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"But Musk is said to want to start construction extremely soon and aims to have Model Y vehicles coming out of the plant by the end of the year." That is just

"But Musk is said to want to start construction extremely soon and aims to have Model Y vehicles coming out of the plant by the end of the year." That is just delusional.

voodooranger 6y ago
maybe. but they’re getting better at building the machine that builds the machine that builds the machine.
- ctdonath 6y ago
  That’s the scale most don’t realize he’s operating at. With a goal of settling 100,000 on Mars, he has to reach a point of practically commoditizing production of factories.
- mplewis 6y ago
  Maybe he should get better at building cars.
- stetrain 6y ago
  Chinese labor? That's the machine that built their most recent machine that builds the machine. Over-indexing on fancy production automation is part of what made the Model 3 launch so painful for them, as admitted by Elon himself. They probably could have had a much happier path spending less capital on a slower, more traditional production ramp-up.
rory_isAdonk 6y ago
this is simply to keep the stock price at a certain level. half of everything he says is to feed into an image which keeps that stock at that level.
- maxlamb 6y ago
  But didn't he say a couple of weeks ago that Tesla's stock price is too high? So is he trying to increase or decrease the stock price?
- nickik 6y ago
  That is such nonsensical believe that is blows my mind that people actually think it. Do you really think Elon has a whole communication strategy design to 'keep the stock high' but then tweets 'the stock is to high'. How exactly does that make any sense at all? He does the exact same thing with SpaceX and there is no stock market there. Why would he do that? This has been his method before Tesla was a stock company as well. The same for the Boring company that only has a few investors, mostly him. The reason he says what he says is the same as it has always been and he has explained this 100 times already, he sets targets that are very optimistic and he sets them publicaly, and even if they are off by 10% it still very fast. You can't achieve high goals unless you set them, and that is what he believes and how he has run his companies. Elon has also said 100x that the short term stock market really doesn't matter to him, and he has proven that over and over again. The reason for the stock price is not because what Musk says but what people believe the company can do and because Elon makes it clear what the priority is for them. It does not mean more then 1% of inverters believe Model Y will actually roll of the line in Texas by the end of they year.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
toolz 6y ago
So they've already built a factory in under a year, but it's delusional to think they could cut that time by 30-40%? I don't think it's likely to happen, but delusional is a stretch.
- tech-historian 6y ago
  Well, construction in China != construction in the US. US has permits, environmental reviews, inspections, labor laws, etc etc that all add time.
  - op03 6y ago
    In Texas all kinds of weird stuff is possible thanks to undocumented labor with ambiguous rights- https://www.texastribune.org/2020/04/27/meatpacking-texas-coronavirus-panhandle/ https://www.texastribune.org/2020/04/27/meatpacking-texas-co... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-essential-workers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/opinion/sunday/coronaviru...
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    Texas is rolling out the mat for Tesla [1]. They will move faster on permitting and reviews. Tesla seems to be moving quickly with GF4 construction in Berlin [2], even with German labor laws (which is good! you still have to make sure labor regulation is adhered to). Texas is not California. The deadline is not set in stone; it is an aspirational goal to motivate. Lots of oil and gas (O&G) construction/services folks looking for work right now in Texas [3], so it's a good time for Tesla to move in. Also, Texas has an abundance of cheap wind energy they can't export due to ERCOT interconnect capacity issues. The SpaceX McGregor engine development and static fire test facility is only 90 minutes north of Austin, and Tesla already has an Autopilot R&D office there for the engineers they hired from AMD. Good pick for the next factory. Maybe a SpaceX HQ relo is in future plans. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-tesla-texas/musk-texas-governor-talk-about-potential-tesla-move-to-lone-star-state-idUSKBN22P06O https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-tesla-... (Musk, Texas governor talk about potential Tesla move to Lone Star state) [2] https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-gigafactory-4-berlin-ground-leveling-completion/ https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-gigafactory-4-berlin-ground-... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/business/energy-environment/coronavirus-oil-prices-collapse.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/business/energy-environme...
sidibe 6y ago
He has no sense of time. Every year they're supposed to have robotaxis by the end of the year and they've only just started to jankily handle stoplights
- rcMgD2BwE72F 6y ago
  Back in 2013, they targeted 35GWh of battery production in 2020 for 500K/y vehicles (source: https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/blog_attachments/gigafactory.pdf https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/blog_attachments/g...) They've already exceeded that run rate on production and delivery (both batteries and vehicles) while being profitable. They do have ~a million cars on the road but the software is neither capable of self-driving nor car sharing. They year isn't over, though, and the comment about robotaxis was that the car would be feature-complete[0], not operational. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_complete https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_complete
  - delfinom 6y ago
    He wasn't off his rocker as much in 2013 as he is now. Sleep deprivation and possibly drugs really do wonders for mental health long term....
    - rcMgD2BwE72F 6y ago
      Yet, his companies are in a much better position compared to 2013. What should one be worried about? The name of his children and his Twitter rants/jokes? Or how the companies we're talking about are actually performing?
    - soulofmischief 6y ago
      Do you think you might be oversimplifying complex human behavior to a fault? Especially with no real insight into his behavior?
- jfoster 6y ago
  Rest of the companies doing that are in more or less the same boat. Tesla ahead of all of them in bringing some pieces of the autonomy to market.
_Microft 6y ago
According to Wikipedia (german article on Tesla Gigafactory 3), Tesla went from the ground-breaking ceremony at beginning of january 2019 in Shanghai to first cars produced there in november of the same year. They might be getting practice in building factories (what's the learning curve for car factories?).
- foota 6y ago
  I assumed this was due to Chinese experience building factories and a large labor pool, would be impressive to replicate that time here.
- 7thaccount 6y ago
  The safety requirements are so much more lax that I'm willing to bet it makes building a factory much quicker in China.
  - chrisan 6y ago
    Probably also more lax in TX than CA
    - lolsal 6y ago
      What makes you think this?
      - rconti 6y ago
        Part of the state's business model is bragging about businesses "fleeing" high-tax, high-regulation states like CA. Also, there was a thread a few days back about OSHA requirements; the Federal government sets minimum standards but each state's OSHA is free to set higher standard on top of that. There is a line of thinking (at least, among Tesla apologists) that CalOSHA is "the reason" that Tesla has the "most reported safety incidents" of auto mfgrs.
    - pvarangot 6y ago
      Not a chance, I worked with similarly regulated providers in the US.
eloff 6y ago
I think the rule with Elon Musk is all his estimates are extremely optimistic and you need to multiply them by two or three to get closer to reality. But I'm sure it serves a purpose in giving his employees an aggressive target to aim at. Even if they miss it, at least they probably got there sooner.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 6y ago
  Musk rarely gives estimates, but targets (used to motivate people, for instance, and to overcompensate any unexpected issue or mistake). I'm looking for his most ambitious and oldest targets and so far, most of them have been reached/exceeded. The most important one being the 500,000 production vehicles run rate for 2020 and 35 GWh battery production for Gigafactory Nevaga. Multiplying that duration by 2 or 3 would bring us to 2027 or 2034... If you can find an even bigger and older target, please share so we can re-evaluate.
  - eloff 6y ago
    His track record on things like self driving is not even close to accurate. But that's to be expected, manufacturing is more engineering and self driving is more research. Engineering is easier to estimate (note, still not easy!)
    - foobiekr 6y ago
      His track record on the NUMMI plant wasn't very good either. Over-automation and many other issues.
      - rcMgD2BwE72F 6y ago
        Yet, they keep completing their overall objectives. Why do subsidiary goals like level of automation (remember the fluff bot failure [0]) matter? How could one learn and progress without trials and errors? [0] https://qz.com/1268647/elon-musk-says-a-fluff-bot-showed-him-the-folly-of-teslas-quest-for-a-fully-automated-car-factory/ https://qz.com/1268647/elon-musk-says-a-fluff-bot-showed-him...
leesec 6y ago
In America yeah. They did it in China.
jjtheblunt 6y ago
what if the slow stage is acquiring the heavy machinery (stamps, industrial robotics), and those are available with less delay than before?
briffle 6y ago
Keep in mind, this isn't a brand new line/model. They have an existing line in place in China at least, they just need to copy it. They also built a new line in a giant tent in CA in a few weeks.
kire2345 6y ago
From the article I read on Electrek on this, they speculated that in the first phase this could be a general assembly only. Considering they built an additional line in a tent in Fremont once, 6 Months is not crazy. https://electrek.co/2020/05/15/tesla-factory-austin-texas/ https://electrek.co/2020/05/15/tesla-factory-austin-texas/
sliken 6y ago
I'd think that, but I have to say that china model 3 factory went from mud to producing cars amazingly quickly. The ended up being what 9 months ahead of schedule?

"But Musk is said to want to start construction extremely soon and aims to have Model Y vehicles coming out of the plant by the end of the year." That is just delusional.

voodooranger 6y ago

maybe. but they’re getting better at building the machine that builds the machine that builds the machine.

ctdonath 6y ago
That’s the scale most don’t realize he’s operating at. With a goal of settling 100,000 on Mars, he has to reach a point of practically commoditizing production of factories.
mplewis 6y ago
Maybe he should get better at building cars.
stetrain 6y ago
Chinese labor? That's the machine that built their most recent machine that builds the machine. Over-indexing on fancy production automation is part of what made the Model 3 launch so painful for them, as admitted by Elon himself. They probably could have had a much happier path spending less capital on a slower, more traditional production ramp-up.

rory_isAdonk 6y ago

this is simply to keep the stock price at a certain level. half of everything he says is to feed into an image which keeps that stock at that level.

maxlamb 6y ago
But didn't he say a couple of weeks ago that Tesla's stock price is too high? So is he trying to increase or decrease the stock price?
nickik 6y ago
That is such nonsensical believe that is blows my mind that people actually think it. Do you really think Elon has a whole communication strategy design to 'keep the stock high' but then tweets 'the stock is to high'. How exactly does that make any sense at all? He does the exact same thing with SpaceX and there is no stock market there. Why would he do that? This has been his method before Tesla was a stock company as well. The same for the Boring company that only has a few investors, mostly him. The reason he says what he says is the same as it has always been and he has explained this 100 times already, he sets targets that are very optimistic and he sets them publicaly, and even if they are off by 10% it still very fast. You can't achieve high goals unless you set them, and that is what he believes and how he has run his companies. Elon has also said 100x that the short term stock market really doesn't matter to him, and he has proven that over and over again. The reason for the stock price is not because what Musk says but what people believe the company can do and because Elon makes it clear what the priority is for them. It does not mean more then 1% of inverters believe Model Y will actually roll of the line in Texas by the end of they year.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

toolz 6y ago

So they've already built a factory in under a year, but it's delusional to think they could cut that time by 30-40%? I don't think it's likely to happen, but delusional is a stretch.

tech-historian 6y ago
Well, construction in China != construction in the US. US has permits, environmental reviews, inspections, labor laws, etc etc that all add time.
- op03 6y ago
  In Texas all kinds of weird stuff is possible thanks to undocumented labor with ambiguous rights- https://www.texastribune.org/2020/04/27/meatpacking-texas-coronavirus-panhandle/ https://www.texastribune.org/2020/04/27/meatpacking-texas-co... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-essential-workers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/opinion/sunday/coronaviru...
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  Texas is rolling out the mat for Tesla [1]. They will move faster on permitting and reviews. Tesla seems to be moving quickly with GF4 construction in Berlin [2], even with German labor laws (which is good! you still have to make sure labor regulation is adhered to). Texas is not California. The deadline is not set in stone; it is an aspirational goal to motivate. Lots of oil and gas (O&G) construction/services folks looking for work right now in Texas [3], so it's a good time for Tesla to move in. Also, Texas has an abundance of cheap wind energy they can't export due to ERCOT interconnect capacity issues. The SpaceX McGregor engine development and static fire test facility is only 90 minutes north of Austin, and Tesla already has an Autopilot R&D office there for the engineers they hired from AMD. Good pick for the next factory. Maybe a SpaceX HQ relo is in future plans. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-tesla-texas/musk-texas-governor-talk-about-potential-tesla-move-to-lone-star-state-idUSKBN22P06O https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-tesla-... (Musk, Texas governor talk about potential Tesla move to Lone Star state) [2] https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-gigafactory-4-berlin-ground-leveling-completion/ https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-gigafactory-4-berlin-ground-... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/business/energy-environment/coronavirus-oil-prices-collapse.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/business/energy-environme...

sidibe 6y ago

He has no sense of time. Every year they're supposed to have robotaxis by the end of the year and they've only just started to jankily handle stoplights

rcMgD2BwE72F 6y ago
Back in 2013, they targeted 35GWh of battery production in 2020 for 500K/y vehicles (source: https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/blog_attachments/gigafactory.pdf https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/blog_attachments/g...) They've already exceeded that run rate on production and delivery (both batteries and vehicles) while being profitable. They do have ~a million cars on the road but the software is neither capable of self-driving nor car sharing. They year isn't over, though, and the comment about robotaxis was that the car would be feature-complete[0], not operational. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_complete https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_complete
- delfinom 6y ago
  He wasn't off his rocker as much in 2013 as he is now. Sleep deprivation and possibly drugs really do wonders for mental health long term....
  - rcMgD2BwE72F 6y ago
    Yet, his companies are in a much better position compared to 2013. What should one be worried about? The name of his children and his Twitter rants/jokes? Or how the companies we're talking about are actually performing?
  - soulofmischief 6y ago
    Do you think you might be oversimplifying complex human behavior to a fault? Especially with no real insight into his behavior?
jfoster 6y ago
Rest of the companies doing that are in more or less the same boat. Tesla ahead of all of them in bringing some pieces of the autonomy to market.

_Microft 6y ago

According to Wikipedia (german article on Tesla Gigafactory 3), Tesla went from the ground-breaking ceremony at beginning of january 2019 in Shanghai to first cars produced there in november of the same year. They might be getting practice in building factories (what's the learning curve for car factories?).

foota 6y ago
I assumed this was due to Chinese experience building factories and a large labor pool, would be impressive to replicate that time here.
7thaccount 6y ago
The safety requirements are so much more lax that I'm willing to bet it makes building a factory much quicker in China.
- chrisan 6y ago
  Probably also more lax in TX than CA
  - lolsal 6y ago
    What makes you think this?
    - rconti 6y ago
      Part of the state's business model is bragging about businesses "fleeing" high-tax, high-regulation states like CA. Also, there was a thread a few days back about OSHA requirements; the Federal government sets minimum standards but each state's OSHA is free to set higher standard on top of that. There is a line of thinking (at least, among Tesla apologists) that CalOSHA is "the reason" that Tesla has the "most reported safety incidents" of auto mfgrs.
  - pvarangot 6y ago
    Not a chance, I worked with similarly regulated providers in the US.

eloff 6y ago

I think the rule with Elon Musk is all his estimates are extremely optimistic and you need to multiply them by two or three to get closer to reality. But I'm sure it serves a purpose in giving his employees an aggressive target to aim at. Even if they miss it, at least they probably got there sooner.

rcMgD2BwE72F 6y ago
Musk rarely gives estimates, but targets (used to motivate people, for instance, and to overcompensate any unexpected issue or mistake). I'm looking for his most ambitious and oldest targets and so far, most of them have been reached/exceeded. The most important one being the 500,000 production vehicles run rate for 2020 and 35 GWh battery production for Gigafactory Nevaga. Multiplying that duration by 2 or 3 would bring us to 2027 or 2034... If you can find an even bigger and older target, please share so we can re-evaluate.
- eloff 6y ago
  His track record on things like self driving is not even close to accurate. But that's to be expected, manufacturing is more engineering and self driving is more research. Engineering is easier to estimate (note, still not easy!)
  - foobiekr 6y ago
    His track record on the NUMMI plant wasn't very good either. Over-automation and many other issues.
    - rcMgD2BwE72F 6y ago
      Yet, they keep completing their overall objectives. Why do subsidiary goals like level of automation (remember the fluff bot failure [0]) matter? How could one learn and progress without trials and errors? [0] https://qz.com/1268647/elon-musk-says-a-fluff-bot-showed-him-the-folly-of-teslas-quest-for-a-fully-automated-car-factory/ https://qz.com/1268647/elon-musk-says-a-fluff-bot-showed-him...

leesec 6y ago

In America yeah. They did it in China.

jjtheblunt 6y ago

what if the slow stage is acquiring the heavy machinery (stamps, industrial robotics), and those are available with less delay than before?

briffle 6y ago

Keep in mind, this isn't a brand new line/model. They have an existing line in place in China at least, they just need to copy it. They also built a new line in a giant tent in CA in a few weeks.

kire2345 6y ago

From the article I read on Electrek on this, they speculated that in the first phase this could be a general assembly only. Considering they built an additional line in a tent in Fremont once, 6 Months is not crazy. https://electrek.co/2020/05/15/tesla-factory-austin-texas/ https://electrek.co/2020/05/15/tesla-factory-austin-texas/

sliken 6y ago

I'd think that, but I have to say that china model 3 factory went from mud to producing cars amazingly quickly. The ended up being what 9 months ahead of schedule?