
Tesla's 'Production Hell' Threatens Its Future - themgt
https://jalopnik.com/teslas-hell-threatens-its-future-1819917980
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Gibbon1
It kinda funny that Tesla's delays in ramping up production of is first mass
produced car results in predictions of total doom. Despite Tesla having large
amounts of cash on hand. Despite that every other manufacturer of complex and
expensive products has routinely had similar problems.

Tip: Never take business advice from a journalist.

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RickS
I am loving this. Let the stock crash hard, so I can buy more of it.

The man built an org that lands reusable rockets on a portable barge. My
suspicion is that he can survive assembly line issues.

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Gibbon1
About 15 years ago I was supporting an IC used in a consumer product. Our
first big customer designed it in and from Feb through middle of August we
fielded a constant stream of questions, spent a countless hours tracking down
and solving obscure bugs in the silicon. And then in the middle of august all
the calls just stopped and in the middle of Sept we got the news that they
were punting to Q1. Six month delay because they didn't feel comfortable
handing over the pre-production units to the buyers.

Okay so that was a scuddy consumer product that sold for $150 retail. But at
1M units a year. Tesla's trying to go full production with a product that is
100 times more complicated. But at 100k/year.

The other funny bit is no one bats an eye when a traditional automaker delays
a new model for a year or two. You see a press release in 2013 about the brand
new 2015 model. And 2015 rolls around and it's now delayed till 2016, then
2017. Anyone want to guess why that happens? Oh yeah.

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dpkonofa
This is clickbait at its finest. No attributable sources and except for a
pretty honest admission by Tesla which then leads to nothing but rampant
speculation and claims.

Tesla will be fine. They have something like a 90+% satisfaction rate amongst
current owners. People stood in line for hours to give them money for a car
that didn't even have a production date. These people want a Tesla no matter
when or how they get it. They're fine waiting and will continue to wait.
Predicting the entire failure of the company on something like this is just
silly.

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digital_trench
I wouldn't be surprised if this guy Ryan Felton was being paid to write
negative pieces against Tesla and Uber. Go look through his articles and
you'll see nothing but doom and gloom about electric cars, autonomous cars,
uber, etc.

Most of his claims are backed up by "anonymous former employees" or "unnamed
people familiar with the matter"

Tesla will be just fine.

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dilemma
I wouldn't be surprised if this guy digital_trench was being paid to shill for
Tesla.

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RickS
At the risk of feeding the trolls:

Are you making a satirical example about the emptiness of such flippant
accusations, or do you actually entertain a serious possibility that GP is on
the tesla payroll spreading propaganda on HN?

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eighthnate
That's not why its future is threatened.

1\. It's low oil/gas/energy prices and the fact that it looks like we are in
for a low energy price environment for a decade or two.

2\. Tesla, just their sister company solar city was built entirely on
government subsidies. Those look to be going away.

3\. They are hemorrhaging money.

Tesla is this decades Prius on steroids. Except that tesla doesn't have
toyota's best selling sedans, tacoma trucks or their luxury lexus buttressing
their foray into clean cars.

Remember when everyone thought that prius would take over the world?

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FullyFunctional
No, I don't remember any such thing. The thing that haters fail to recognize
is that people buy Tesla cars for more than the government subsidy and fuel
economy. Ask any _actual_ owner and they will tell you how incredible the cars
are in _practice_. Disclaimer: owner since 2012.

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eighthnate
> No, I don't remember any such thing.

It was called the 2000s. Did you miss that decade?

> The thing that haters fail to recognize is that people buy Tesla cars for
> more than the government subsidy and fuel economy.

I'm not a hater. I'm just pointing out economic/business reality.

> Ask any actual owner and they will tell you how incredible the cars are in
> practice. Disclaimer: owner since 2012.

My god, that's exactly what my uncle said about the prius more than a decade
ago. Also, tesla isn't the only incredible car. There are lots of incredible
cars out there. That's why most people don't buy teslas.

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rayuela
A lot of criticism over this aritcle's credibility in this thread. So here's a
more reputable source with a similar take:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-02/model-3-h...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-02/model-3-hell-
is-burning-tesla-s-other-projects)

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ramenmeal
Jalopnik is a joke that shouldn't really be used as a source here.

