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This article caused me to become very bearish on Tesla. https://dailykanban.com/2017/12/go-production-hell-went-production-heaven/ https://dailykanban.com/2017

This article caused me to become very bearish on Tesla. https://dailykanban.com/2017/12/go-production-hell-went-production-heaven/ https://dailykanban.com/2017/12/go-production-hell-went-prod... Not on EVs in general, but just on their ability to actually outpace delivering the market (without killing anyone) before the old guard caught on and gets there first. Not a novel thought, but the factory analysis really put the nail in the coffin for me.

mmanfrin 9y ago
I've come to see Tesla as being very bad at production lines. I've heard almost nothing but bad news about working conditions, safety, output, etc. Top it off with the massive firings that happened right as the Model 3 production was set to ramp up. However, I'm bullish, because these are solved problems that many other people have expertise in. It's easier for Tesla to find someone skilled in car manufacturing than it is for other manufacturers to build the brand demand that Tesla has. They have solved the hard problem, but failed the easy. And when they figure out how to build cars faster, the demand is there to meet them, which means that when they solve that easy problem, they will be sitting pretty.
- rsynnott 9y ago
  > However, I'm bullish, because these are solved problems that many other people have expertise in. Which raises the question, why didn't Tesla hire experts, like the company in the article? I suspect because Musk thinks his way is best, and, worse, hasn't yet realised that he's wrong. This would make me very concerned about Tesla's future. Ultimately, if Tesla goes bust, the brand will presumably be sold off, and someone who knows how to make cars will make Teslas, I suppose...
- bdamm 9y ago
  Is this really the "easy" problem? I've often wondered to what degree maneuverability or parts availability influences car maker's designs. If the design fundamentally requires parts that are single-source or difficulty to manufacture, as Tesla's design must be, then it's a difficult problem.
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    Sounds like they are dicks to the blue collar guys, and are more worried about Union busting than making cars.
    - erikpukinskis 9y ago
      Tesla is at most spending 1% of their effort on union busting and 99% on building cars. You think they spend over half of their time on union busting?
  - mehrdada 9y ago
    Yes, relatively speaking. The difficulty of this sort of stuff ultimately can hit the margin, so you usually are fine and have ample time if you have a relatively high margin (and no competitor in line of sight). For operationally tight businesses, this could prove to be disastrous.
- Tiktaalik 9y ago
  > However, I'm bullish, because these are solved problems that many other people have expertise in. All of Teslas woes make me bullish on companies like Toyota and GM that understand how to build cars. I'm increasingly questioning whether the electric drive train and the batteries are actual difficult and novel part about building an electric car. I think it's going to be easier for GM to find people that can build good electric engines than it is for Tesla to get upto speed on how to build their cars at GM scales.
  - nihonde 9y ago
    Having lived in Nagoya, Japan after growing up in America, I think industrials is one of those areas where Japanese sensibilities and approaches to innovation vs incremental improvement are going to be tough to beat. Like everything in Japan, it’s not simple. My friends who run companies that supply Toyota and Mitsubishi in auto and aerospace absolutely worship the golden age of American industry in a way that I’m not sure many Americans still do. At the same time, they’re brilliant engineers that operate at extremely high standards, and are playing to win.
  - danhak 9y ago
    Why, in your opinion, is GM’s Chevy Bolt still being outsold by the Tesla Model S? Also FYI “electric engines” are not a thing.
    - Sohcahtoa82 9y ago
      I'd say it's a failure of GM's marketing department and dealership salesmen that for some reason steer (no pun intended) people to ICEs. GM should be capitalizing on Tesla's failure to bring the Model 3 out. They could absolutely sell the message of "Why wait 18 months for an affordable electric car when you can drive one TODAY?" They could devour Model 3 reservations, but for some reason are choosing not to.
      - abledon 9y ago
        The people who reserved Teslas would probably wretch driving a GM. That company doesn’t belong in their psyche
- nilkn 9y ago
  > It's easier for Tesla to find someone skilled in car manufacturing than it is for other manufacturers to build the brand demand that Tesla has. They have solved the hard problem, but failed the easy. But Mercedes, Audi, BMW, etc., have an incredible amount of brand demand too. They'd have even more if they cut out their entry-level cars and only sold flagships like Tesla has done up to this point. The reality is building a desirable car brand is not that hard. Just make absurdly expensive cars that few people can own and you're halfway there. Then slowly introduce more affordable models.
  - Shivetya 9y ago
    Not only do they have brand demand, when they do enter the same markets as Tesla with their own EV they will have people flocking to them. far too many people keep hyping numbers of Tesla's preorders or even sales of S & X while completely ignoring they don't even come close to equaling single lines of some other brands who do this year in year out
  - princeb 9y ago
    BMW in particular i'm looking at quite closely. Unlike MB and Audi, BMW are invested in electric tech and have already been for a while with the i3 (both full and hybrid trims) and also the X series hybrid SUVs. So for them battery tech is a "solved problem". They already have a production capacity of 2.5m/yr and likely will keep the same capacity in the gas-electric transition. > Just make absurdly expensive cars that few people can own and you're halfway there. Not that the GTR was absurdly expensive, but i don't think that car changed the perception of Nissan much.
    - fyfy18 9y ago
      Other than the i3, which has a 125 mile range, all of BMWs other vehicles are hybrid rather than true EVs. Yes that’s probably the way the market will go (Toyota offer a hybrid option on nearly every model now), but it’s not really the same as a true EV like Tesla. Also both Audi and MB have hybrid and full EVs (well VW who own Audi, and share the same platforms).
    - propogandist 9y ago
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  Actually building production lines and supply lines is a very difficult problem that needs a lot of experience, fine tuning and time. It's like building a moderately complex software. Getting most features in is relatively quick. But then debugging all issues is very slow and tedious and just needs a lot of time. It's definitely not their easy problem.
- lev99 9y ago
  > It's easier for Tesla to find someone skilled in car manufacturing than it is for other manufacturers to build the brand demand that Tesla has. If supply was not a problem Tesla would still not sell as many automobiles as other brands. Ford sold something like 5 million automobiles in 2016. The Model 3 has 1/10 that in preorders. Tesla has a great brand in EVs, and Tesla has great market growth, but it has to double several more times until it reaches the established demand other car companies enjoy. I'm bearish on Tesla. Everyone ships more units then Tesla. Japanese companies are outselling Tesla on EV units. German companies are 1-3 years behind on luxury EV units in terms of quality. I'm hedging my bet by considering the gigafactory. If we see 5 gigafacotries by 2022 they'll have a significant position in the entire CE & EV industry for decades.
  - krrrh 9y ago
    The rest of the world is also building battery manufacturing. [1]. Even Tesla’s plant Is jointly run by Panasonic. https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1112878_china-to-build-many-gigafactories-worth-of-electric-car-battery-plants https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1112878_china-to-build-...
  - erikpukinskis 9y ago
    The Model 3 hasn’t even been reviewed yet. A lot of people won’t buy a product until they’ve seen it deliver on its promises and it is available to buy immediately. You can’t compare demand for their offering to Ford’s until it’s actually... you know... offered. Model 3 is still basically in a Beta release.
obastani 9y ago
From that article, I got a very different impression (despite its clearly negative tone). The quote that really stood out to me was "How long does it take to build such a factory? From that other car company, you may have heard that car factories could be brought from no plans to mass production in two years, no time at all, or whatever is less. I ask Mr. Demeunyck how long the Luqiao plant took from start to finish, and he proudly tells me that it “took only five years. They do things fast in China”... "In Europe, or in other places with tight permitting, it would take a few years longer,” Demeunyck says. If anyone tells you he has picked no location, and secured no permits, but wants to have a new car plant up and running in two years, call an ambulance." Apparently, what they are really arguing is not that Tesla is bad at production, but that Tesla is trying to do something nearly impossible. In this light, the problems Tesla faces are not because they lack the skills or expertise to deliver, but problems that any other car company would face if they were to do things on the schedule Tesla is trying to achieve. Thus, Tesla is really just taking a huge gamble -- they have a chance to pull off something very impressive, even if they fall 6 months or a year behind schedule. And if they fail, they failed because they took on a challenge that was simply too hard for any company to achieve. To me, it really resembles the gamble that SpaceX took, which paid off very well in the long run. So while I think there's a real chance that Tesla will fail like all of their detractors believe, I think there is also a real chance that they will be wildly successful.
- Tiktaalik 9y ago
  >Apparently, what they are really arguing is not that Tesla is bad at production, but that Tesla is trying to do something nearly impossible. >And if they fail, they failed because they took on a challenge that was simply too hard for any company to achieve. From the way that Musk has recently embarrassed himself arguing with transit experts on twitter over the last few weeks I am increasingly believing in the possibility that Musk thinks he's the smartest guy in the room, is completely ignoring experts in the field, is trying to do something that actually is impossible, and he's doomed to failure.
  - acover 9y ago
    He's done the impossible how many times?
m3kw9 9y ago
Sort of like how old guards like Rim and Nokia caught on with the iPhone when it was introduced?
- sjsbsh 9y ago
  Your comparing apple displacing a lumber company and a 10 year old startup in a rapidly changing field to companies that are over 100 years old in a field where a mistake isn’t an OTA fix away, but a recall costing hundreds of millions.
- philwelch 9y ago
  Apple had years of experience manufacturing high quality consumer electronics at large scale with the iPod, years of experience managing power consumption on the OS level with Mac OS X, and decades of experience in user experience design and industrial design. At the peak of iPod sales, Apple managed to corner the market on NAND flash memory, to the point where they preordered entire years of production. And the iPhone was the biggest leap in user experience for a portable device ever.
FullyFunctional 9y ago
Very interesting reporting on Geely, but childish and pointless uneducated snarks at Tesla. It seems quite obvious that Geely represents the latest iteration of a continuously, incrementally, optimized production machine. That's great. That says nothing about Tesla. They aren't there yet, but they could (should) get there and hopefully exceed it.
- rsynnott 9y ago
  > It seems quite obvious that Geely represents the latest iteration of a continuously, incrementally, optimized production machine. Does it? The impression I get from the article is that it's one of many. There are plants like this all over the place.
  - FullyFunctional 9y ago
    Apologies. By "Production Machine" I intended to refer to the production methodology, not just this particular plant.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Geely is also Volvo´s parent company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geely https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geely
crx087 9y ago
Not buying it -- these headlines make me even more bullish on Tesla, and I've been following them since before they had their first investors. Production is coming along better than anyone realistic could have ever expected, and continues to do so at an impressive and steady rate.
- kec 9y ago
  In what world is half of what their previously stated goal "better than expected"?
  - princeb 9y ago
    > Production is coming along better than anyone realistic could have ever expected i think he might have knowledge of tesla's "private expectation" i.e. what tesla is seeing internally, vs "public expectation" what tesla is telling the press.
    - mcguire 9y ago
      If so, I think the SEC might want a talk with someone.
    - bjl 9y ago
      >...what tesla is seeing internally, vs "public expectation" what tesla is telling the press. If TSLA's 'private expectation' don't match what they're targeting, then Musk will be going to jail. The SEC doesn't mess around with that type of securities fraud.
- addicted 9y ago
  So what you are saying is Tesla's public announcements and investor statements should not be taken as realistic? That almost sounds illegal.
  - nickik 9y ago
    Compare Tesla to others and not their own targets and its clear.
dkhenry 9y ago
That article talks about a plant that took five years to commission, and is built to make cars that have been mass produced for decades and when it is done it will have a capacity to produce 200,000 cars per year. Why would anyone say thats even in the same ball park as a company building a assembly line for a new class of product at over double the capacity and doing it in one third the time ? Of course their factory is going to be a smoother operation they have been doing it for decades, when will volvo make a mass market electric vehicle ? You would think with the kind of demand there is for the model 3 Volvo, BMW, GM, or another one of the established manufactures would be able to exploit their knowledge of car assembly and take market share from Tesla, but so far the best anyone has done is the 30,000 units a year the Chevy bolt is expected to manage and it isn't planned on scaling much past that. So the factory situation is a mess, but I don't think a peachy PR piece about a very different situation is any kind of nail in the coffin, just a reminder of how much the current state of the art in car manufacturing is being changed. Even companies that have internal combustion down to a science can't manage to put together electric cars. To me it shows how far ahead Tesla, it would appear the current plan for everyone else it to let Tesla figure it out and poach their executives.
- drewcon 9y ago
  It's uncontroversial that Tesla is in the "figuring it out in ramp-up a factory stage". What I fail to see (that this article really drives home) is that they aren't actually building anything resembling a defensive moat...because they're going to run out of time. You could absolutely make the case that if they got to (mass) market significantly faster than existing car companies they could devour market share and suck the air out of the room and really springboard into their existing valuation...it just feels like they're burning the candle at both ends and that scenario seems a lot less likely (to me). By the time they figure it out...the companies producing significantly higher volumes of cars (for a hundred years) may simply surpass their ability to ship a great EV in large numbers. The Bolt / Leaf / i3 are basically the first-gen "hobby" projects to dip their toes in the water and get some EV mindshare. Do we really think a company like BMW can't make a desirable EV halo car + econo EV literally whenever they want as battery capacity tech progresses and mass market demand picks up? Drop an electric motor into an existing M4 and an X1 (I realize its more complicated than that) and you're basically there. I'm guessing here, but I think the BMWs and GMs and Toyotas of the world all must be extremely happy to be last mover here for a tech that feels like, at this point (thanks to Tesla!), will become an inevitable commodity technology. Meanwhile they let the Tesla brand do the hard work of getting the pubic amped up about EV with none of the risk and swoop in when it makes sense to them to move their existing brand onto a new and better electric platform.
tootie 9y ago
I think they're extremely well positioned from a marketing POV and the first attempts at competition from Detroit have fallen flat. I expect them to enjoy a position similar to Apple where they no longer really need to be the most innovative or practical so long as they are stylish and desirable.
danhak 9y ago
The problem for the major OEMs is that there literally isn’t enough battery production capacity in the world for all of them to ship EV’s in significant volume, and there has been zero indication that they are taking steps to solve that problem. They are already years behind on securing GW-scale capacity.

mmanfrin 9y ago

I've come to see Tesla as being very bad at production lines. I've heard almost nothing but bad news about working conditions, safety, output, etc. Top it off with the massive firings that happened right as the Model 3 production was set to ramp up. However, I'm bullish, because these are solved problems that many other people have expertise in. It's easier for Tesla to find someone skilled in car manufacturing than it is for other manufacturers to build the brand demand that Tesla has. They have solved the hard problem, but failed the easy. And when they figure out how to build cars faster, the demand is there to meet them, which means that when they solve that easy problem, they will be sitting pretty.

rsynnott 9y ago
> However, I'm bullish, because these are solved problems that many other people have expertise in. Which raises the question, why didn't Tesla hire experts, like the company in the article? I suspect because Musk thinks his way is best, and, worse, hasn't yet realised that he's wrong. This would make me very concerned about Tesla's future. Ultimately, if Tesla goes bust, the brand will presumably be sold off, and someone who knows how to make cars will make Teslas, I suppose...
bdamm 9y ago
Is this really the "easy" problem? I've often wondered to what degree maneuverability or parts availability influences car maker's designs. If the design fundamentally requires parts that are single-source or difficulty to manufacture, as Tesla's design must be, then it's a difficult problem.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  Sounds like they are dicks to the blue collar guys, and are more worried about Union busting than making cars.
  - erikpukinskis 9y ago
    Tesla is at most spending 1% of their effort on union busting and 99% on building cars. You think they spend over half of their time on union busting?
- mehrdada 9y ago
  Yes, relatively speaking. The difficulty of this sort of stuff ultimately can hit the margin, so you usually are fine and have ample time if you have a relatively high margin (and no competitor in line of sight). For operationally tight businesses, this could prove to be disastrous.
Tiktaalik 9y ago
> However, I'm bullish, because these are solved problems that many other people have expertise in. All of Teslas woes make me bullish on companies like Toyota and GM that understand how to build cars. I'm increasingly questioning whether the electric drive train and the batteries are actual difficult and novel part about building an electric car. I think it's going to be easier for GM to find people that can build good electric engines than it is for Tesla to get upto speed on how to build their cars at GM scales.
- nihonde 9y ago
  Having lived in Nagoya, Japan after growing up in America, I think industrials is one of those areas where Japanese sensibilities and approaches to innovation vs incremental improvement are going to be tough to beat. Like everything in Japan, it’s not simple. My friends who run companies that supply Toyota and Mitsubishi in auto and aerospace absolutely worship the golden age of American industry in a way that I’m not sure many Americans still do. At the same time, they’re brilliant engineers that operate at extremely high standards, and are playing to win.
- danhak 9y ago
  Why, in your opinion, is GM’s Chevy Bolt still being outsold by the Tesla Model S? Also FYI “electric engines” are not a thing.
  - Sohcahtoa82 9y ago
    I'd say it's a failure of GM's marketing department and dealership salesmen that for some reason steer (no pun intended) people to ICEs. GM should be capitalizing on Tesla's failure to bring the Model 3 out. They could absolutely sell the message of "Why wait 18 months for an affordable electric car when you can drive one TODAY?" They could devour Model 3 reservations, but for some reason are choosing not to.
    - abledon 9y ago
      The people who reserved Teslas would probably wretch driving a GM. That company doesn’t belong in their psyche
nilkn 9y ago
> It's easier for Tesla to find someone skilled in car manufacturing than it is for other manufacturers to build the brand demand that Tesla has. They have solved the hard problem, but failed the easy. But Mercedes, Audi, BMW, etc., have an incredible amount of brand demand too. They'd have even more if they cut out their entry-level cars and only sold flagships like Tesla has done up to this point. The reality is building a desirable car brand is not that hard. Just make absurdly expensive cars that few people can own and you're halfway there. Then slowly introduce more affordable models.
- Shivetya 9y ago
  Not only do they have brand demand, when they do enter the same markets as Tesla with their own EV they will have people flocking to them. far too many people keep hyping numbers of Tesla's preorders or even sales of S & X while completely ignoring they don't even come close to equaling single lines of some other brands who do this year in year out
- princeb 9y ago
  BMW in particular i'm looking at quite closely. Unlike MB and Audi, BMW are invested in electric tech and have already been for a while with the i3 (both full and hybrid trims) and also the X series hybrid SUVs. So for them battery tech is a "solved problem". They already have a production capacity of 2.5m/yr and likely will keep the same capacity in the gas-electric transition. > Just make absurdly expensive cars that few people can own and you're halfway there. Not that the GTR was absurdly expensive, but i don't think that car changed the perception of Nissan much.
  - fyfy18 9y ago
    Other than the i3, which has a 125 mile range, all of BMWs other vehicles are hybrid rather than true EVs. Yes that’s probably the way the market will go (Toyota offer a hybrid option on nearly every model now), but it’s not really the same as a true EV like Tesla. Also both Audi and MB have hybrid and full EVs (well VW who own Audi, and share the same platforms).
  - propogandist 9y ago
maxxxxx 9y ago
Actually building production lines and supply lines is a very difficult problem that needs a lot of experience, fine tuning and time. It's like building a moderately complex software. Getting most features in is relatively quick. But then debugging all issues is very slow and tedious and just needs a lot of time. It's definitely not their easy problem.
lev99 9y ago
> It's easier for Tesla to find someone skilled in car manufacturing than it is for other manufacturers to build the brand demand that Tesla has. If supply was not a problem Tesla would still not sell as many automobiles as other brands. Ford sold something like 5 million automobiles in 2016. The Model 3 has 1/10 that in preorders. Tesla has a great brand in EVs, and Tesla has great market growth, but it has to double several more times until it reaches the established demand other car companies enjoy. I'm bearish on Tesla. Everyone ships more units then Tesla. Japanese companies are outselling Tesla on EV units. German companies are 1-3 years behind on luxury EV units in terms of quality. I'm hedging my bet by considering the gigafactory. If we see 5 gigafacotries by 2022 they'll have a significant position in the entire CE & EV industry for decades.
- krrrh 9y ago
  The rest of the world is also building battery manufacturing. [1]. Even Tesla’s plant Is jointly run by Panasonic. https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1112878_china-to-build-many-gigafactories-worth-of-electric-car-battery-plants https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1112878_china-to-build-...
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  The Model 3 hasn’t even been reviewed yet. A lot of people won’t buy a product until they’ve seen it deliver on its promises and it is available to buy immediately. You can’t compare demand for their offering to Ford’s until it’s actually... you know... offered. Model 3 is still basically in a Beta release.

obastani 9y ago

From that article, I got a very different impression (despite its clearly negative tone). The quote that really stood out to me was "How long does it take to build such a factory? From that other car company, you may have heard that car factories could be brought from no plans to mass production in two years, no time at all, or whatever is less. I ask Mr. Demeunyck how long the Luqiao plant took from start to finish, and he proudly tells me that it “took only five years. They do things fast in China”... "In Europe, or in other places with tight permitting, it would take a few years longer,” Demeunyck says. If anyone tells you he has picked no location, and secured no permits, but wants to have a new car plant up and running in two years, call an ambulance." Apparently, what they are really arguing is not that Tesla is bad at production, but that Tesla is trying to do something nearly impossible. In this light, the problems Tesla faces are not because they lack the skills or expertise to deliver, but problems that any other car company would face if they were to do things on the schedule Tesla is trying to achieve. Thus, Tesla is really just taking a huge gamble -- they have a chance to pull off something very impressive, even if they fall 6 months or a year behind schedule. And if they fail, they failed because they took on a challenge that was simply too hard for any company to achieve. To me, it really resembles the gamble that SpaceX took, which paid off very well in the long run. So while I think there's a real chance that Tesla will fail like all of their detractors believe, I think there is also a real chance that they will be wildly successful.

Tiktaalik 9y ago
>Apparently, what they are really arguing is not that Tesla is bad at production, but that Tesla is trying to do something nearly impossible. >And if they fail, they failed because they took on a challenge that was simply too hard for any company to achieve. From the way that Musk has recently embarrassed himself arguing with transit experts on twitter over the last few weeks I am increasingly believing in the possibility that Musk thinks he's the smartest guy in the room, is completely ignoring experts in the field, is trying to do something that actually is impossible, and he's doomed to failure.
- acover 9y ago
  He's done the impossible how many times?

m3kw9 9y ago

Sort of like how old guards like Rim and Nokia caught on with the iPhone when it was introduced?

sjsbsh 9y ago
Your comparing apple displacing a lumber company and a 10 year old startup in a rapidly changing field to companies that are over 100 years old in a field where a mistake isn’t an OTA fix away, but a recall costing hundreds of millions.
philwelch 9y ago
Apple had years of experience manufacturing high quality consumer electronics at large scale with the iPod, years of experience managing power consumption on the OS level with Mac OS X, and decades of experience in user experience design and industrial design. At the peak of iPod sales, Apple managed to corner the market on NAND flash memory, to the point where they preordered entire years of production. And the iPhone was the biggest leap in user experience for a portable device ever.

FullyFunctional 9y ago

Very interesting reporting on Geely, but childish and pointless uneducated snarks at Tesla. It seems quite obvious that Geely represents the latest iteration of a continuously, incrementally, optimized production machine. That's great. That says nothing about Tesla. They aren't there yet, but they could (should) get there and hopefully exceed it.

rsynnott 9y ago
> It seems quite obvious that Geely represents the latest iteration of a continuously, incrementally, optimized production machine. Does it? The impression I get from the article is that it's one of many. There are plants like this all over the place.
- FullyFunctional 9y ago
  Apologies. By "Production Machine" I intended to refer to the production methodology, not just this particular plant.
jacquesm 9y ago
Geely is also Volvo´s parent company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geely https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geely

crx087 9y ago

Not buying it -- these headlines make me even more bullish on Tesla, and I've been following them since before they had their first investors. Production is coming along better than anyone realistic could have ever expected, and continues to do so at an impressive and steady rate.

kec 9y ago
In what world is half of what their previously stated goal "better than expected"?
- princeb 9y ago
  > Production is coming along better than anyone realistic could have ever expected i think he might have knowledge of tesla's "private expectation" i.e. what tesla is seeing internally, vs "public expectation" what tesla is telling the press.
  - mcguire 9y ago
    If so, I think the SEC might want a talk with someone.
  - bjl 9y ago
    >...what tesla is seeing internally, vs "public expectation" what tesla is telling the press. If TSLA's 'private expectation' don't match what they're targeting, then Musk will be going to jail. The SEC doesn't mess around with that type of securities fraud.
addicted 9y ago
So what you are saying is Tesla's public announcements and investor statements should not be taken as realistic? That almost sounds illegal.
- nickik 9y ago
  Compare Tesla to others and not their own targets and its clear.

dkhenry 9y ago

That article talks about a plant that took five years to commission, and is built to make cars that have been mass produced for decades and when it is done it will have a capacity to produce 200,000 cars per year. Why would anyone say thats even in the same ball park as a company building a assembly line for a new class of product at over double the capacity and doing it in one third the time ? Of course their factory is going to be a smoother operation they have been doing it for decades, when will volvo make a mass market electric vehicle ? You would think with the kind of demand there is for the model 3 Volvo, BMW, GM, or another one of the established manufactures would be able to exploit their knowledge of car assembly and take market share from Tesla, but so far the best anyone has done is the 30,000 units a year the Chevy bolt is expected to manage and it isn't planned on scaling much past that. So the factory situation is a mess, but I don't think a peachy PR piece about a very different situation is any kind of nail in the coffin, just a reminder of how much the current state of the art in car manufacturing is being changed. Even companies that have internal combustion down to a science can't manage to put together electric cars. To me it shows how far ahead Tesla, it would appear the current plan for everyone else it to let Tesla figure it out and poach their executives.

drewcon 9y ago
It's uncontroversial that Tesla is in the "figuring it out in ramp-up a factory stage". What I fail to see (that this article really drives home) is that they aren't actually building anything resembling a defensive moat...because they're going to run out of time. You could absolutely make the case that if they got to (mass) market significantly faster than existing car companies they could devour market share and suck the air out of the room and really springboard into their existing valuation...it just feels like they're burning the candle at both ends and that scenario seems a lot less likely (to me). By the time they figure it out...the companies producing significantly higher volumes of cars (for a hundred years) may simply surpass their ability to ship a great EV in large numbers. The Bolt / Leaf / i3 are basically the first-gen "hobby" projects to dip their toes in the water and get some EV mindshare. Do we really think a company like BMW can't make a desirable EV halo car + econo EV literally whenever they want as battery capacity tech progresses and mass market demand picks up? Drop an electric motor into an existing M4 and an X1 (I realize its more complicated than that) and you're basically there. I'm guessing here, but I think the BMWs and GMs and Toyotas of the world all must be extremely happy to be last mover here for a tech that feels like, at this point (thanks to Tesla!), will become an inevitable commodity technology. Meanwhile they let the Tesla brand do the hard work of getting the pubic amped up about EV with none of the risk and swoop in when it makes sense to them to move their existing brand onto a new and better electric platform.

tootie 9y ago

I think they're extremely well positioned from a marketing POV and the first attempts at competition from Detroit have fallen flat. I expect them to enjoy a position similar to Apple where they no longer really need to be the most innovative or practical so long as they are stylish and desirable.

danhak 9y ago

The problem for the major OEMs is that there literally isn’t enough battery production capacity in the world for all of them to ship EV’s in significant volume, and there has been zero indication that they are taking steps to solve that problem. They are already years behind on securing GW-scale capacity.