
Tesla Model 3 is now officially the best-selling electric car in the US - evo_9
https://electrek.co/2018/04/03/tesla-model-3-best-selling-electric-car-us/
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Robotbeat
This is what will most likely happen (with respect to production rate):

Tesla will continue to draw the ire of the naysayers/shortsellers in the media
for the next year or so. Then, by 2021 or so, we'll look back at a company
making over a million electric cars per year at high margin, dwarfing the
entire rest of the electric car production rate (with the possible exception
of China...).

Doesn't mean Tesla will be worth $100s of billions or will solve self-driving
or anything like that. But exponential ramp-ups tend to catch people off-guard
after hearing small numbers at the beginning of the ramp and early delays.

~~~
skgoa
> Then, by 2021 or so, we'll look back at a company making over a million
> electric cars per year at high margin

Yeah, sure. Why not say that it is "most likely" that they will have a colony
on Mars by that time, too?

> dwarfing the entire rest of the electric car production rate (with the
> possible exception of China...).

Even at a million cars per year, Tesla would not dwarf the production of the
many other EVs that will come out in the next 3 years. I also don't see what
this has to do with Tesla being profitable and surviving as a company.

> But exponential ramp-ups tend to catch people off-guard after hearing small
> numbers at the beginning of the ramp and early delays.

However, exponential ramp ups are not typical with a product as complex as a
car and Tesla has shown no ability to actually pull it off. Tesla is the least
automated mass-producting car manufacturer. Tesla currently requires 35 (yes,
thirty-five!) workers per car produced per day. This is ten times of what is
normal in the automotive industry. Going by their own numbers, they have shown
a sustained output below 800 cars per week, with only managing to produce 2020
briefly in the 7 day period ending on April 2nd. And this is after they
installed an entirely new production line and made a company-wide all hands on
deck push that is not sustainable.

I'm not saying Tesla is going to crash and burn tommorrow. They still have
some chance of making it through these hard times, if investors' and
creditors' confidence holds up. But just handwaving away the massive headwinds
they face isn't sensible, either.

~~~
Robotbeat
> Even at a million cars per year, Tesla would not dwarf the production of the
> many other EVs that will come out in the next 3 years.

Oh, I know BMW and others claim to be moving towards EVs, but the press
release vs actual deployment is much worse even than Tesla.

Tesla's manufacturing numbers until now were almost all high-end luxury
vehicles, so of course they wouldn't equal conventional manufacturers on
automation and mass production. Additionally, of course Tesla's worker numbers
look worse than a non-vertically-integrated company that just buys parts (of
course, those parts also require a whole bunch of workers that aren't
counted).

Sure, you can think they only can make 800 cars per week, but customers are
getting their cars now at a faster rate. I'm merely saying what will most
likely happen, not what's PROVEN BEYOND ALL DOUBT.

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jacquesm
> If Tesla can indeed maintain its current production rate

That's the key sentence, and with the number of people involved in producing a
Model 3 they will be hard pressed to keep that up without fixing the
underlying issues with the production line. But they clearly did everything
they could to end the quarter on a high note and investors bought it so props
to Elon Musk for buying himself another 90 days.

Do keep in mind that the original projection for end of Q1 production volume
was 5000 cars / week, not 2500 so it isn't nearly the coup that it is made out
to be and it came at the expense of their other production lines. It will be
interesting to see how much those other models (S and X) dropped in production
volume at the end of Q1. That will tell the real story.

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skgoa
(in the one quarter they made a huge, unsustainable effort to push production
rate as high as possible)

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dingo_bat
But according to every analyst and their dad tesla is going bankrupt any day
now.

~~~
sunstone
More than a few analysts (shore sellers?) just looked at Tesla's cash burn
over the past three years and projected that investment flow forward. This
thinking doesn't appreciate that once the Model 3 manufacturing system is paid
for most of that capital expenditure will cease. The tricky part is ironing
out the wrinkles of that new system, which doesn't necessarily require a lot
of new capital.

~~~
skgoa
> This thinking doesn't appreciate that once the Model 3 manufacturing system
> is paid for most of that capital expenditure will cease.

That's not how this works. You can't just stop investing in capital.
Especially not when you have promissed to produce a semi, a Roadster 2.0 and a
Model Y, the production capacity for none of which exists right now.

~~~
sunstone
The semi and the Roadster are low volume products that will take no where near
the investment in infrastructure for their manufacture as the model 3. The
model Y maybe higher volume and require more capex but it's unlikely to start
until the model3 manufacturing has been sorted out and its cashflows have
become steady and predictable. That's why Musk can say there will be no more
capital raises for Tesla this year.

