bold move, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off for him.
- dagw 10y agoThat in itself is not illegal. It all depends on how he got a hold of the information.
- kybernetikos 10y agoI found the exact rules on this quite interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEC_Rule_10b5-1#A_possible_loophole:_canceling_plans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEC_Rule_10b5-1#A_possible_loo...
- Symmetry 10y agoNot a lawyer but unless he's an employee of Tesla or otherwise got his information through his employment then he's not an insider for purposes of insider trading regulation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._O%27Hagan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._O%27Hagan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiarella_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiarella_v._United_States Which isn't to say the SEC wouldn't go after him. Cops arrest people in the US for photographing public things all the time, for instance. Just that if it went to court he'd probably win.
- jagger27 10y agoIt just smells like spin to me. They were going to build preproduction cars anyway for certification, testing, and to iron out manufacturing kinks. Putting them on display for the press and investors is just PR.
- _ph_ 10y agoI don't think it is big news that they are going to build preproduction cars, of course they have to do that. The big news is, that if they are doing it now, that they seem to be on schedule for the full production.
- diebir 10y agoPersonally, I am trying to avoid giving my business to any companies that take part in legitimizing Trump, which Elon Musk does (probably due to SpaceX needing government contracts). I have no need or use for Tesla cars, which makes it really easy to avoid them.
- scythe 10y agoI agree. I want to make sure nobody competent works in the executive branch alongside the other team, so that the maximum amount of damage is cause to my country as a result of their mistakes. Wait, no I don't, because I'm not insane. Are you aware that we're playing for real money?
- hyperbovine 10y agoWhat an insulting, patronizing response to a perfectly legitimate moral stance. If you disagree, fine. No need to be an asshole about it.
- banhfun 10y agoPerfectly legitimate and moral? The OP is demonizing our POTUS and anyone that associates with him. This kind of thinking ("Fuck Republicans/Democrats and anyone that empathizes with them") is what divides our country.
- nitrogen 10y agoGuilt by association is one of those things that people don't like about the current administration. Let's not sink to the same level. Also, let's leave the politics for the few political articles and let this discussion be about the technology and business of Tesla.
- rimantas 10y agoLet's not pretend that politics have no influence on tech. E.g. solar/wind vs. oil.
- 10y ago
- yladiz 10y agoOn a slightly related note, I have serious doubts that even if they hit their target that the company will actually sell enough to profit in the long term, because it is an electric car and they only sell electric cars. This is dissimilar to traditional car manufacturers which do manufacture electric cars but primarily make gas powered cars. The main reason I argue this is that to a lot of consumers, an electric car is nice but functionally less useful than a gas car. That is, a lot of consumers think, "What if my battery runs out? How do I charge it in an emergency?" referring to if the battery runs out somewhere. In a traditional car, if you go somewhere far and run out of gas you can just call AAA and they can either tow your car or bring you a bit of gas to get you to your next gas station, and this isn't really possible with current electric cars. Even in town, if you forget to charge your car you can't just go to the gas station, you have to wait a bit of time for your car to be ready to go. Don't discount 5 vs 15 minutes -- I can fill a car and be done in less than 5 minutes whereas it takes a bit more time to charge an electric car, even a Tesla at a supercharging station. The company that produces a car that isn't gas powered but can be re-powered in the same amount of time, or creates the technology within batteries, will be the one that causes a true revolution. I don't know if I'd go so far as to short TSLA but I am not completely convinced their cars will take off (also consider the fact that a $35,000 car is still really expensive for the average consumer).
- spectrum1234 10y agoI think the opposite is true. For Tesla owners its more like "Every day I wake up with a full tank of gas." The percentage of trips over ~215 miles is quite small. Doing the math you are saving many hours/year on average. Of course I'm not accounting for edge cases but that's the point they are edge cases.
- Gustomaximus 10y agoAdd to this with their fast charge you can add ~70m/100km 10min. This makes topping up quite fast if your going over the range a bit any one day. Or 80% charge in 40min, which for most people would be easy to organise around lunch break or meeting if your already doing enough driving to drain the days range. Looking further ahead, the self driving will likely allow the car to go fuel itself while you are out of it. And generally we should see more and more parking spots with chargers.
- zump 10y agoHow's the working environment at Tesla? Seems they are very productive (or it might be PR), does it have a 'big company' feel yet?
- AtheistOfFail 10y agoPeople dislike Elon Musk and he's basically a slave driver by most reviews.
- dcgudeman 10y agoI think people who have attitudes like this are misguided. If you don't like working for Elon or at Tesla, don't. There is only one Tesla while there are tons of other companies you can have a "good" work/life balance at.
- hueving 10y agoYou can believe in the mission and the company and still the the CEO is an asshole. See: Steve Jobs
- pkkim 10y agoThat's true to some extent. You should be able to choose a job that is a little less stressful but pays a little less, or the opposite. But there are a lot of caveats. For example: First of all, a company sets standards in wages, benefits, and hours to the extent that it is a monopsony [1] in its particular geographic market and labor market, and also insofar as there is unemployment in the region (and, thus, there are people who could take your job and it would be hard for you to find another job). Tesla is a very large employer of unskilled labor, as well as skilled. The Bay Area doesn't have as high unemployment as other areas, but it still has some. Therefore, the labor conditions at Tesla impact labor conditions at other workplaces to some extent. Second, more on the level of values, why should a worker have to miss his daughter's ballet recital on Saturday because his manager told him on Friday afternoon at end-of-shift that he has to come in tomorrow? That should not be necessary in a well-run factory. Maybe it would be different if a factory worker at a Tesla factory could participate in the vision by buying a Tesla car, but that's not possible either because they're too expensive. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony: "In economics, a monopsony ... is a market structure in which only one buyer interacts with many would-be sellers of a particular product [here, labor]."
- Beldur 10y agoI just saw this video from 4 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_lfxPI5ObM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_lfxPI5ObM Does somebody know if there's a more recent one? It looked impressive even it's age.
- WhitneyLand 10y agoWhat's the going market rate to buy a reservation from someone? Say you wanted to be order #50,000 or higher? Also: "last week design changes were still underway, which could hinder the ramp-up to full production" This is kind of funny because it so often what you see in software which was his background. I wonder if any exec at GM ever pushes the envelope in this way.
- Bedon292 10y agoPre-Orders are non transferable, so not sure there is much of a market. There are also not really set places in line. Stores were open on the East Coast were open before the West Coast, but West will ship before East. And current owners cut in line somehow as well. I am sure you could pay someone to keep their pre-order open, buy the vehicle, then sell it to you afterwards. But that seems like a good way to get screwed, on both sides of the deal.