There is no way on god's earth that Tesla can ramp up production like that. I suspect the first cars that they sell will roll off the VP tools and not off the main lines anyway. With a lack of product maturation the quality of the first cars will be appalling too.
I'd bet that the guys at the coal face are wanting to kill their PR people right now for making promises that they know will get broken.
Disclosure: work in the automotive industry designing high volume production lines and planning vehicle launches.
I'm reminded a little of how the Blackberry board supposedly watched the iPhone announcement and insisted it was fake, as there was "no way" someone could build and profitably sell a phone with that feature-set.
Tesla might not do what they're promising. Hell, they probably won't do what they're promising. But pronouncing something impossible on the basis of industry experience can be a dangerous thing. Some things are considered unthinkable and impossible only until someone finds a way to do them, after which they are retroactively declared obvious and inevitable.
Certainly, Tesla seem to have the right ideas: Electric cars are inherently simpler, mechanically speaking, than gasoline cars, and they're leveraging this further by reducing the options and variability on the Model 3 to the absolute minimum. They also hired Peter Hochholdinger from Audi as VP of production, and he is pursuing a pretty extreme form of Industry 4.0[1] — with everything in their production process being instrumented, automated and designed for easy replacement.[2]
> I suspect the first cars that they sell will roll off the VP tools and not off the main lines anyway.
There a story a couple of months ago about the fact that they've saved a lot of time by going straight to the main production lines rather than building a testing line first?
Is this a good plan? Time will tell but I'm sure glad I'm not involved. :S
> Let's recap: Tesla's flawed Model X launch was partly due to not taking the time to adjust for problems identified in the soft-tooling phase of pre-production. The lesson Tesla learned? Don't bother with soft tooling for the Model 3.
Wow. Is it just me or does that sound like "The unit tests kept failing and made us miss a deadline. No more unit tests!"
People said the exact same thing when Musk announced SpaceX. Then they said no big deal after the Falcon 1 worked, and laughed when Musk said he was going to land the Falcon 9 on a barge in the ocean, then he did. Next they said there was simply no way SpaceX would be able to refly a used first stage, which they've now successfully done twice.
History of his accomplishments show us "industry knowledge" doesn't really matter as he's trying to do things explicitly different than the rest of the industry.
Disclosure: I've never worked in or around the automotive industry.
The amount of focus and effort Tesla has put toward the tech in the Model 3 pales in comparison to the amount they have put toward factory automation. Musk has said as much in multiple interviews. He's talked about how it's 10x harder to 'build the machines that build the machines'.
See also their acquisition of Grohmann Engineering.
Having said all that, we will have to wait and see. One thing I do know is that Musk's ventures have a long history of surprising the status quo.
There is no way anyone could ever profitably produce a rapidly reusable rocket. No one can make an online bank. No one can do solar profitably. No one can replace the yellow pages (Zip2 got passed on when an investor threw the yellow pages on the table). No one can make an electric vehicle that doesn't suck...
You might not be wrong, but the shorts get squeezed Everytime someone says this. I wouldn't bet against Tesla and the market is more than tolerant of these delays
I would have more confidence in this announcement if it was not made a day before Tesla announced that they are experiencing falling demand for their existing line and barely hit the bottom of their production forecast.
Their initial "hand over" is to employees, not real customers, so it is really just internal testing and does not indicate anything about when actual deliveries will begin.
Hitting delivery deadlines is actually worse than missing them if you are hitting them by pushing an unfinished product which is losing tons of money per unit due to inefficient production processes and creating huge future liabilities for warranty repairs, recalls, and negligence lawsuits if someone gets injured by a defect.
There is a reason why Goldman is revising their price target down on this news and their target is half the current stock price.
This is not gods earth. I would be interested in how they solved these challenges but you come off being someone who just points out problems which is not as helpful as someone who thinks of solutions, also not as abrasive either.
There was an article recently where some higher ups talked about the engineering. They described focusing work on the factory itself instead of the product with the idea being that every time you improve or fix the factory, you gain many upsides in the final output.
Can't find the article but I was an interesting read
Not that it means much, but I saw a semi trailer full of new Model 3 on I-80 heading east near Des Moines Iowa today. All of them were black and still had factory wrap on the panels.
So is it likely (or even possible) that TSLA really is the most shorted stock on Earth? I've seen this tossed around repeatedly, although perhaps it's just a rumor.
On the other hand,
> Tesla said that it's now "rare" for a new Model X to have "initial quality problems." [1]
Tying novel ideas in a mass road vehicle is a very, very bad idea. If these ideas include supply chain and QC shortcuts, it pretty much guarantees failure. I applaud Tesla for "making EV sexy" and pushing existing OEMs, but unless Musk gets his ego in check and starts tackling the boring (no pun intended) problems instead of trying to promote himself as autonomous driving messiah, I don't see the first batch of mass produced 3s as having a high chance of being acceptable.
Not sure about Earth, but I think it is the most shorted stock on the US market. Something like $10B in short interest last time I checked a few weeks ago.
I wonder if Tesla is worried that this new model might cannibalize its more expensive, more profitable model S?
Also, I should think that the level of automation required to produce a mass market car on the scale necessary to be profitable would be insane... And I bet Toyota, GM and all the others have patents on many, if not all of these production automation technologies.
I doubt it, suspect it's more likely to open them up to a whole new market.
For example, I would never consider dropping $90k on a car (unless I was earning many multiples of that a year), but $35k on a car that has the right range for me, and many of the mod cons of the grown up version? That's more likely.
Ask yourself this - why would anyone buy an A1, A3 or A4 when there is the A5, A7, TT and R8/RS8 from Audi? Because people want different things from cars.
> I wonder if Tesla is worried that this new model might cannibalize its more expensive, more profitable model S?
Obligatory "If you don't cannibalise yourself, someone else will" Steve Jobs quote! I see them aimed at different markets though; I could never justify buying a Model S, but a Model 3 is definitely feasible (especially in the UK where petrol prices are high).
They clearly are worried about exactly that. They've spent the past year discouraging people from reserving a Model 3, in a clear attempt to drive more Model S/X sales. Elon has gone on a couple of Twitter sprees to tell people that the Model 3 exists to be cheaper, won't be as good as the S, and that you should buy an S or X if you want the best Tesla has to offer. Just the other day Tesla shaved a full second off the low-end Model S's 0-60 time, which is likely intended to give the S a solid performance edge over the 3.
I remember hearing some time back that Tesla's entire electric car plan was to produce the more expensive, luxury cars first, using the benefits (monetary and production improvements and so on) from those to start making more affordable electric cars - because understandably, most folks can't understand the more expensive ones. The vision is more to make sure everyone can own an electric car, hence the cheaper models.
So no, I truly don't think that is a worry. I think this is just continuation of the bigger picture and a calculated risk.
The power of the other companies would not be their patents or such related to production, its their ability to produce in any number they choose to do so. Hell GM proved they could pivot/etc with speed when they delivered a well developed and beat expectations "affordable" two hundred mile range EV before Tesla.
While its cool Tesla has entered "production" with the model 3 I haven't seen one story on what the actual production line looks like. How many people are hired for it and trained? Did they get all the equipment in, installed, and certified? Surely these can be found out.
I hope this is not like the X launch where some insiders made jokes about the paint being practically wet in regards to how close they cut it getting just the stage vehicles delivered.
the big concerns going forward are obviously cannibalization of the S sales and the fact these cars will be in the hands of people who won't be as accepting of issues as the early adopters have been. its easy to dismiss issues with your third, fourth, or fifth family vehicle. However some of the 3 buyers will be likely pushing their finances and this will be their only or second.
They aren't selling car assembly robotics, so the biggest issue (one would think) would be acquiring the robotics in the first place, as it would be the theoretical company selling the robots that would be infringing any patents.
Tesla is (to my understanding) free to use whatever technology they like in their factories, patented or not, so long as the products they're selling are non-infringing.
Assuming they're not now.
8-9 AM work-days it seems that the HOV lane is only marginally faster. Going back from Mountain View to San Jose at 4-5 is equally as bad with traffic grinding to a halt near the Montegue Express exit in any lane.
It's kind of ridiculous actually because even if you're in a 4 person carpool its pretty horrific.
I live in Denver and we only have a few HOV lanes, but none on my commute. I'm fortunate enough to live close enough to one of the, somewhat weak, train system lines and now commute vis public transit and drive my car maybe 1x/2weeks. It's been really liberating. We still need one car for the family, but not one per working adult.
The nice thing about a car with Autopilot is that it makes driving in heavy traffic less stressful. You still lose the time, but the trip is almost as relaxing as being a passenger during heavy traffic.
Before you disagree, remember there was a time they went from exactly zero HOV lanes to one.. which is an infinite increase. This time they will go from whatever they have now (usually one) to two, which is at most only a 100% increase.
Also keep in mind the day will come that all roads will only permit electric vehicles, essentially meaning all lanes are "HOV". So from 2017 -> the future we must transition to that, which means we have to start adding HOV lanes sooner or later.
Any fellow reservation holders have an idea of when to start expecting our units to roll out? I'm told the #'s are not sequential and correspond to regions instead...
According to Tesla [0], 8 years is the minimum expected lifetime. After that point the battery will still work just fine, but the capacity can drop below 80% of total.
[+] [-] Munkum|8 years ago|reply
I'd bet that the guys at the coal face are wanting to kill their PR people right now for making promises that they know will get broken.
Disclosure: work in the automotive industry designing high volume production lines and planning vehicle launches.
[+] [-] stupidcar|8 years ago|reply
Tesla might not do what they're promising. Hell, they probably won't do what they're promising. But pronouncing something impossible on the basis of industry experience can be a dangerous thing. Some things are considered unthinkable and impossible only until someone finds a way to do them, after which they are retroactively declared obvious and inevitable.
Certainly, Tesla seem to have the right ideas: Electric cars are inherently simpler, mechanically speaking, than gasoline cars, and they're leveraging this further by reducing the options and variability on the Model 3 to the absolute minimum. They also hired Peter Hochholdinger from Audi as VP of production, and he is pursuing a pretty extreme form of Industry 4.0[1] — with everything in their production process being instrumented, automated and designed for easy replacement.[2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industry_4.0 [2] http://www.mljournal-digital.com/meleadershipjournal/october...
[+] [-] taneq|8 years ago|reply
There a story a couple of months ago about the fact that they've saved a lot of time by going straight to the main production lines rather than building a testing line first?
Is this a good plan? Time will tell but I'm sure glad I'm not involved. :S
Sources:
http://www.newsweek.com/tesla-skips-traditional-manufacturin...
http://autoweek.com/article/green-cars/tesla-wont-test-model...
Edit: From the second link:
> Let's recap: Tesla's flawed Model X launch was partly due to not taking the time to adjust for problems identified in the soft-tooling phase of pre-production. The lesson Tesla learned? Don't bother with soft tooling for the Model 3.
Wow. Is it just me or does that sound like "The unit tests kept failing and made us miss a deadline. No more unit tests!"
[+] [-] SEJeff|8 years ago|reply
History of his accomplishments show us "industry knowledge" doesn't really matter as he's trying to do things explicitly different than the rest of the industry.
[+] [-] Diederich|8 years ago|reply
The amount of focus and effort Tesla has put toward the tech in the Model 3 pales in comparison to the amount they have put toward factory automation. Musk has said as much in multiple interviews. He's talked about how it's 10x harder to 'build the machines that build the machines'.
See also their acquisition of Grohmann Engineering.
Having said all that, we will have to wait and see. One thing I do know is that Musk's ventures have a long history of surprising the status quo.
[+] [-] wand3r|8 years ago|reply
You might not be wrong, but the shorts get squeezed Everytime someone says this. I wouldn't bet against Tesla and the market is more than tolerant of these delays
[+] [-] calafrax|8 years ago|reply
Their initial "hand over" is to employees, not real customers, so it is really just internal testing and does not indicate anything about when actual deliveries will begin.
Hitting delivery deadlines is actually worse than missing them if you are hitting them by pushing an unfinished product which is losing tons of money per unit due to inefficient production processes and creating huge future liabilities for warranty repairs, recalls, and negligence lawsuits if someone gets injured by a defect.
There is a reason why Goldman is revising their price target down on this news and their target is half the current stock price.
[+] [-] fosco|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aron|8 years ago|reply
I'm not clear what like that you are referring to, or what would be a more reasonable plan.
[+] [-] stevenj|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kluny|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devopsproject|8 years ago|reply
Can't find the article but I was an interesting read
[+] [-] zerohp|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tcoppi|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greenyoda|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] mfrommil|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Fej|8 years ago|reply
On the other hand,
> Tesla said that it's now "rare" for a new Model X to have "initial quality problems." [1]
doesn't sound very pretty.
[1] http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/03/tesla-delivers-22000-vehicles...
[+] [-] _pmf_|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] castratikron|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crunchaboo87|8 years ago|reply
Disclosure: Short Tesla and Alibaba.
[+] [-] jondubois|8 years ago|reply
Also, I should think that the level of automation required to produce a mass market car on the scale necessary to be profitable would be insane... And I bet Toyota, GM and all the others have patents on many, if not all of these production automation technologies.
[+] [-] philjohn|8 years ago|reply
For example, I would never consider dropping $90k on a car (unless I was earning many multiples of that a year), but $35k on a car that has the right range for me, and many of the mod cons of the grown up version? That's more likely.
Ask yourself this - why would anyone buy an A1, A3 or A4 when there is the A5, A7, TT and R8/RS8 from Audi? Because people want different things from cars.
[+] [-] cjrp|8 years ago|reply
Obligatory "If you don't cannibalise yourself, someone else will" Steve Jobs quote! I see them aimed at different markets though; I could never justify buying a Model S, but a Model 3 is definitely feasible (especially in the UK where petrol prices are high).
[+] [-] mikeash|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Broken_Hippo|8 years ago|reply
So no, I truly don't think that is a worry. I think this is just continuation of the bigger picture and a calculated risk.
[+] [-] skgoa|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] izacus|8 years ago|reply
I don't see people that can easily drop a 100k on a car decide that they're suddenly buy an average Joe car.
[+] [-] Shivetya|8 years ago|reply
While its cool Tesla has entered "production" with the model 3 I haven't seen one story on what the actual production line looks like. How many people are hired for it and trained? Did they get all the equipment in, installed, and certified? Surely these can be found out.
I hope this is not like the X launch where some insiders made jokes about the paint being practically wet in regards to how close they cut it getting just the stage vehicles delivered.
the big concerns going forward are obviously cannibalization of the S sales and the fact these cars will be in the hands of people who won't be as accepting of issues as the early adopters have been. its easy to dismiss issues with your third, fourth, or fifth family vehicle. However some of the 3 buyers will be likely pushing their finances and this will be their only or second.
[+] [-] headmelted|8 years ago|reply
They aren't selling car assembly robotics, so the biggest issue (one would think) would be acquiring the robotics in the first place, as it would be the theoretical company selling the robots that would be infringing any patents.
Tesla is (to my understanding) free to use whatever technology they like in their factories, patented or not, so long as the products they're selling are non-infringing.
[+] [-] takeda|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] radious|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmalynin|8 years ago|reply
It's kind of ridiculous actually because even if you're in a 4 person carpool its pretty horrific.
[+] [-] nerdwaller|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sxp|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grecy|8 years ago|reply
Before you disagree, remember there was a time they went from exactly zero HOV lanes to one.. which is an infinite increase. This time they will go from whatever they have now (usually one) to two, which is at most only a 100% increase.
Also keep in mind the day will come that all roads will only permit electric vehicles, essentially meaning all lanes are "HOV". So from 2017 -> the future we must transition to that, which means we have to start adding HOV lanes sooner or later.
[+] [-] Spiritus|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] synaesthesisx|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tachyonbeam|8 years ago|reply
And accompanying YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcgvAYKro10&t=1648s
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ericfrederich|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DigitalTraffic|8 years ago|reply
Here's hoping they are successful and safe too!
[+] [-] onetokeoverthe|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Qub3d|8 years ago|reply
[0]: https://www.tesla.com/blog/infinite-mile-warranty
[+] [-] asdfGUYasdfn|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] columnm|8 years ago|reply