
Tesla meets Q3 production goals of 50,000 to 55,000 Model 3s - martythemaniak
https://electrek.co/2018/09/28/tesla-model-3-production-goal-achieved-record-quarter/
======
Shivetya
I have mine, having taken delivery at the end of August and it was ordered at
the beginning of the same. Not a previous owner and did not reserve. Recently
completed a 1600+ mile round trip with it.

As a car it is very competent, fun to drive, and well designed inside and out.
As an EV, Tesla cars are in a league of their own. Build quality was very
good, I do have three areas that are not as tight as I want but I will take it
to the local service shop and let them tell me my options.

Are EVs ready for prime time? If your primary usage is local then yes. Even on
our trip we needed three stops and the time charging plus to and from added
over two hours each way. That can take a "tolerable" nine hour drive and push
it into "well....". Plus the planning required to insure adequate range at
your destination where you might be anchored to the nearest SC. (120v is
desperation, 240/20a is minimum realistic and that is still but 12/15 miles
ranged added per hour!)

While they will continue to add features over the life time of the car it does
lack some simple quality of life attributes that I have had in cars more than
a decade ago. From the mundane as to real bluetooth audio controls with
playlist support and maximum audio startup to the required blind spot
monitoring which apparently they will never put in the mirrors where it needs
to be. Traffic aware cruise control works very well, auto steer at my current
software level is good for 95% of the highway travel we had. Though cruise
control's default speed is the posted limit and that can be damn annoying when
that is lowered by weather or even construction - you cannot stop it - it will
only assume your current speed if lower than what the maps say if there is a
car in front of you or your going faster.

Still great news to hear, I like mine. Was a great step up from the Chevy Volt
which sold me on EV driving. It isn't for everyone but give it ten years and
it might be the default choice.

~~~
EADGBE
No maximum startup volume? That's honestly pitiful, Tesla.

An absolutely necessary feature. (no sarcasm)

~~~
r00fus
Why?

~~~
EADGBE
I’ve found that I naturally reached for the volume knob on older cars which
didn’t have this very software-enabled feature.

It’s something that I didn’t notice nearly how much I used it until I enabled
it and found myself grabbing the volume at startup and turning it down to 0.

------
SCAQTony
This is very good news. If they can do this for ten more quarters there will
be less carbon in the atmosphere and an oil glut for 2-million-barrels of oil
a day will be removed from daily demand according to Bloomberg — Great graphs
in the article too: [https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-ev-oil-
crisis/](https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-ev-oil-crisis/)

~~~
debt
I think it's probably closer to 1 million barrels/day if you factor in all the
emissions and pollutants associated with mining the nickel/lithium for the
batteries.

[https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-
business/2017/aug/24...](https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-
business/2017/aug/24/nickel-mining-hidden-environmental-cost-electric-cars-
batteries)

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> I think it's probably closer to 1 million barrels/day if you factor in all
> the emissions and pollutants associated with mining the nickel/lithium for
> the batteries.

This is the same type of argument erroneously used against nuclear --
factoring in costs in one place but not the other. As though internal
combustion engines, transmissions, radiators, exhaust systems with rare metal
catalysts, etc. are not made of raw materials that have to be mined and
processed.

The curb weight of a Model 3 is on the same order as a Ford Taurus or BMW 3
series.

~~~
debt
They to mine way more Earth for this rare Earth mineral batteries.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
As opposed to, say, aluminum, which consumes so much electricity to produce
that it amounts to ~3% of the world electrical generating capacity and
producers have resorted to building their own power plants at the site of the
smelting operation.

There is also the question of how much longer lithium mining will have to
continue at this pace, since in a few years there will obviously be a dense
source of lithium for new batteries in the form of all the old batteries that
can be recycled.

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dragontamer
Hmmm... this seems to be a miss of the goal actually.

Here's the Q2 2018 earning call:
[https://seekingalpha.com/article/4193497-tesla-
tsla-q2-2018-...](https://seekingalpha.com/article/4193497-tesla-
tsla-q2-2018-results-earnings-call-transcript)

> We continued to achieve 5,000 Model 3s per week, or 7,000 combined S, X and
> 3, multiple weeks in July, showing that, so we're able to do this on a
> sustained basis. And we expect to, in the absence of a force majeure or some
> very unexpected event, be able to achieve an average of 5,000 Model 3s or
> above for Q3 and 2,000 Model S, Xs or above per week for Q3 as well. So
> essentially, 7,000 cars a week plus on average for Q3.

An average of 5000/week would be 13-weeks * 5000 == 65000. If Tesla makes only
55,000 M3 cars, then that's a miss by 10,000.

~~~
empath75
As a point of comparison, the big car companies make close to 200,000 cars a
week.

~~~
SEJeff
As a point of comparison, the last US car company to be founded was Ford, in
1903. They all literally have a > 100 year head start in factories and
whatnot.

Edit: GM in 1908 is the actual correct answer.

~~~
Alupis
> They all literally have a > 100 year head start in factories and whatnot

Which really begs the question - why did Tesla scoff at outside help from the
big car companies? They've figured things out already...

~~~
SEJeff
For ICE vehicles perhaps, not for EVs, or we'd see more than a token
manufacturing capacity from them.

How many times did they manufacture 200k Volts or i3 EVs? Where is their
serious battery production? Anything even 1/2 as big as the current
gigafactory (which is about 30% finished and is still the aggregate battery
capacity of almost every battery factory in the world in 2016).

~~~
Alupis
Tesla's manufacturing woes are not with assembly of the EV components... it's
with the build quality, speed and precision of assembling everything else,
plus worker safety and required on-clock hours. This has been discussed here
many times.

It reminds me of Chipotle famously scoffing at McDonald's attempt to teach
supply chain management and more... and then Chipotle routinely having
shortages of food items, quality and consistency issues, or suffering from
nation-wide food-safety outbreaks. Turns out they could have leaned a thing or
two...

~~~
SEJeff
That's fair, but I'm still a bit skeptical as most other manufacturers
outsource the overwhelming majority of things where Tesla does things in-
house. I mean they had to create their own Seat for the Model X as they wanted
them to take an amount of force no "off the shelf" seat could. As a result,
the traditional "scale up by buying more" model simply doesn't work quite as
well. That said, Tesla could learn TONS from the rest of the industry, but
that is why guys like Deepak Ahuja are executives there, their experience.

~~~
Alupis
Yes, but you must acknowledge having a seat manufacturing company design and
manufacture the seats probably would have resulted in a better, cheaper seat
that was available sooner and with less trouble... after all, it's the only
thing the seat manufacturer does as a business.

(I also don't believe the forces were so great that no seat could be bought or
made by another company... some of the Tesla models have good performance...
but they aren't alone in that arena)

The seat is a flagship example of NIH Syndrome - the same syndrome that has
led to bloated costs, reduced profitability and poor quality and craftsmanship
of Tesla vehicles. Tesla is figuring out how to do things for the first time -
solving problems that have already been solved, and solved well by others.
Looking towards the heavy-weights in the field and learning a few things could
go a long way...

Also, they've had a lot of executive turnover... we've all heard the stories
about what it's like to work for Mr. Musk...

~~~
SEJeff
I will acknowledge that they tried to have a seat manufacturing company design
and manufacture the seats, and it failed: [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-
tesla-seats/teslas-seat-s...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-
seats/teslas-seat-strategy-goes-against-the-grain-for-now-idUSKBN1CV0DS)

Gotta say, as a Model 3 owner, I don't see any build quality or poor
craftsmanship in the vehicle and I took a very long time doing final
inspection at the service center before taking delivery. I'm not saying it has
the same build quality as say a high end Mercedes or BMW (the model 3 isn't in
that category of vehicle), but it is the nicest car I've ever driven as a
daily driver. He is trying to do something differently, and he very well might
do it slower as a result, but vertical integration will definitely lead to
lower costs in the _long run_ as there is simply less of the middle tier. When
it comes to the guts, there is nothing but quality, and tesla easily stands
alone in that regard: [https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/19/tesla-
model-3-stuns-ger...](https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/19/tesla-
model-3-stuns-german-engineers-wonders/)

TL;DNR: People have been hating on Elon since he said that banking could be
online (when he founded x.com that became most of what is now paypal), and
when he said he would found a rocket company, and when he said his rockets
would be reusable by landing on boats, etc. He'll get it eventually, or die
trying.

------
drewg123
Can they sell them at a profit, or have they saturated the market now? I heard
they actually have enough inventory that they were doing same day deliveries
and offering end-of-quarter incentives. That's great for customers, but not so
much for a company that is not profitable.

~~~
heisenbergs
Gross margins for model S and X are 25%+. The model 3 is supposedly
profitable, at the scale that they have now achieved. Tesla's big spend is on
R&D on new product lines, and ramping up production. In other words: their
core business has long been cash flow positive. It's the growth that is
requiring all the cash and creating short term losses.

~~~
madamelic
I mean look at Amazon. They are basically on their last legs after doing the
same idea. /s

------
mikeash
The pace of their growth is pretty amazing. The year I bought mine, 2015, they
made just over 50,000 cars. Now they’ve made that many on one fourth the time,
of just one model! Add in their other models and this quarter’s numbers are
close to the number they made in 2016.

They have not met their goals, but that’s only because their goals are crazy
ambitious.

------
cjhopman
> Tesla had quite the ambitious Model 3 production goal for this quarter

They claimed to be able to consistently make 5000/week at the beginning of the
quarter and that they'd be at 6000/week in August.

50000/quarter is <4200/week. That doesn't seem like "quite the ambitious"
goal. If they were actually consistently making 5000/week at the beginning of
the quarter, they could've taken 2 weeks off, just easily continue at the same
pace that they were already doing and still hit that goal.

~~~
kccqzy
It's not like every week is the same. On a typical week they could make 5000,
but on some weeks (say Labor Day), the production line has planned shutdowns.

------
joeblau
And now they need to deliver the cars. I have two colleagues who are waiting
for their cars. Apparently the deliver process (which Elon noted on Twitter)
is pretty hectic right now.

~~~
ben174
I've heard the horror stories, but delivery for me was amazingly smooth. I
signed a few pages of papers which were already prepared, and got a 10 minute
tutorial on features, and drove out of there less than a half hour after I
arrived. Best car buying experience ever.

~~~
exhilaration
Was that enough time to go through the Model 3 delivery checklist?
[https://model3slo.org/model-3-delivery-
checklist/](https://model3slo.org/model-3-delivery-checklist/)

With all the manufacturing defects we've been hearing about, I would think
that purchasers should take their time inspecting the vehicle.

~~~
maherbeg
They have a 2 days no questions asked return policy, including paint. We had
plenty of time to inspect ours and then do an even deeper inspection at home.

The car is nearly perfect!

------
electriclove
"The automaker had been guiding a production of 50,000 to 55,000 Model 3
vehicles for the third quarter.

According to a reliable source familiar with Tesla’s production, the automaker
had a strong week of production and managed to bring the total number Model 3
produced to over 51,000 vehicles."

------
partingshots
I wonder how this will affect the upcoming earnings report. I think we’ll have
to see how it ultimately is going to mesh with the ongoing SEC investigation
into Musk.

~~~
fourpointfive
The phone call will be a stream of champaign bottles being uncorked followed
by a "thank you".

~~~
partingshots
Why did you make a new account just to comment on this?

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jsight
At least they were smart enough to aim a little lower this time. People love
to complain about marginally too ambitious goals.

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dmode
Tesla has basically won

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calvinbhai
No wonder the Tesla hating incumbents (ICE manufacturers, car dealerships in
US/Canada, Big Oil Industry worldwide) are all out against Musk in every
possible way.

