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Tesla Badly Misses Model 3 Production Goals (wsj.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source): Tesla badly missed its goal of building 1,500 Model 3 cars in the third quarter, the first sign that the production ramp-up for the new sedan isn't going as smoothly as planned. The Silicon Valley electric-car maker built 260 of the Model 3s between July and September, the company said Monday in a statement. In August, the auto maker predicted it would build more than 1,500 Model 3s before cranking up production to 5,000 a week by the end of the fourth quarter. Tesla blamed "production bottlenecks" for the weaker production. "It is important to emphasize that there are no fundamental issues with the Model 3 production or supply chain," Tesla said in a statement. "We understand what needs to be fixed and we are confident of addressing the manufacturing bottleneck issues in the near-term."
Computers got better and we have 3D printers now? Isn't this the post-Luddite post-scarcity 3D printed virtual AI space future I was promised?
Am I still going to retire on Mars?
Given that they have been building cars for a while, they should know how to construct an assembly line. This could just training issues, with having to bring in people who are new to building cars.
Can someone explain to me why missing predicted goals - by even as much as 50% - is such a big issue with investors?
Any time Tesla comes out slightly lower than "predicted results" the market analysts go haywire, it's all "doom and gloom! We warned you about Tesla! It's a baaaaaad investment!".
There are people who, with a straight face, talk about Tesla being fraudulent, being 3-months away from insolvent, or being super hyper over inflated in some way. "Look at Tesla's capitalization, and compare it to Ford's!!! There's *no way* Tesla will ever be as big as Ford!"
And Musk is a con man, Tesla only survives because of federal grants and will go under once those grants are revoked, Tesla sells cars at a loss, chewing through investor money...
WTF?
Is there a *rational* explanation for all this bugaboo reporting?
If you ask them about the delay, Elon might cancel your order.
#DeleteChrome
Tesla is basically trying to compress +100 years of automobile development, infrastructure, manufacturing, and marketing within the span of about a few years, all while trying to rewrite the book. They have no where near the number of facilities(companies like Ford have 100s of acres of facilities dedicated solely for testing out transmissions, gearboxes, etc. To say nothing of their factories) or dealerships(there's like only 1 within 50 miles of where I live). They're also hemorrhaging money due to said breakneck expansion.
They do have an excellent PR however that's been able to convince enough investors(or donors, depending on your perspective) to keep dropping money on the company despite plenty of reports noting that they aren't really do very well.
That said, you could argue that Tesla has achieved it's goal of convincing people to want EVs, and other companies to start developing their own. I doubt Tesla will ever really break out of its status as a small time car company though, and it's overvalued stock may come to bite investors in the ass.
Investors and stocks. They are going to try to sell you with their ambition. Just like anything sold it falls short. In this case a lot of other companies are doing far worse. As far as it goes for Tesla can we just not see these mentioned but rather save it until they ACTUALLY meet their goals which will be news. Then after they consistently do then you can post about them failing their goals. News is what is not the norm. They just were threatened with unionizing workers... so of course they fell behind. You can be sure the big three were significantly behind it. Tesla will build more than a few factories in China for the Chinese market. So their American employees better shape up; least China can show it can out perform Americans.
Diverted resources to Australia batteries? Though if bottlenecks unrelated to batteries then the Australia project might help use some idle capacity .
This is more pathetic than reading about German WWII tank production numbers.
Sounds like this computer company back in the 80s where the founder got fired by the board.
Having completed 17% of what was promised and the problem is nothing fundamental. Sure hope he never runs into anything fundamental!
Then again, it might be a problem of what the definition of fundamental is. If I only reached 17% of my goals, I'd be pretty damn bummed to have such failure. I kind of admire people who can be faced with the same kind of failure and still say they are optimistic. Then again, they also make for great used car salespeople, as they often don't tell the truth.
260 Cars in 91 days is less than 3 cars a day. This doesn't sound right at all.. How can they be making just 2 or 3 Cars a day?!
I have yet to see Tesla address the problems they had before the Model 3 ramp up. Their production goals have never been robust and their defect issues have either been covered up, ignored, or poorly addressed unless owners really complain. Tesla has always set goals its not really capable of meeting and the Model 3 expansion only makes it worse.
99% hype, 1% hot air.
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Plain and simple.
Will $CURRENT_YEAR be the year of the Linux Desktop?
In our esteemed Slashdot colleague's homeland, orchards are an important part of the economy and relieve stress by making a healthy snack always at hand. Yes, you indeed had better get your grove in place, and you want the soil down packed (but not too much) so the roots for the newly planted trees can get established.
This is a tree analogy to a car, but Elon Musk had better heed that lesson.
I worked with a couple of ex-Tesla engineers. They hated working there. 90hr weeks...obscene demands by bully management. A person can only last so long under those conditions.
...but planning is indispensable."--Dwight Eisenhower
Obsessing over hitting arbitrary timeline goals is pointless. If Tesla hadn't produced squat, that would be a problem. If they're behind schedule, meh, welcome to the real world.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
I worked in an auto plant that was supposed to build 1000 cars per day.
When I started, they were running 1 shift, hoping to get to 500 cars per day, but were building about 300-350. They added the second shift, and with training and all, barely got about 500 cars per day. After about 9 months, the management said we will try our best for one day, really pushing things. That one day the plant built 700 cars. After that, the plant was building 600-650 consistently, with a few days around 700. After that they added an extra hour to each shift (9 hours) and were able to build about 700-750 consistently every day. After about 2 years the plant was building about 750-800 every day.
This was in the early 90's and we could sell every car produced. The company had to put quotas on dealers and they would sell cars above retail price, making customers unhappy.
Troubles included Just In Time parts delivery being late, and line workers wasting materials (they dropped a plastic clip, and rather than picking it up, use another one, but the JIT predictor didn't account for that much waste, and we were short parts). There were silly troubles too, like it couldn't read the body number out of the paint shop sometimes, so the line wasn't sure what car just came out.
Erm, I was busy with this hobby of mine. You have to believe me when I say It happens to BE Rocket Science!