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Tesla Produced Over 80,000 Cars In Third Quarter, Beating Estimates (electrek.co)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Tesla has now confirmed the official record production numbers of 80,000 vehicles. The automaker has also confirmed Q3 deliveries of 83,500 vehicles. Yesterday, Electrek reported the production numbers, which Tesla has now confirmed to be exactly 53,239 Model 3 vehicles and 26,903 Model S and X vehicles. Tesla elaborated on the Model 3 production ramp-up: "During Q3, we transitioned Model 3 production from entirely rear wheel drive at the beginning of the quarter to almost entirely dual motor during the last few weeks of the quarter. This added significant complexity, but we successfully executed this transition and ultimately produced more dual motor than rear wheel drive cars in Q3. In the last week of the quarter, we produced over 5,300 Model 3 vehicles, almost all of which were dual motor, meaning that we achieved a production rate of more than 10,000 drive units per week." Tesla delivered a total of 83,500 vehicles during the third quarter: 55,840 Model 3, 14,470 Model S, and 13,190 Model X.
Here's what Tesla had to say about the Model 3 deliveries: "Our Q3 Model 3 deliveries were limited to higher-priced variants, cash/loan transactions, and North American customers only. There remain significant opportunities to grow the addressable market for Model 3 by introducing leasing, standard battery and other lower-priced variants of the car, and by starting international deliveries."
Here's what Tesla had to say about the Model 3 deliveries: "Our Q3 Model 3 deliveries were limited to higher-priced variants, cash/loan transactions, and North American customers only. There remain significant opportunities to grow the addressable market for Model 3 by introducing leasing, standard battery and other lower-priced variants of the car, and by starting international deliveries."
Coincidentally, this came out today.
Ezekiel 23:20
The economy is running hot right now such that most products are selling above average.
(Since it's likely to come up, as far as the political credit for the economy, the "tax-cut stimulus" did help, but also jacked up debt. It's counter-Keynesian, which is bad my book. Pay down debt during up-times and save the stimuli for slumps.)
Table-ized A.I.
The ford Model A was a bargain basement model. Tesla are hardly aiming at that market segment.
Go here : here and click on August and see how they are doing relative to similarly priced models today.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
It may be like when Scientology purchased tons of "Dianetics" books to get on the best-seller lists. (Ok, allegedly, don't come after me, please.)
Table-ized A.I.
Oooh! N=2, at the start of production of a new product. Very convincing.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
But they are profitable this quarter. As they get better and learn more, and have stronger economies of scale, they will increase margin, just like what happens to most businesses after the initial spending to build segment is over.
Shorting such an innovative company is lunacy. They are years ahead on battery tech, years ahead on drivetrain, years ahead on driving assistants, and years ahead on infrastructure (power wall, solar panels, superchargers) as any other competitor. News and articles and tweets and this crap is fine for shorting in the immediate term, but over the long ark of time, financial performance is what will govern the stock price, and I don't think there are any worries there. They have a product, people want to buy it, and they are learning how to build that product profitably. Everything else is noise.
California is their biggest market; could well be coulter pines ;) The cones can weigh 2-5kg when fresh. There's also sugar pine cones, which can be 2/3rds of a meter long (but narrow).
As for the time to get an appointment, it depends entirely on where they are. While Tesla is working on switching to Tesla-owned body shops, right now, body work is contracted out to local body shops. So if you can't get an appointment, then the local body shop is overbooked.
"Close the door! What, were you born in a barn?" -- Police chief, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
Wouldn't be surprised if they do it even sooner. After transportation, their next bottleneck is going to be cell production; Tesla's growth has outpaced Panasonic's ability to provide cells. They're trying to get three new lines online at Giga as soon as possible, but it'll take months. When cells are the limiting factor, it makes sense to switch to SRs so you can make more vehicles with a limited volume of cells. Well optioned out SRs surely first, of course, but SRs nonetheless.
"Close the door! What, were you born in a barn?" -- Police chief, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
I note that people only go into "but what about the mining!" rants when talking about EV batteries, and not.... literally everything else they consume which is also made out of mined products. E.g. why should we give a rat's arse whether we use nickel in the form of stainless steel or in the form of the nickel oxides that make up the lion's share of an EV cathode? Why shouldn't we care about other mined products like platinium for catalytic converters (you don't need much, but it's mined in hundreds of ppb/low ppm quantities after stripping vast quantities of overburden) and the like? Heck, if you want to look for low impact mining, it's pretty dang hard to beat salar lithium. Really... why are the steel, alumium, vanadium, manganese, molybdenum, silicon, chromium, magnesium, etc etc in the ICEs considered irrelevant?
And as for cobalt - the element that's been dwindling in EV batteries - even in Congo, 80% of it is mined in mines run by international conglomerates, to modern standards, and of the artisinal mining, most is just villagers mining their own land; the concern is over a minority of a minority of mining in a single country. And even that is irrelevant - not because western companies generally have procedures in place to prevent buying artisinal cobalt (it's generally purchased by less scrupulous buyers, such as in China), but because this article about Tesla, and Tesla has historically acquired most of its cobalt from Canada.
The mass of a Model 3 is is about the same as its performance equivalents from BMW. The mass of "stuff" that makes it up is about the same as the mass of "stuff" that makes up the BMW. Why are we supposed to freak out about one but not the other?
"Close the door! What, were you born in a barn?" -- Police chief, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
You realize that Sandy Munroe, the guy you're citing, later changed his mind and called the vehicle a symphony of engineering, among other high praise? Literally stated "I have to eat crow" concerning his earlier analysis (aka what you linked)
"Close the door! What, were you born in a barn?" -- Police chief, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
Don't tell him not to short! I rely on such idiots to sometimes drive the price down so I can snatch up a few more stocks below market value.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Not sure they are years ahead on anything but possibly charge station network. While their competitors are decades ahead in things like dealer support, parts delivery, build quality, and most importantly paying down their debts. Their are many companies with decades of more experience on mass producing electric drive trains over Tesla. Panasonic is the primary holder of the battery technology, and manufacturing even at the Giga factory.
Personally their is no way I would consider a car that is locked down in DRM, from a company that maintains a list of VIN's that they will not sell parts for. Also no service or repair manuals, and so far demonstrated an inability to deliver repair parts at any scale. Especially one that is so deep in debt and tied up in a couple car models, one big recall and they are bankrupt.
Don't get me wrong, I am not saying short Tesla or anything close to predicting they will fail. Just that while I clearly have no idea how much of the population is like me, that would gladly pay $10k more for the support of BMW over the restrictions of Tesla. And they are just one mistake away from turning over their market lead to any one of nearly a dozen competitors.
The other AC got it right - there is NO PLACE where it says they make profit; that's why they lost $717 million last quarter, and are burning money at nearly $2 billion per year... That's not a profit.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
If you define successful as selling all your products at a loss, then yes - Tesla is successful.
Their financial statements are quite clear in that the raw cost of building their cars is less than the income from selling those cars. All the other stuff that's dragging them into the red is the problem, and the reports are not granular enough to determine if each car made is sold at a loss because of other costs like general overheads (a separate line item), whether the expenditure on assembly lines upgrades/installs is dragging it down (no idea where this is represented), or the loss comes from other areas that are car related (like supercharger stations) but not specific to building a car.
It's specious to say that they are selling their cars at a loss though...unless you know more detail about the financial statements released?
From a technical perspective, I honestly wish everything you said was true. Personally I'd love to buy an electric car now (and powerwall-type product) but given the large investment it would have to be from a stable manufacturer.
Since it's pretty clear now that Tesla is a few months away from being forced into DIP financing based on their convertibles situation, and what the bond yields and CDS rates are saying, it's definitely a no-go. Even in chapter 11 I wouldn't trust that any warranty promises could be fulfilled in a timely manner, if at all.
However the slew of models coming from established manufacturers in the next year is heartening. The Jaguar I-Pace and Porsche Taycan look very promising so it appears we really are at the tipping point of mass adoption. So that's at least a positive in gradual evolution of electric vehicles.
This is complete and utter bullshit. BYD makes far more electric vehicles than Tesla at this point, and many of their vehicles are heavy duty, ranging from busses to sedans. So they need more battery capacity per vehicle on average. Tesla iirc is barely in the third place, well behind both BYD and Luxgen.
Having driven one as my first car, it was amazing. Cheap enough that you can do whatever the fuck you want with it without regrets. I literally drove mine to death by driving just over the legal limit on the road, which was close to maximum rated speed of the car for thousands of kilometres with no maintenance until the housing that held the generator failed from stress and wheel that connects generator to engine via a belt went flying into the radiator. Fun part: car still kept driving. It's just that since cooling system sat on the same belt, coolant fluid went into boiling range quickly.
Also fun as heck, fully mechanical, no computers anywhere, and rear drive. You could do amazing things with it in the snow. Wanted to turn 180 degrees on straight line one lane road? Give it a bit of speed in second hear, turn wheel hard to the left and apply handbrake. It turned literally around its own front wheels on the spot.
Regulatory obstacles: you mean like not killing you at a 20mph collision by collapsing into a tangled mess. Look if European, Japanese and Korean manufactures can make cars that pass the regulatory obstacles without issue then the fact the Chinese can't should tell you the cars they are making are in fact death traps.
There is also the issue that a lot of Chinese cars are design knockoff's of western designs. They simply can't sell them in the west even if they could pass the regulatory barrier.
So for example putting both together the Cheryâ(TM)s QQ is a huge rip-off of the Daewoo Matiz, but if you are involved in a crash in the QQ you will most likely die, guess they cut some corners to get to the $5k price point then.