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Using your numbers that would mean increasing their output by over 40% without a new factory... I'd say that is very much "far off". I mean they had to make a t

Using your numbers that would mean increasing their output by over 40% without a new factory... I'd say that is very much "far off". I mean they had to make a tent to try and convince Wall Street they can make 5,000 cars in a week. In reality they make nowhere near 350k cars a year. They built 41k in Q2 which was their most ever by a long shot. They celebrated the 300,000th shipped Tesla in Q1 2018...

mikeyouse 8y ago
That NUMMI plant used to do ~430,000 vehicles per year so Tesla in theory could produce that many without expanding to a new facility but the shortfalls of a plant on the West Coast away from so many suppliers in a very high cost-of-living area are going to make that a much less attractive proposition. I wouldn't be surprised if they're in talks for a South Carolina or Alabama facility to produce their Model 3s and if they reserve the Fremont facility for their higher-end models.
- cultus 8y ago
  These other factories would have to be completely retooled. It would take a long time and a lot of money. It's not like changing the die in an injection mold or something.
  - mikeyouse 8y ago
    Yeah -- I meant, they'd have to build a new factory from the ground up, spending billions of dollars to do so.. not that they could just lease a Corolla plant or something.
mikeash 8y ago
They’ve increased their numbers by about 250% over this time last year. Another 40% isn’t that much by comparison. At the end of Q2 they hit 5,000 Model 3s per week, plus 2,000 S/X. That’s an annualized rate of 350,000. And yes, they haven’t even built 350,000 cars yet. The acceleration of their manufacturing over the last few months has been amazingly fast.
- reitzensteinm 8y ago
  Production stats: Q2 2018: 53,339 Q2 2017: 25,708 Still impressive, but not an increase of 250%. http://ir.tesla.com/news-releases/news-release-details/update-tesla-q2-2017-vehicle-production-and-deliveries http://ir.tesla.com/news-releases/news-release-details/updat... http://ir.tesla.com/news-releases/news-release-details/tesla-q2-2018-vehicle-production-and-deliveries http://ir.tesla.com/news-releases/news-release-details/tesla...
  - mikeash 8y ago
    Production stats: 7,000/week at the end of Q2. Am I just not making myself clear on where the 350,000/year figure came from, or are you ignoring it to make some sort of point?
    - reitzensteinm 8y ago
      Extrapolating from the crunch week is just wrong. It featured: 1) A temporary production line 2) Reworked cars included in the total 3) 24x7 production, all hands on deck 4) No downtime for maintenance 5) Went on for 175 hours, not 168 6) Whatever else that went on that's not public (almost certainly some stockpiling of parts) Maybe you can draw some inferences from the outcome but N x 50 is not the way to do it. Output will certainly drop in the short term, it's just a question of how much. In the long term, maybe they'll do better than 5k a week, maybe they'll eventually reach there as a steady state, but even the latter isn't guaranteed.
      - mikeash 8y ago
        This is an actually useful response, instead of just ignoring what I’m saying and quoting numbers I already know. I think they’ll sustain this rate. We’ll see.

mikeyouse 8y ago

That NUMMI plant used to do ~430,000 vehicles per year so Tesla in theory could produce that many without expanding to a new facility but the shortfalls of a plant on the West Coast away from so many suppliers in a very high cost-of-living area are going to make that a much less attractive proposition. I wouldn't be surprised if they're in talks for a South Carolina or Alabama facility to produce their Model 3s and if they reserve the Fremont facility for their higher-end models.

cultus 8y ago
These other factories would have to be completely retooled. It would take a long time and a lot of money. It's not like changing the die in an injection mold or something.
- mikeyouse 8y ago
  Yeah -- I meant, they'd have to build a new factory from the ground up, spending billions of dollars to do so.. not that they could just lease a Corolla plant or something.

mikeash 8y ago

They’ve increased their numbers by about 250% over this time last year. Another 40% isn’t that much by comparison. At the end of Q2 they hit 5,000 Model 3s per week, plus 2,000 S/X. That’s an annualized rate of 350,000. And yes, they haven’t even built 350,000 cars yet. The acceleration of their manufacturing over the last few months has been amazingly fast.

reitzensteinm 8y ago
Production stats: Q2 2018: 53,339 Q2 2017: 25,708 Still impressive, but not an increase of 250%. http://ir.tesla.com/news-releases/news-release-details/update-tesla-q2-2017-vehicle-production-and-deliveries http://ir.tesla.com/news-releases/news-release-details/updat... http://ir.tesla.com/news-releases/news-release-details/tesla-q2-2018-vehicle-production-and-deliveries http://ir.tesla.com/news-releases/news-release-details/tesla...
- mikeash 8y ago
  Production stats: 7,000/week at the end of Q2. Am I just not making myself clear on where the 350,000/year figure came from, or are you ignoring it to make some sort of point?
  - reitzensteinm 8y ago
    Extrapolating from the crunch week is just wrong. It featured: 1) A temporary production line 2) Reworked cars included in the total 3) 24x7 production, all hands on deck 4) No downtime for maintenance 5) Went on for 175 hours, not 168 6) Whatever else that went on that's not public (almost certainly some stockpiling of parts) Maybe you can draw some inferences from the outcome but N x 50 is not the way to do it. Output will certainly drop in the short term, it's just a question of how much. In the long term, maybe they'll do better than 5k a week, maybe they'll eventually reach there as a steady state, but even the latter isn't guaranteed.
    - mikeash 8y ago
      This is an actually useful response, instead of just ignoring what I’m saying and quoting numbers I already know. I think they’ll sustain this rate. We’ll see.