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Analysts Expect Tesla To Miss Its First 2018 Model 3 Production Target (usnews.com)
schwit1 shares a report from U.S. News & World Report: In October, Tesla reported that it produced 220 Model 3 vehicles in the third quarter. CEO Elon Musk had previously said the company would produce more than 1,600 Model 3s by September. Loup Ventures analyst Gene Munster isn't the only analyst to doubt Tesla's fourth-quarter Model 3 production. KeyBanc analyst Brad Erickson reduced his fourth-quarter Model 3 production target by two-thirds, cutting it from 15,000 to only 5,000. According to Munster, Tesla investors may need to wait several more quarters for the Model 3 story to play out. "We predict a breakout year for the Model 3 in 2019 which means, until then, other elements like solid Model S and X production numbers, increasing energy deployments like the South Australia installation, and future vehicles (Roadster, Semi, Model Y, and pickup truck) will stoke investor optimism," he says.
schwit1 adds: "Elon Musk promised Tesla would produce 500,000 Model 3 sedans in 2018 and has accepted refundable $1,000 deposits on nearly that many. At current production rates, it will be years before pre-orders are filled. The Model 3's good will and good reviews won't matter much if Tesla can't ramp up production, which even bulls like Munster believes is running at least a year late."
Ramping up production like this to the required volume is hugely capital intensive, even when you are just producing a single model, which is what they should be concentrating completely on. They will likely have to cut many corners, and given the build quality of many Model S and X cars they have already been doing so.
The trouble is, the Model 3 is a mass market car that will need to work and need to be spot on in every respect. Those who would be looking to buy a Model 3 in the heavily competitive market it operates in are not Tesla fanboys who will cut them slack. It's a completely different ballgame.
Elon must have missed that lecture in Marketing 101
We urgently need Rei to inform the world that this is not really a bad thing and how fabulous Tesla is actually doing. BTW the Tesla, when it arrives, will be the best car evar!!!
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Tesla hasn't met a timeline, target, or marketing promise in their entire career, why start now?
Isn't how it works, you fire employees and expect more production.
Why bring self-driving into this? the only people stupid enough to think that the Tesla is in any way a self-driving car is Tesla themselves. Okay I guess they did manage to con a few people into paying the extra few thousand dollars for "full self-driving", but you have to be a special kind of stupid to think that the hardware that's on those vehicles right now has any hope of ever fulfilling that promise. Not that there's anything new here though, Tesla is very familiar with promising things that they can never hope to achieve. Just look at all the things they promised in 2014 around their initial autopilot suite, in fact there isn't even a single thing listed from that original presentation that the current cars can do.
A stock analyst (i.e. Munster, who is quoted in the summary) saying some Tesla action will "stoke investor optimism" means nothing... there are no concrete facts here, it's just feelings. There is no rationality to the Tesla's stock (TSLA) stock price being valued many times more than the company assets, and many times higher than the stock prices of established competing car companies, which have comparable cars to the Model 3 on the market right now (e.g. Nissan, Volkswagon, Chevy, etc.) while Tesla still struggles with production. I honestly hope Tesla survives and thrives as a company, but stock analysts aren't providing any useful information here.
No, they are not Tesla fanboys and they are not going to be appeased by a downloadable Easter egg.
A friend or two that has the Model 3 is very much a Tesla fan. And so it will be for some time to come - or did you forget the pre-order lines just to lay down $1k for a car that would not be delivered for a year or two? None of the buyers for a long time is going to be anything but a die-hard Tesla fan. When they clear out pre-orders two or three years hence, then you can talk about the remaining buyers actually treating Tesla on an equal footing.
Range even when using air con and heating, charging stations, the time it takes to charge versus filling up (whatever did happen to those quick replace batteries?), build quality, everything has to be spot on perfect.
Another responder already talked about this, but I just wanted to add on - why? Why does it have to be "perfect" when no-one else is? A lot of little flaws can be made up for in big design choices - like that sweeping all clear roof. Some videos have already pointed out model3 body panels do not have a perfect fit, but it does not matter because in so many other ways the car is doing an excellent job already compared to any other car someone might be thinking of.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
.... is the main reason I did not reserve a Tesla 3 (after waiting in line). I wasn't about to wait YEARS for a vehicle that could in the end be out of date by the time I receive it.
They claimed that the vehicle could be delivery by Dec 2018 (i.e., 20+ months wait), but as you can see, Tesla has NEVER delivered in time and is always around 2 year behind schedule. With so many companies going into production (for EVs) in the next couple of years, it was just plain stupid to make the investment without any guarantee that the vehicle would be delivered within a reasonable time.
Tesla has survived until this day by missing just about every target they ever set and making pie-in-the-sky announcements to divert attention every time that happens.
The thing about Tesla is, they have a track record of delivering.
Yes they deliver really late. But that does not matter to the people investing in them and buying from them, because they have already baked in the understanding of these delays. When someone was waiting in line for a model 3, they knew it may well be years before they get the car. But they do not care, as long as it is eventually be delivered - and since Tesla is indeed producing model 3's, it eventually will be. That is enough.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Tesla delivered only 1,550 Model 3 vehicles in the Q4, lower than the lowest "analyst" guidance. But as they say, "Hope springs eternal". http://www.latimes.com/busines... [latimes.com]
May be the CEO saying "it is in production hell" clued them on to it? may be? Just saying ...
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
"Just look at all the things they promised in 2014 around their initial autopilot suite, in fact there isn't even a single thing listed from that original presentation that the current cars can do"
Really? See link below for the *October* 2014 event (so the year was almost over) and tell us what was promised & is missing. I gather there's going to be quite a few items on that list.
https://youtu.be/FZ6lZJWL_Xk?t...
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
The next quarter, expected production is 15,000, though potentially only 5,000 will be made.
Looks to me that Tesla are less than 3 months behind schedule. So why the anxiety?
Sure, every single promise that came out of Elon's mouth in regard to driver assistance is missing:
- Can automatically pull out of your garage and meet you at the curb on private property. Not even close, they haven't released any feature remotely resembling this
- Can be summoned to your location wherever you are on private property. Nope, doesn't do this either
- Ultrasonics work at any speed. Nope, they top out well below the top speed of the car
- Monitors stop signs and traffic lights. Nope, ignores them completely
- Brings the vehicle to a full stop to avoid a collision. Nope, it actually releases the brake when it's shed a certain amount of speed, or gets below a certain speed threshold. (it actually has among the worst automatic emergency braking system in the industry in that regard)
List me a single thing that Elon claimed the car could do in regards to driver assistance that it can actually do. There isn't anything at that event that he got right. Not a single thing.
If you include his comments after the event, or to the media, or watch the test drives it gets even worse because even more things are claimed, none of which have come to fruition. Things like hands free on-ramp to off-ramp driving were claimed, now they pretend they never claimed that.
Tesla is most likely not going to survive as an independent car maker.
Maybe they'll make it as a niche luxury brand, but unless the miraculously start producing, they are going to be crushed by the real carmakers.
All the majors have EVs and hybrids on the way, and they can actually build them across the globe and in large quantities.
I think they are going to be bought up after their stock crashes, or turn into a battery company. Making money on cars is a very tough business.
I don't trust Tesla's automation for one second. Of course they've also never sold a car with autonomous features, only driver assistance, and I trust their driver assistance every time I get in the car. The difference is that I am always in control of the system. I am driving. Tesla isn't. The absolute worst thing the automation is capable of doing if it screws up is to move the car a foot or so to the side before I catch it and override. And if there wasn't several feet beside the car to start with, I never would have engaged the system in the first place.
The way the system is designed, there is still a physical link between the steering wheel and the steering of the front wheels, and between the brake pedal and the brakes. The software simply cannot override that no matter what it does wrong.
If you treat it as the feature it is (a better cruise control) it's great. If you expect it to drive itself you're both ignorant, and stupid.
That said, apparently too many people were both ignorant and stupid, so in a pure marketing move, and against the law in almost every jurisdiction, Tesla retroactively removed a paid for feature from all the cars it had already sold. Luckily for me, I've rooted my car and was able to re-instate the feature that Tesla stole.
As for resisting code audits, that's partly to cover their blatant copyright infringement using GPL software without adhering to the GPL, and partly because Tesla is of the opinion that they know better than the rest of the world on all things and have a right to do anything they want to other people's property without their permission. I'd say that it will come back to bite them eventually, but as long as they have no competition, and most countries consumer protection laws lack any teeth, what incentive do they have to change?
As for Tesla's "full self driving" that's just another of a long line of marketing lies, they'll never get there with the current hardware, nor will any regulatory body ever approve it with this hardware (we don't even need to talk about software for this, the hardware is so obviously incapable of it that the software is irrelevant)
One thing that I think Autopilot gets right versus most of its emerging competitors is the situation display. It tells you what it's thinking, how it sees the world - e.g., "I see you here in your lane, I sense something in your blind spot over here, I see two cars ahead of you, one to the front right..." etc. It may seem like such a little thing at first, but it's absolutely critical to owners being comfortable with any degree of automation (even glorified TACC+lanekeeping, aka Autopilot as it currently stands) that it not just be some "black box" randomly making inexplicable decisions. IMHO, Tesla could do even more to make clear why it decides things as it does - but they're at least much better than what most other companies are doing.
The chloride owes the sodium money.