depending on how you define it we’re already there. many of the controls that you think are directly operating the car are actually talking to a computer.
call it whatever you want but it’s a user-friendly control thingy for the computer. 2 is better than 1.
I’m not sure what your point is, then. The common functions can be controlled via the multi-function steering wheel controls and the touchscreen. The less common controls will be touchscreen only. Seat position, mirrors, air vents, and perhaps a couple other things will be profiled. Some stuff will be voice-activated, though I personally wouldn’t depend on that too much.
I’m on the list for a model 3, but I live on the east coast, so by the time they start delivering here, there may be other options. On the other hand, one of the (faraway-ish) places I drive to has a supercharging station, so that’s a consideration.
So an update is in order: this summer, one analyst expected that Tesla would deliver 83,000 Model 3s this year, based on hitting 5,000 cars per week in October. Link.
Thus far, Telsa is averging 120 cars per month. Link.
I’m very much rooting for Tesla, and I may consider a Model 3 for my next car in a few years. But let’s get this straight: no Elon Musk prediction should be given very much mind. I’m undecided as to whether he sets outrageous goals (aka “lies”) to motivate his workforce, in that “beatings will continue until morale improves” theory of management; or if he’s just poorly informed as to how his businesses are performing.
I honestly think he believes you can build cars like writing software. if schedules slip, throw bodies and hours at the problem.
unfortunately not the case. There are things which have to be done before other things can start, and those things take time.
Tesla is trying to get a baby in one month via 9 women.
How exactly is Tesla responsible for hitting targets estimated by a random blogger? 83,000 units in 2017 is way out of line with anything Tesla said. Here’s an actual quote from Tesla:
Somehow, the blogger went from “5k per week sometime in the 4th quarter” to “5k per week in September and more from then on”.
Tesla is definitely a little behind on their ramp, but this Ben Sullins guy isn’t a professional analyst and certainly not a Tesla spokesperson; he’s a YouTube fanboy blogger.
Tesla tanking?
No.
Still up 70% over the past 12 months. Which is absurd and probably not justified even if they were on schedule to hit production targets. It may drop some but it will stay sizably above where it was a year ago and running year on year still keep numbers outperforming the market overall, even after a sizable correction.
Once they start producing they will very likely sell as many of them as they can make as fast as they can make them. The Bolt is doing well, now up to almost 2800 vehicles sold in a month, but that’s nothing compared to the pent up demand for the new Tesla.
Sooner or later all of those people who are buying TSLA at its current high share price are going to want to realize a return on their investment. A company (especially a manufacturing company) is far more than its share price.
and even with GM’s decades of experience and economies of scale (e.g. building it in an existing plant alongside other models) they’re supposedly still losing money on the Bolt.
Tesla will definitely sell every Model 3 they can manufacture. The question is whether they can manufacture enough of them quickly enough to avoid disaster.
Tesla is currently losing about $1.5 billion a year, and has reserves of $3.5. That gives them two years or so of runway before they need to start turning a profit or get more funding. They expect their margin to be about 15% going forward, and model 3s are selling for around $50k right now, but are supposed to eventually be $35k or so (I think most of the people who reserved one expect to pay the lower price. So they need to sell between 200,000 and 300,000 Model 3s a year to break even.
Yeah, if they actually hit 5000 vehicles a week in the first part of 2018 and ramp to 10,000 a week later in the year, then great. But if they delay again, and we hit the end of 2018 with average production for the year more like 1000-2000 a week, they’ll have sold every car they could make and still be headed towards bankruptcy.
Assembly lines that make thousands of cars a week are really hard, and Tesla has not yet demonstrated the ability to create one. I hope Tesla succeeds, but I would certainly not buy their stock right now.
You mean dividends or EPS? People are still buying up AMZN. No dividends and a P/E of something like 280. Pretty consistently ran losses for net earnings until 2016. It didn’t mean the company was “tanking” or that those who invested did not experience a return on their investments.
Investors sometimes buy a story, and the belief that others are buying the story and that more will. Several months behind schedule is not going to be enough to convince those who have bought that story that it is more one told at bedtimes than what will really be. They be graced by most investors into mid next year to get production really into gear. And if they run more losses by way of investing more in R&D and in capacity they’ll be granted a few years of losses too.
As far as running out of the fuel in the reserves tank goes … TSLA has had no problem selling bonds when they need cash and could easily issue several million more shares to raise a billion or so more with minimal dilutional impact. If they are indeed ramping up to the rate consistent with 200K+/yr over the course of next year, then they’ll find plenty of fiscal charging stations to be able to plug into to get a few more miles down the road.
They might tank. Hell AMZN might yet. Every year for the last decade plus had a cadre predicting AAPL would. Maybe they will yet too. But not TSLA this quarter or this year. If production does not ramp up over the next six months? Then yes, next year they may experience range anxiety.
(I do not directly own any of the stocks mentioned but had been a long time shareholder in AAPL.)
Some nifty videos of their production:
Model 3 General Assembly
Model 3 Welding
The general assembly one is pretty impressive. While not unheard of, installing the dash and seats with robots is pretty uncommon, and usually done by hand.
I listened to their conference call. Their current bottleneck is in a few stages of battery pack assembly. They contracted out the work and there wasn’t enough oversight to catch that the subcontractor totally dropped the ball. There are a few other problem areas but that was the long pole for now.
The 3 production ramp seems to be delayed by about 3 months. Not ideal but also insignificant in the grand scheme of things. The X ramp was far more painful and no one cares about it now.
They’ve gone from 2,500 units in 2012 to 250,000 units today. Although not directly analogous to each other, each order of magnitude increase is a serious change in how the manufacturing is run. They’ve gone through two such step changes in 5 years; it seems like they can pull off one more.
Amazon doesn’t manufacture anything.
because doing it by hand (with an ergo assist arm) is faster. The first thing I noticed in that video is that the car those robots were installing seats into wasn’t moving. Every single other automotive assembly plant has the cars going down a continuously moving assembly line, and humans (with mechanical assist) are installing parts onto vehicles without stopping the assembly line. That you think that video is “impressive” speaks volumes.
so you’re admitting you believe every single word Tesla tells you?
clearly you’ve never set foot in an automotive assembly plant.
Okay, Elon said 1,600 cars by September, and reality was 220.
https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2017/10/02/tesla-model-3-production
There is no universe, no nitpicking of the numbers, that adds up to anything other than Tesla massively missing its production goals. How can you describe this as “a little behind in its ramp?” Was Hiroshima a “fairly noisy event?”
Describing things in terms of time makes more sense than fractions. None of the early numbers are meaningful in the long term (like a year)–even tiny glitches in the setup could bring the entire throughput to 0. The only real question is how far away they are from achieving some reasonable fraction of full throughput. If their conference call is to be believed, that’s about 3 months farther away than expected. Compared to Tesla’s previous misses, that’s barely worth mentioning.
That you think the speed of an individual vehicle has any relevance to the overall throughput of a line speaks volumes. I’m sure Tesla is capable of adding some buffer space before this station so that the line behind it can progress while this is happening.
I’m just relaying what they said, not taking a hard position on whether it’s true. But it was a conference call with analysts, and it would be blatantly illegal for them to lie outright.
I got a nice tour of Tesla’s plant, though I’d consider this a non sequitur. Not sure what it has to do with the different sorts of scaling problems one faces when going from, say, 10 to 100 to 1000 to 10000 units a week.
Tesla just sent an email to Model 3 reservation holders asking us to “view your updated delivery window.”
Mine had been November 2017 - January 2018 for a $49k long range premium model or February - April 2018 for a $35k standard model. Mine now shows January - March 2018 for the long range, and “Early 2018” for the standard. I have a March 31, 2016 reservation, but I am not a current Tesla owner, and I don’t have any relationship to the company (other than loaning them $1000, this one time).
Paraphrasing something Musk, or perhaps a journalist, said. It doesn’t matter if they make 100 or 250 a week now. What matters is when they bump to 1000, 2500, 5000, and 10k per week.
Stress and discombobulation?