Tesla Is Making Over 2,000 Model 3s a Week, Falling Just Short of Its Goal (theverge.com)

According to an email from Elon Musk, Tesla has increased its production of its mass-market electric Model 3 to over 2,000 units per week. "It's an impressive ramp up of production, but it still falls short of Musk's goal of 2,500 Model 3s per week by the end of the first quarter of 2018," reports The Verge. From the report: In the companywide email (which was obtained by Jalopnik, Electrek, and Autonocast host Ed Niedermeyer), Musk sounds a celebratory note on the 2,000-vehicle per week benchmark, while ignoring the larger issue of missed deadlines: "It has been extremely difficult to pass the 2,000 cars per week rate for Model 3, but we are finally there. If things go as planned today, we will comfortably exceed that number over a seven-day period! Moreover, the whole Tesla production system is now on a firm foundation for that output, which means we should be able to exceed a combined Model S, X, and 3 production rate of 4,000 vehicles per week and climbing rapidly. This is already double the pace of 2017! By the end of this year, I believe we will be producing vehicles at least four times faster than last year." With Q1 now behind us, we can expect to see Tesla report its official production numbers to investors sometime this week.

Comments

Bloomberg estimate 1214 per week

[Michael Woodhams]

https://www.bloomberg.com/grap...

However, their methods are inexact. They are doing the best they can without access to inside knowledge. Musk has inside knowledge, and there are laws against lying to the stock market.

Re:Over promise

[Rei]

S and X production were only down for one day. Lines have to go down periodically regardless; tooling does not last forever, even if you're not doing upgrades.

Re:Over promise

[Rei]

Meanwhile, Tesla produced its first 10k Model 3s in the time it took GM to produce its first 1000 Bolts. I guess that's that "decades to tune their processes and supply chains" they had going for them, eh? And it costs Tesla $10k less per vehicle.

Re:Over promise

[Anonymous Coward]

Toolings typically last for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of operations. Tesla should still be on its first toolings UNLESS they've redesigned parts, forcing tooling changes or new tools altogether.

Yes, the tool lasts that long. Of course it never needs to be sharpened, or never chips, or rebuilt, or damaged, or, or, or, or, or

As someone who has worked in a factory, it is normal to change tools very regularly, so as to not make bad parts that need rework or scrapping.
Do you actually think a drill or a tap can just run forever?
And those are quite good compared to an endmill, to say nothing of a facemill.

I'm not sure what sort of tooling is required for building a Tesla, but even a drill needs to be changed, and I'd be surprised if at least something wasn't tapped.

Re:Over promise

[BadDreamer]

Having worked a lot with installing factory automation, I can actually parse what is stated in that article. The four years were not spent planning, but actually building the replacement factory content.

That is how installing factory assembly lines work. They are built offsite, one sub-assembly line at the time, complete with SAT acceptance, and then moved to the factory and installed and tested there.

That is what the article explains. They spent four years speccing and building sub-assembly lines, and then budgeted 8 weeks to remove the old assembly line and get the new ones running. Which is a crazy schedule, which they almost managed to keep - which is amazing.

But no, they did not shift over production in 8-10 weeks total implementation time. The new factory already existed at the start of those 8 weeks, only spread out at the integrator sites.

Re:Over promise

[Rei]

Read.

Gross margin = Gross profits / sales = historically around 25%, down a bit recently due to Model 3 production issues Your graph is operating margin, which is EBIT/sales. EBIT = gross profits - operating expenses (SGA, etc) - non-operating income + interest. In 2017, gross profit for TSLA was $2,2B, SGA was $2,5B, and R&D was $1,4B, yielding a net loss of $1,6B (plus everything else = -$2B). But a gross margin around 25% is quite solid for the auto industry. Tesla ran a negative not because of negative automotive margins, but because 1) SGA is scaled up to the size Tesla is actively growing to, not to the company's current sales, and 2) likewise for the R&D budget. Which are both exactly what you want to see in a rapidly growing company. None of Tesla's investors want to see them sit back on their laurels right now and live off of S and X; the point of investing in Tesla is to have a stake in a company that's transforming the automotive market. And that requires rapid scaleup. Gross margins prove the economic case for your products; operating margins remain negative until you've grown large.