[syedkarim]

What’s strange is that it’s just a PCB. It should not be an issue for them to stock or quick-build a circuit board. They can’t possibly still blame the chip-shortage bogeyman.

[FireBeyond]

Interestingly, this is one of the theories for why Tesla's parts situation sucks.

While you could also argue that they make things complex for themselves by having these rolling updates rather than using a Model Year system...

Elon, as is well known, is FANATICAL about the quarterly numbers. Burn the midnight oil to pump up the deliveries, etc., etc.

The thing with that, every part that's on a shelf waiting to be sold for warranty or accident repair is a part that can't go on a new car and boost the numbers. Wall Street doesn't give a shit what your parts market numbers look like, it's "How many Teslas did you build this quarter?" so there's a lot less incentive to fully stock that market - Tesla already has the sale booked and the money in their balance book.

[shalmanese]

That may be a theory but there's a much more mundane theory that explains the crunch of the last few years:

Tesla sold about 100,000 Model 3/Ys to Hertz for rental in 2021.

Hertz rented a ton of EVs to people who were only used to the acceleration curve of ICE cars.

A ton of those people unexpectedly crashed those cars [1].

This clogged up Tesla's repair channels and blew out the timeline for everyone else.

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/18/business/why-do-people-ke...

[Retric]

Which is strange from a financial standpoint. Individual parts generally have a massive markup compared to the total cost of a car.

There was some magazine that once did this with a Honda motorcycle and the total cost for parts was 6x what the bike would cost when new.