> > Tesla has accomplished something no other automaker can claim: It's made a relatively affordable electric car.
That quote doesn't even make sense. The Model 3 isn't even the cheapest all electric car...
The Smart Fortwo Electric ($26K), Nissan LEAF ($29K), Volkswagen e-Golf ($30K), and Mitsubishi i-MiEV ($23K).
So Tesla is the only automaker that can claim they made a "relatively affordable electric car" by producing one that's more expensive and has sold fewer units? I do not understand.
Wasn't that goal already met by the EV1 back in the 80s? If you're willing to live with compromises (short range and long recharge times), affordable electric cars are a long since solved problem.
> Wasn't that goal already met by the EV1 back in the 80s?
The EV1 wasn't for sale at any price, so it also wasn't relatively affordable. It was leased at a loss to meet a state law while GM lobbied against the law. (Same with its contemporaries the Toyota RAV4EV and the Honda EVplus.)
Pretty sure the RAV4EV was sold in limited quantities, there's at least two different ones I have seen in downtown Los Altos over the past 10 years, so Toyota didn't try to destroy them all like GM did with the EV1.
That's right, I had some RAV4 EVs were sold after the leases when the line was discontinued (though you may have also seen the newer RAV4 EV, as it was resurrected in 2012.)
Selling something the customer can't buy doesn't make sense either. Waiting a month for your new car to be delivered is insane waiting three years is a broken system.
Tesla Motors expects their customers to be fanatical. But what if I just want to buy a car like a normal person?
Waiting a month is normal in some countries, like mine - Uruguay - if you want a particular make, color or optionals it's worse (they ship it via container from wherever it's produced and takes months).
In Argentina there was a time where slightly used cars sold for more than retail price simply because you had same-day availability instead of waiting for months.
They don't sell any of their vehicles for a loss... do people not read/understand the financials before stating something?
They have a positive operating margin per vehicle, they for the most part always have. Is it as high as they want the margin to be yet, no, but it's not a loss. Are they spending a ton of money? YES! They are spending more on Cap Ex and R&D than Chevy and Ford combined. This is the same argument people made with Amazon for 15 years.. until one day Amazon became one of the top 5 companies by market cap. A high growth company should be reinvesting every dollar, and then borrow a shit ton more to reinvest still.
This isn't really accurate, they shut the line down for a week or so a while back and from indications since then (VIN registrations and deliveries) it seems like they're probably producing around 2,000 a week now.
The trend line they added to the graphs on that page were put in recently to try and show this I think.
That is inaccurate. They did over 2,000 last week and are tracking for 2,500 by the end of this week. There are groups on the forums and such that keep track of the latest VINs people have. Also I believe the goal is 5,000/week, not 10,000.
Meanwhile according to the fanboys in /r/teslamotors it appears deliveries are still riddled with obvious defects. Look at the rims on this brand new vehicle!
That issue by the way with the wheels and even pieces of the vehicle is 100% the service center. Which is a new service center in... Miami! The shit holes of all shit holes when it comes to getting things done RIGHT. You have to pay the service techs under the table if you want anything I'm willing to bet... just like the rest of that bottom feeder of a city.
It's not just Model 3's from that service center that are getting lengthy defect reports. I mean /r/teslamotors made a checklist for people[1] and it's giant. Things wrong with cars that I didn't even know were possible in this day and age.
You'd be shocked to see the numbers of cars bought from dealerships that need to come back for something. And if you look at those cars' respective forums, you see the exact same thing. It is nothing out of the ordinary. I've had to take multiple cars back for issues, including Ford, Toyota, Buick, BMW, and Chevy. The Buick literally had an issue where if you turned the left blinker on, the windshield wipers would stop working until turned off.
I am a Tesla owner of 2 years now, I never had to go back to the service center once, excluding the 1 year routine checkup. I've had zero problems with it. So when you see forum posts and all, also realize there is a bias of only the people with the issues go to post them. It is most certainly not the norm.
Oh, and of all the brands above that I mentioned, the one that was the worst.. the Toyota 4 runner. For all the talk of highest quality, etc, it was practically a lemon. And don't get me started on how many times I ended up just fixing my own Chevy because something else broke!
Vehicle defects are not uncommon, particularly for a new model, even for high end vehicles. A friend purchased a Porsche Panamera, which had a scratch on the rear passenger console.
(disclaimer I own one and a two more family members also own Porsches)
How long did Porsche take to fix it?
I had a small rattling appear on mine after a couple weeks and called and they fixed it on the spot (user error, my son dropped a metal ball through the seatbelt hole that caused it). My cousin had a brand new Panamera with a scratch/dent that didn't notice when he picked it up. Called, 3 days later they called to take the car there and replace the piece (took 3 days since these were the brand new Panameras when they were released and they didn't have that part in stock to replace)
It’s a cult, inside and out. People believe because they want to believe, and because they have faith in Elon Musk. I don’t hate Tesla, and SpaceX is downright exciting, but I also have no particular faith in Elon Musk. Tesla in particular is in some pretty hot financial water with no obvious way out. The whole Hyperloop thing is disappointing to see taken seriously, and it’s hard to ignore just how rich Musk gets while he works peons to the bone.
The Bloomberg article is written in a very confusing manner (journalists these days) but I understood it means they are asking people to volunteer to switch from the S and X production lines to the Model 3 production line. Not to volunteer to work without salary. Perhaps I understood the article wrong?
That's how I read it. They're shutting down the S and X production lines that are ahead of schedule to move people over to the 3 assembly line to meet the delivery target.
Sounds like the S and X lines are shut down and those employees will not get paid (have to take vacation or unpaid time off) unless they volunteer for the Model 3 line.
My guess is that this email was intentionally leaked to create buzz.
“Tesla will suspend Model S and Model X production Thursday and Friday because it’s ahead of target on building those this quarter,”
They are shutting down the line for 2 days to focus on the Model 3 because they are so far behind. They can use some of the people on the Model 3 but 9 women can’t make a baby in a month. Some people will be able to “volunteer” to work and they’ll get paid.
I wonder how motivating it would be if he said "Hit the target and I'll split $50B of the bonus equally among everybody who puts in extra time to make it happen."
According to Google Tesla has about 37,000 employees, so that would work out to a bonus of $1.35 million per assembly line employee, and he still gets to keep a staggering $5 billion of the bonus. It would make ordinary Christmas bonuses look like chopped liver.
I know it is equity, but if they really did that, and if employees could cash it in immediately then they'd all quit because many could likely retire modestly on $1.35M.
But I do agree with the concept, particularly if the equity paid out over ten years or more.
I figure it would probably be paid out in stock options that would need to vest over time. Sort of like working for a startup that has a big IPO.
If you're a youngish guy $1.35M over 50-70 years is only around $35k/year even if you do invest it wisely and luck out. And $35k/year won't be worth as much with inflation constantly eating away at it. Hell, just the taxes and paying off your mortgage on your California home will probably eat it up. Even properly invested it's close to poverty level income. Sure some people will move out to Montana and live out their dream of being Grizzly Adams for the rest of their life, but I thing more would stay and keep working that you might expect.
In a pair of internal memos last week, the heads of engineering and production spelled out measures to free up workers for the Model 3 line and challenged them to reach production goals.
My interpretation of that is that they've eased need for employees in some other departments, and are asking for volunteers to shift to the production line temporarily, not volunteering to work more hours for free or something (I'm sure employees on the line are probably allowed encouraged to work overtime as well at this stage).
The entire presentation of this is odd, and to me just points towards more people trying to manipulate the market. Having a CEO, or even just a manager, send out a memo that appears to me to be a combined pop-talk and solicitation for employees to shift to the line (instead of you know, just reassigning them, because you can as the employer) doesn't seem out of the ordinary to me at all.
All this positive/negative Tesla coverage the last few months is just annoying. Beyond the raw numbers of what they are delivering each week and how close they are to their goal, and how late they are in achieving it, the rest is just spin.
The end of the article suggests that employees who don't "volunteer" to work on the Model 3 after the X/S lines have been paused will have to use PTO or otherwise take unpaid vacation.
Which seems like a bit of a "no duh". Obviously you can't keep working on the same production line if it is currently shut down. It sounds like the Model 3 folks could use some extra hands so it shouldn't be that hard to find something to do.
Feels like these top-level guys think everyone else in the company is as passionate about the product as them, without thinking about the fact that other people in the company don't benefit from the product as much as them. A cash bonus would certainly help.
One thing against Tesla, their valuation demands impeccable execution to the T. If Model 3 has some sort of massive recall, they will be hit very hard.
They do this every single quarter.
There's a reason they got up to 1000 a week right before the end of last quarter, and then dipped back down for months after that. The headline is either going to be that they're on track or that they're not, their stock price is going to be greatly affected one way or the other.
That actually makes sense. If during quarterly earnings they can claim X number of car the last week of the quarter, that will have a significant impact on the stock even if the week after it drops 50%.
I wonder if Tesla will experience an assembly line version of the Mythical Man Month.
I assume the Model 3 line is a bit different from the others, because if it was the same, they wouldn't have so much trouble meeting targets. So the workers who switch to it from other assembly lines will presumably need some time to ramp up.
Elon Musk may be a good visionary but it's astounding how bad he is at operational elements.
Steve Jobs was just as awful at this, the Macintosh project was nearly killed by his ridiculous manufacturing efforts. The resurgence of Apple was only possible with someone like Tim Cook who knew how to build a reliable manufacturing supply chain.
Man.... if this doesn't trigger a NLRB vote to unionize then I've given up hope on there ever being a working middle class with 40 hr work week, decent pay, and benefits.
That went out in the 1980s. Suggesting a single income from 40 hours a week of work should be able to comfortably support an entire family is now akin to radical socialism. Not quite as extreme as it was originally (at the time it constituted demanding most employers raise their labor costs by 600% or more) but moving in that direction every single day.
The article uses the word "volunteer", but then it does not provide any evidence that the workers are not being paid. So I would use the word "employee"...
Obviously they can offer to pay their workers more for longer hours what's wrong with that??
Where did you read that? It said you either take an unpaid day or use paid vacation day. Never mentioned anything about having to volunteer. I do agree that it is not proper practice to have your workers take unpaid off days when they might depend on the income.
An auto assembly line is a custom-built machine a thousand feet long. It runs as fast as the slowest station. Its reject rate is determined by the worst station.
Every station is custom designed for the product. This is not an easy thing to debug while also trying to use it for production.
On the other hand, Tesla has a relatively simple vehicle without much variation. It's a sled with a body on top. The power train is all in the sled. That simplifies assembly. There are US assembly lines which make a whole range of similar vehicles on the same line. Tesla doesn't do that. They don't have a foundry and IC engine plant at all. What they're doing is well within automotive assembly technology.
Everybody is guessing. Tesla is so secretive that nobody outside really knows what's wrong with their assembly line. Do they have a few troublesome stations, or many random failures? Custom tooling that's not quite right? A high alarm rate from sensors, causing line stops? No buffering into a station that has variable time, so the line upstream stalls?
One station that needs to be split into two, but there's no room? Supplier problems? Aluminum stamping problems? Not enough experienced manufacturing engineers?
Their secrecy isn't helping them. Analysts are assuming the worst. They'd probably look better if they had a reporter who really knows auto factories visit for a few days and write up an honest evaluation.
I live in Florida but would come volunteer. Is there a way I can do that. I do have a vested interest since I am on the list for a 3.
but if you workers on MY X line and I needed you to work on MY 3 line I am not sure I would ASK. They work for Tesla motors not Tesla Motors X line. (employees these days ;) )
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 132 ms ] threadhttps://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-tracker/
Their goal is 10,000 cars a week by the end of the year. Yesterday there was talk that Tesla used too much automation:
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/28/tesla-is-overusing-automat...
That remains to be seen. Selling something at a loss doesn't equate with making something affordable.
That quote doesn't even make sense. The Model 3 isn't even the cheapest all electric car...
The Smart Fortwo Electric ($26K), Nissan LEAF ($29K), Volkswagen e-Golf ($30K), and Mitsubishi i-MiEV ($23K).
So Tesla is the only automaker that can claim they made a "relatively affordable electric car" by producing one that's more expensive and has sold fewer units? I do not understand.
> > Tesla has accomplished something no other automaker can claim: It's made a relatively affordable electric car.
Nobody is arguing that Tesla's vehicles have no merit, we're picking apart that absurd claim.
The EV1 wasn't for sale at any price, so it also wasn't relatively affordable. It was leased at a loss to meet a state law while GM lobbied against the law. (Same with its contemporaries the Toyota RAV4EV and the Honda EVplus.)
Tesla Motors expects their customers to be fanatical. But what if I just want to buy a car like a normal person?
In Argentina there was a time where slightly used cars sold for more than retail price simply because you had same-day availability instead of waiting for months.
They have a positive operating margin per vehicle, they for the most part always have. Is it as high as they want the margin to be yet, no, but it's not a loss. Are they spending a ton of money? YES! They are spending more on Cap Ex and R&D than Chevy and Ford combined. This is the same argument people made with Amazon for 15 years.. until one day Amazon became one of the top 5 companies by market cap. A high growth company should be reinvesting every dollar, and then borrow a shit ton more to reinvest still.
The trend line they added to the graphs on that page were put in recently to try and show this I think.
https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/87wbxv/model_3...
[1] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gw13-SKi_XQkooBmWKUunrtL...
I am a Tesla owner of 2 years now, I never had to go back to the service center once, excluding the 1 year routine checkup. I've had zero problems with it. So when you see forum posts and all, also realize there is a bias of only the people with the issues go to post them. It is most certainly not the norm.
Oh, and of all the brands above that I mentioned, the one that was the worst.. the Toyota 4 runner. For all the talk of highest quality, etc, it was practically a lemon. And don't get me started on how many times I ended up just fixing my own Chevy because something else broke!
How long did Porsche take to fix it?
I had a small rattling appear on mine after a couple weeks and called and they fixed it on the spot (user error, my son dropped a metal ball through the seatbelt hole that caused it). My cousin had a brand new Panamera with a scratch/dent that didn't notice when he picked it up. Called, 3 days later they called to take the car there and replace the piece (took 3 days since these were the brand new Panameras when they were released and they didn't have that part in stock to replace)
Now an “us vs them” spiel? Cult.
Usually employees are already on the payroll.
The first line is: "Tesla Inc. exhorted its factory workers ..."
My guess is that this email was intentionally leaked to create buzz.
They are shutting down the line for 2 days to focus on the Model 3 because they are so far behind. They can use some of the people on the Model 3 but 9 women can’t make a baby in a month. Some people will be able to “volunteer” to work and they’ll get paid.
According to Google Tesla has about 37,000 employees, so that would work out to a bonus of $1.35 million per assembly line employee, and he still gets to keep a staggering $5 billion of the bonus. It would make ordinary Christmas bonuses look like chopped liver.
But I do agree with the concept, particularly if the equity paid out over ten years or more.
If you're a youngish guy $1.35M over 50-70 years is only around $35k/year even if you do invest it wisely and luck out. And $35k/year won't be worth as much with inflation constantly eating away at it. Hell, just the taxes and paying off your mortgage on your California home will probably eat it up. Even properly invested it's close to poverty level income. Sure some people will move out to Montana and live out their dream of being Grizzly Adams for the rest of their life, but I thing more would stay and keep working that you might expect.
For most people, this is a fortune.
My interpretation of that is that they've eased need for employees in some other departments, and are asking for volunteers to shift to the production line temporarily, not volunteering to work more hours for free or something (I'm sure employees on the line are probably allowed encouraged to work overtime as well at this stage).
The entire presentation of this is odd, and to me just points towards more people trying to manipulate the market. Having a CEO, or even just a manager, send out a memo that appears to me to be a combined pop-talk and solicitation for employees to shift to the line (instead of you know, just reassigning them, because you can as the employer) doesn't seem out of the ordinary to me at all.
All this positive/negative Tesla coverage the last few months is just annoying. Beyond the raw numbers of what they are delivering each week and how close they are to their goal, and how late they are in achieving it, the rest is just spin.
He’s simply trying to inspire the troops with a common enemy.
One thing against Tesla, their valuation demands impeccable execution to the T. If Model 3 has some sort of massive recall, they will be hit very hard.
Would I short it? Not yet!
I assume the Model 3 line is a bit different from the others, because if it was the same, they wouldn't have so much trouble meeting targets. So the workers who switch to it from other assembly lines will presumably need some time to ramp up.
Steve Jobs was just as awful at this, the Macintosh project was nearly killed by his ridiculous manufacturing efforts. The resurgence of Apple was only possible with someone like Tim Cook who knew how to build a reliable manufacturing supply chain.
Elon should be focusing on finding his Tim.
An auto assembly line is a custom-built machine a thousand feet long. It runs as fast as the slowest station. Its reject rate is determined by the worst station. Every station is custom designed for the product. This is not an easy thing to debug while also trying to use it for production.
On the other hand, Tesla has a relatively simple vehicle without much variation. It's a sled with a body on top. The power train is all in the sled. That simplifies assembly. There are US assembly lines which make a whole range of similar vehicles on the same line. Tesla doesn't do that. They don't have a foundry and IC engine plant at all. What they're doing is well within automotive assembly technology.
Everybody is guessing. Tesla is so secretive that nobody outside really knows what's wrong with their assembly line. Do they have a few troublesome stations, or many random failures? Custom tooling that's not quite right? A high alarm rate from sensors, causing line stops? No buffering into a station that has variable time, so the line upstream stalls? One station that needs to be split into two, but there's no room? Supplier problems? Aluminum stamping problems? Not enough experienced manufacturing engineers?
Their secrecy isn't helping them. Analysts are assuming the worst. They'd probably look better if they had a reporter who really knows auto factories visit for a few days and write up an honest evaluation.
but if you workers on MY X line and I needed you to work on MY 3 line I am not sure I would ASK. They work for Tesla motors not Tesla Motors X line. (employees these days ;) )