Tesla Temporarily Stops Model 3 Production Line (theverge.com) 145
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Tesla is temporarily stopping production of its Model 3 electric car, amid a long waiting list and several missed targets. The company, however, says the shutdown is intended to resolve some of the problems that have contributed to the numerous delays in getting the cars to hundreds of thousands of reservation holders. The automaker said Monday it would halt production of the Model 3 sedan for 4-5 days at its Fremont, California assembly plant, BuzzFeed reported. Tesla, however, says this is part of a planned period of downtime that was similar to another shutdown in February, and it isn't intended to have an affect on the company's current production targets for the car. "Our Model 3 production plan includes periods of planned downtime in both Fremont and Gigafactory 1," a Tesla spokesperson told The Verge. "These periods are used to improve automation and systematically address bottlenecks in order to increase production rates. This is not unusual and is in fact common in production ramps like this."
Next - janitorial staffing updates (Score:5, Insightful)
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Depends where the janitors come from.
Re:Next - janitorial staffing updates (Score:5, Funny)
Because people are genuinely interested in the amount of fiber in Mr. Musk's diet.
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So would I. The amount of science we could do on the diet of a man who shits pure gold and farts roses is incredible.
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I know, right! The Model 3 is already the best selling (as in actual deliveries) EV. It also outsells similarly priced 4-door ICE competitors like the Acura TLX, Mercedes C/CLA, Audi A4, Lexus RC, and the BMW 2, 3, and 4 series.
I fully expect WSJ articles soon with articles like "Tesla Manufacturing Impacted by Maintenance: Robot 127E was taken down for maintenance during the second shift at the Tesla factory in Freemont, California during the second shift today. Production was adversely impacted with 7 few
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Not my post, but:
"I know, right! The Model 3 is already the best selling (as in actual deliveries) EV." - Ref [insideevs.com]
Accura TLX: Pretty close [insideevs.com]. The TLX had a March sales jump, but with the new 3 production rate, there's no way it'll beat the 3 again.
Mercedes C/CLA: Model 3 sold over 50% more [carsalesbase.com]
Audi A4: Closer, but still a solid Model 3 win. [carsalesbase.com]
Lexus RC: Over an order of magnitude more Model 3 sales [carsalesbase.com]
BMW 2: 3 1/2 times more Model 3s. [carsalesbase.com]
BMW 3: Actually the 3-series edged out the Model 3... but it's unlikely to do so again. [carsalesbase.com]
BMW 4:
Re: Next - janitorial staffing updates (Score:1)
Read the articles, you fucking imbecile. Those are actual delivered cars... You people are so retarded.
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He's too busy citing short nonsense.
* Reservations have remained constant, as confirmed in statements filed with the SEC. The rate of cancellations has been roughly equal to the rate of new orders.
* Only 30% of people who receive their invite are choosing first production vehicles. If you choose first production, you must buy the LR pack and PUP and you can't buy dual motor, performance package, 20" wheels, or air suspension. It's impressive to me that 30% of people are choosing to config
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Musk recently said they just managed to deliver 2000 vehicles in a week. You say they've delivered 500,000. So, being generous and saying that they have been producing 2000 since production started (they haven't), it would take 250 weeks to deliver 500,000 vehicles. Has the Model 3 been in production for the better part of 5 years now? Me's think you may be what you accuse others of being.
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I know, right! The Model 3 is already the best selling (as in actual deliveries) EV. It also outsells similarly priced 4-door ICE competitors like the Acura TLX, Mercedes C/CLA, Audi A4, Lexus RC, and the BMW 2, 3, and 4 series.
I'm assuming you are joking. But in case you aren't, the highest estimate of model 3's that I've seen is just over 17K [bloomberg.com]The Chevy Bolt hit 20K before the end of last year [electrek.co] Nissan has delivered 300K Leafs [forbes.com] as of January of this year.
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Why are you mixing together total sales with monthly sales? Here [insideevs.com] are monthly sales. 3820 Model 3s are estimated sold and delivered in the US in March, vs. 1774 Bolts.
And why are you comparing total production of the Bolt vs. the Model 3 to begin with?
The Bolt concept car was unveiled in January 2015; pre-production vehicles were seen in testing in mid-2015; the first production car shown at the end of 2015; the production line started making vehicles in fall of 2016; and sales were opened to the public in
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I know, right! The Model 3 is already the best selling (as in actual deliveries) EV. It also outsells similarly priced 4-door ICE competitors like the Acura TLX, Mercedes C/CLA, Audi A4, Lexus RC, and the BMW 2, 3, and 4 series.
I fully expect WSJ articles soon with articles like "Tesla Manufacturing Impacted by Maintenance: Robot 127E was taken down for maintenance during the second shift at the Tesla factory in Freemont, California during the second shift today. Production was adversely impacted with 7 fewer Model 3's produced than expected while capacitor C12 was replaced..."
This argument is flawed. The other manufacturers have model variances to spread their buyers among. Tesla has just three.
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Musk is the Donald Trump of car company CEOs.
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you know what VW has that Tesla doesn't?
Many, many profitable quarters.
(My fucking god, whataboutism is the worst fucking form of argument, )
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Why such obsession over trivial and routine manufacturing decisions at Tesla?
Experienced automakers wouldn't be going through that. They know how to deal with it.
Of course they would. It just doesn't make the news when they do.
Re:It's not trivial (Score:4, Insightful)
Meanwhile, even with the delays, Tesla made their first 10000 Model 3s in less time than it took GM to make their first 1000 Bolts, from the start of tooling. And the first Model 3s were rolling off the line well sooner than the first Bolts (again, relative to the start of tooling).
Bankwupt! Bankwupt, I say! ;)
Hey, let's put or skeptic's hat on. Let's say that Musk is wrong about 5-6k/wk at the end of this quarter. Let's say they only do 4k at the end of this quarter. That would still be 80% of the line's initial design spec, aka the point where it's designed to be turning a 25% gross margin. Even a miss this quarter still means that they've pretty much succeeded with line development. Yes, they'll tune it over Q3 to get the rate up as high as they can, and this might mean a couple weeks downtime here and there. Sure, they'll probably take a quarter or two to realize the full margin. But at the end of this quarter, they're probably going to be earning at least 10% margin on at least 4k cars per week with an average sale price in the early run of around $45k (it's worth pointing out that the early cars are option-heavy and likely to have higher margins, so 10% is very pessimistic). That's Model 3 profits of $234M in Q3 (positive-$234M, vs a Model 3 loss in the last quarterly report) if Q3 averages only 4k/wk across all of Q3 (vs. the target of 5k/6k per week at the start of Q3). If Q3 averages 5/wk and 15% margin? That's $438M. Q4, at say 6k and 20%? $702M. I mention these numbers to contrast with the 598M quarterly loss they had in Q4.
Even if we ignore everything else - how the solar gigafactory is finally starting consumer sales, the huge boom in energy orders, the half billion or so they're going to get from deposits on the Y, etc, etc - Tesla's cash burn is all but over in Q3, and they're profitable in Q4. And even in Q2, their burn is heavily slashed from Q4/Q1.
And this is just the start of reasons I could go into as to why this "bankwupcy" thing is nonsense; there's about a dozen more. The shorts, strangely enough, always only develop their hindsight in the rearview mirror. To them, Tesla is always bankrupt in six months. Last summer, Tesla was going bankrupt this winter. Last fall, they were going bankrupt this spring. This winter, the bankruptcy was scheduled for summer. Here we are in the fall sweeps. Well, sorry to rain on the parade, but their predictive ability is worth squat. They keep pointing to reasons that Tesla did better than they expected, and it's always, "Well, of course they could do that, but they can't do it again, so now they're doomed!". Yeah? Well where were you pointing out what they could do? They were just off screaming "Bankrupt!" to their Seeking Alpha echo chamber, only developing their "foresight" after the fact. It's like listening to the Nostradamus crowd insisting that he predicted the 11 September attacks - if the predictions were so great, where were you on 10 September?
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Oh, and speaking of margins. A majority of buyers get Autopilot ($5k). A minority get FSD ($3k). Software margins are huge, as in over 95%. Let's just say that Tesla made *no* profit at all on a $35k car and someone added AP. The car instantaneously has a 14% profit margin, just from that one option. Let alone premium interiors, dual motor, air suspension, long-range pack, performance package, 18"/20" wheels, paint options, etc, etc - just that one option alone can turn a zero-margin car into a 14% margi
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FSD doesn't exist yet. They need to write the software and do any upgrades necessary on the cars for less than $3k per customer. Good luck with that.
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And yet, the cash for FSD very much does exist. I think people are stupid for putting down money on FSD, but some people actually are. A nice interest-free loan for Tesla, on an option that has more than enough weasel wording in its description to insulate them from any liability for not delivering in the remotely near future.
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If it weren't for the massive injections of credulous investors' cash, Tesla would already be bankrupt. The problem with the model 3 production line is not "can they get it up to capacity" but "can they get it up to capacity in time". All the while they are not profitable, they are accruing debt and that debt is getting more and more expensive (because their credit rating is getting downgraded). It may get to the point that Tesla cannot increase production of the model 3 fast enough to produce the required
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Wow, if investors didn't invest in a company, it would have no money? Imagine that.
BTW, we're going to be having a meeting of the Tautology Club next week, if you want to join us; it will be the first time that the Tautology Club meets.
See the post you're replying to.
Wrong. Tesla's debt is relatively stable. You're confusing cash with debt.
Fo
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Meanwhile, even with the delays, Tesla made their first 10000 Model 3s in less time than it took GM to make their first 1000 Bolts, from the start of tooling
Maybe that's because GM knows how to bring a car into production.
In 2017 GM made over 22,000 Bolts, meanwhile Tesla has only made a total of just over 17,000 Model 3's to date. GM is crushing Tesla.
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But then, when you have a loss of money on every car, you have to talk about something else to make it look not as bad as a 20% annual loss...
Re:It's not trivial (Score:5, Informative)
"See, the obsession is that investors have dumped BILLIONS into Tesla and it has been lost - yes, LOST - period."
The money hasn't been lost yet, but Tesla is burning through it's cash at a stunning rate. It looks to be a crapshoot as to whether Tesla will end this year flying high, dead broke, or struggling off into the future having sold off much of whatever it has in the way of marketable assets. See https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/3... [cnbc.com]
Moody's downgraded Tesla's credit rating to "Negative" a few weeks ago. That's not good.
Lost. (Score:1)
The money hasn't been lost yet, ....
Yes, the money has been lost. Salaries, utilities, day to day expenses, insurance, etc .....
That money is all gone - forever.
The money spent on CAPEX, although in tangible assets, won't be worth that much when the company goes bust.
Cite: Every goddamn cash flow statement for the last 15 years. See the huge NEGATIVE number "Cash Flows from operations"
LOST.
You need to learn how to read a financial statement and understand what the numbers mean.
And don't cite CNBC because they all have shit for brains. The
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Ah, I remember people like you... [youtube.com]
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Why such obsession over trivial and routine manufacturing decisions at Tesla? Are we also going to get "Janitors at Tesla factory had to put overtime to unclog plugged toilet" headlines?
Maybe because Tesla and Musk constantly demand attention. Heck, Musk installs a few solar panels at one bldg. in Puerto Rico and its an international story. But that's ALL HE DID in PR. Its not like installing solar panels is some great achievement, its been done for decades. Meanwhile, individuals and organizations that did so much more were and are still ignored.
Maybe also because Tesla is worth billions in market value, but is still burning cash like crazy with no indication they can do anything better t
Re:Next - janitorial staffing updates (Score:4, Interesting)
"Maybe because Tesla and Musk constantly demand attention. Heck, Musk installs a few solar panels at one bldg. in Puerto Rico and its an international story. But that's ALL HE DID in PR. Its not like installing solar panels is some great achievement, its been done for decades. Meanwhile, individuals and organizations that did so much more were and are still ignored"
yeah, Tesla Energy only installed at least 6 projects to restore power in Puerto Rico incl at a children's hospital.
Stupid of Elon to go through all that trouble when all he had to do was toss a few bundles of paper towels, say that everyone was enjoying themselves and we can't do more because of all the bigly ocean water surrounding the island.
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Why such obsession over trivial and routine manufacturing decisions at Tesla? Are we also going to get "Janitors at Tesla factory had to put overtime to unclog plugged toilet" headlines?
Pff! What? Nooo... *closes Slashdot submission tab detailing plumbing issues*
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Why such obsession over trivial and routine manufacturing decisions at Tesla? Are we also going to get "Janitors at Tesla factory had to put overtime to unclog plugged toilet" headlines?
Good. Now I can count my today's time on /. toward mandatory court-ordered community service time.
Pff! What? Nooo... *closes Slashdot submission tab detailing plumbing issues*
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Why such obsession over trivial and routine manufacturing decisions at Tesla? Are we also going to get "Janitors at Tesla factory had to put overtime to unclog plugged toilet" headlines?
There is clearly an effort underway to sow uncertainty about Tesla by its competitors and also by Wall Street traders hoping to make money on the ups and downs.
If Tesla can actually ramp up production and make the line profitable that is a huge threat to some very big entrenched interests and the uncertainty about that is a huge opportunity for some Wall Street vulture capitalists.
I wish Tesla well.
Re:Next - janitorial staffing updates (Score:4, Informative)
Stock pricing I imagine. There's a lot of people with short term investments in the company.
This isn't a "janitorial issue" either. This is about Tesla consistently failing to hit production targets by orders of magnitude, with stock that is prices mostly on assumptions of future performance and hence promises. This shut down actually appears to be the consequence of previous Tesla story of them actually managing to increase production to something close to a quarter or so of what they actually promised to deliver. Which followed the reports that this was done in unsustainable way that would force stoppage of production line in near future due to wear and tear.
Relevance comes from the fact that if even hitting a quarter of production which is needed to just even begin meeting the promises makes the production random inoperable in weeks as appears to have happened here, what is the basis of the stock price of Tesla?
Re:Next - janitorial staffing updates (Score:5, Insightful)
They hit 80% of last quarter's target. Is that "off by an order of magnitude" to you?
What BS "reports"? They've maintained the 2k/wk rate since then.
Yes, they're six months late. Big whoop. Reservations are still at half a million, the "competition" is still a joke, and each of the supposed "Tesla killers" so far has turned out to be half-baked. Exceeding in some cases even my pessimism. I totally didn't call that, for example, the 2018 Leaf would only be able to go 200-300km before being throttled to 20-25kW charge rates. I mean, ouch.
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I guess I hit the nerve. Their initial target was far larger than their massive scaled down "last quarter" target, and I was in fact talking about the reason for stock price, which is carried by big promises.
You also appear to have missed what this story is about.
And finally, there are bigger and more successful competitors in electric vehicles. BYD for example. They just do the work, and don't over-promise or focus on expensive vehicles only, so they're not in the news every time something happens on their
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Re:Next - janitorial staffing updates (Score:4, Informative)
The S and X lines were down for one day. For periodic maintenance, because you have to take lines down periodically for maintenance.
S&X are neither production nor demand constrained; they're 18650 cell constrained. Neither Tesla nor Panasonic have an interest in the capital expenditure to increase 18650 production, since Tesla is moving to 2170s.
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Why such obsession over trivial and routine manufacturing decisions at Tesla?
You really have to ask? The answer's really quite obvious. [wikipedia.org]
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There is good news coming out of China suggesting that TESLA will be able to open a plant in China while still holding control of the company.
The market weasels want to talk down the stock so they can get a better price as the implications of TESLA opening a plant in China move out into the general investor marketplace.
Tomorrows headlines will be something like, TESLA to lose all IP and lose key management as a result of internal division and revolt related to horrid plans to build plant in China.
The percei
Short sellers (Score:5, Insightful)
Tesla is the most shorted [cnbc.com] company right now.
The problem with the situation is that most investors *want* Tesla to fail so that they can make money from the short sales.
OTOH, Elon Musk is aware of the shorts and tends to do something to prop up the stock price whenever it drops a little. Like announcing a new model or a new production goal. (The production goals are never met, but the announcements make the stock tick up a couple of percent.)
So right now we're awash in bear market opinions, and many suggestive (but worthless) statements keep making the rounds such as:
"Tesla has never made a profit"
"Tesla loses money on every car they sell"
"Tesla only survives due to government handouts"
"Tesla is so far behind that some people will get their cars $SOMENUMBER years from now"
"Tesla is burning through cash, will be bankrupt in $NUM months"
"Musk is a serial liar"
Those are the highlights - have I missed any?
To analyze #4 as an example ("burning through cash"), note that this is something the CFO and CEO keep track of and anticipate, and are responsible for raising more cash before the bankruptcy actually happens. Also, specifically Tesla predicts that they won't need another round of financing, but that option is certainly open if they need it.
It's nigh impossible to get an accurate assessment of Tesla's worth right now, due to corruption in reporting.
Tesla expects to turn a profit for the first time later this year. Their stock will probably skyrocket when that happens.
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Also, specifically Tesla predicts that they won't need another round of financing, but that option is certainly open if they need it.
Musk had to say this. The cash burn at Tesla is factual and well known so any shareholder rightly cares if Tesla can pay its bills. When a company doesn't make a profit the only way to keep the doors open are borrowing or selling shares. Tesla's long term debt currently trades at a substantial discount to face value so the bond markets are saying they don't believe the hype and don't really want to lend to Tesla. If Tesla can't borrow then they have to sell shares. At depressed stock prices, any meaningful
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Cash burn is utterly irrelevant. Tesla can't go broke, so it can't go bankrupt. They've a half million cars on order at at least 50K each. That's 25 billion in gross sales, and that's *past* orders. Present orders are being held back because they can't make cars fast enough to immediately deliver.
At 25 billion coming in, they have all the lines of credit and investor interest they will ever want.
China just let them own their own factory there. That's...enormous news.
Cash burn is a concern if you can't pay y
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Oh, gawd damn it. 2 and a half billion. Do not use your head for a calculator. Still, that's conservative. Call it 3-4 billion because most of those cars will cost more than 50K.
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virtual upvote this.
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"Tesla loses money on every car they sell" "Tesla only survives due to government handouts"
I have always wondered about these arguments. I haven't looked at Tesla's P&L recently (in spite of being a stockholder) but I was under the impression that they are plowing tons of money into R&D.
So if they wanted to suddenly be profitable all they would have to do is stop spending on R&D. Just bank the gross profit they get off of selling their existing product which is heavily in demand.
So what would their stock be worth if they did that?
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They are. About 1 1/2 billion per year. Versus their Q4 loss of under $600M. Their SG&A is also scaled up in advance of the 3 rollout, since you can't magic that into existence the instant production increases. Tesla has big capex also. Interestingly, there are clear signs that Tesla is increasing (or preparing to increase) capex. They're currently relocating the Gigafactory parking lot (first step to expand the building) a
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Found the guy that works at Tesla
Or has invested in them :D
Absolutely correct (Score:2)
Found the guy that works at Tesla
Or has invested in them :D
Fair point: I am invested in Tesla.
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You fail to mention that shorts also articificial reduce a companies share price, however the problem with shorts is that if people push up the price to a certain point those shorts are forced to buy the stock at a much higher price than they sold it for. Shorts are also most often leverage, so they pay around 10% of the value of the shares they short and of course if shares prices go 10% higher than the price they pretended to sell at, the finacing broker forces them to buy at the new much higher price to
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Tesla's stock is massively overpriced given its current revenue and production. That's not talking down the price , it is stating a fact.
General Motors has revenue of about $148 billion and a market cap. of around $40 billion
Tesla has revenue of $12 billion and market cap. of about $50 billion.
Neither company makes a net profit, however Tesla is apparently worthy more in spite of have less than a tenth of the income. It's overpriced.
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Neither company makes a net profit, however Tesla is apparently worthy more in spite of have less than a tenth of the income. It's overpriced.
Huh? GM's EPS is $5.15 and at its current share price pays a dividend with a 3.87% yield. Tesla has the dubious honor of increasing its losses per share even as share dilution increases.
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Alternatively, if Tesla wasn't going to need to issue more stock for cash any time soon, he could just let the shorts happen and then buy more shares at a lower price. If he believed in Tesla that is.
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The problem with the situation is that most investors *want* Tesla to fail so that they can make money from the short sales.
Most investors want to make money, long or short. If they thought they could make the most money by going long on Tesla, there's no reason they wouldn't. But the fundamentals point to going short being the better move, so they're selling it short - not out of spite, but out of analysis.
Re:Next - janitorial staffing updates (Score:5, Insightful)
Why such obsession over trivial and routine manufacturing decisions at Tesla? Are we also going to get "Janitors at Tesla factory had to put overtime to unclog plugged toilet" headlines?
Because Tesla is a heavily shorted stock, and has started to return to the "good news" phase of the cycle.
Whenever a stock is heavily shorted, good news that increases the stock value must be immediately followed by a series of damning articles to make the stock value drop again.
So if Model 3 production was completely on-track, and there was nothing else bad to report about the company, you absolutely would see a front-page article on the terrible toilet problems that were causing issues at the factory. (Often, but not exclusively, originating from a place like "Business Insider" or "Seeking Alpha" from an author who quietly admits to have a short position on TSLA and a long position on competitors.)
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Also a good time for the "analysts" to buy cheap, so the drumbeat goes on to drive the stock price as low as it can go.
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There were some articles about how Model 3 production was finally starting to ramp up.
Also, their stock price was beginning to recover from the recent dip.
And speaking of that recall... Everyone else does those kinds of recalls all the time, and it never makes the news. It was a complete non-issue that only made the headlines "because Tesla."
Seriously, I once had a car that got a recall notice every other month. No one really cared, and it was just part of the normal routine maintenance.
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The Koch brothers declared war on electric cars and solar/wind last year. I expect some of the the current coordinated howling about Tesla is in fact a single front in their war. The Russians didn't invent this kind of thing. They just copied it for their own use.
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I expect it is Musk takes a Tech Sector approach towards its products (High Automation, Smart Software, ). Many of them such as Automobiles already have an industry with its own sets of standards and best practices behind them. So it is interesting to see what manufacturing changes stay and what roles back to the traditional tried and true method. They are camps that wants to see these new methods succeed (because these new manufacturing methods can put America back to manufacturing again, by reducing th
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Why such obsession over trivial and routine manufacturing decisions at Tesla?
Two reasons:
First, anything which seems like it could possibly be construed as a setback is cited by the Tesla haters as evidence that the company is certainly doomed to fail. Some conservatives, because they oppose government subsidies and are skeptical of the forecast (and Gore-cast) AGW apocalypse, by association despise Tesla and talk it down at any opportunity. Of course, Tesla is long-term bet on the profitability of mass-producing smart electric cars. Growing pains, such as deviations from forecas
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Tesla will end up merging with or being bought by a car maker. It's the smart thing to do. Tesla's got the software. They have everything else. The Liliputians didn't rule the day either.
Even if Tesla's market cap falls to $5B(less than $30 a share, assuming no further dilution), nobody will buy it given its $24B in liabilities. Assets will be sold piecemeal after reorg.
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"Routine manufacturing decisions"?
If this were Ford or Kia, two companies that have produced millions of cars in more than a dozen models, a temporary shutdown of a production line of one model would be more routine, but this is Tesla -- a company that's still not profitable and that has missed several deadlines for its Model 3 "mass-production" vehicle.
So yeah, it is a big deal.
Not to mention potential buyers have plopped down $1,000 to reserve one of these cars (OK, I mentioned it)
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It is a swindle.
Welcome to Unrestrained Capitalism, anything that is not illegal will be attempted, and then some.
Re: Next - janitorial staffing updates (Score:2, Insightful)
Meanwhile, teachers in West Virginia went on strike. And Oklahoma. And Kentucky. Where the governor admitted that the teachers were the ones keeping children from being sexually abused and poisoned, but well, they just couldn't be fairly paid for that critical task.
Yay America! Where two black men still can't wait at Starbucks before ordering.
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There are also starving children somewhere. What any of this has to do with Tesla?
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At my local Starbucks, there were often 3 retirement-age white dudes who seemed to always be parked in the comfiest chairs, without purchasing anything. They seemed to be just using the place as their personal social club. I remember thinking that if I owned that business, I might be a bit ticked off. It wasn't a big place, and there wasn't a whole lot of seating.
So when I read about the non-customers waiting in the Phil. Starbucks being asked to leave, it didn't strike me as 100% crazy. So hey, maybe it
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They took fully refundable $1000 reservations, where is the swindle?
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Turns out AC's right -- people are cancelling, and in many cases Tesla's taking a really really long time to refund their money (up to 3 months, it seems). More at https://www.wired.com/story/ca... [wired.com]
Not technically "not refunding", but still pretty poor.
Re: Next - janitorial staffing updates (Score:5, Interesting)
I was about to respond, snippily, that it's not like there's a whole lot of people cancelling, and then thought I'd google.
Turns out AC's right -- people are cancelling, and in many cases Tesla's taking a really really long time to refund their money (up to 3 months, it seems). More at https://www.wired.com/story/ca... [wired.com]
Not technically "not refunding", but still pretty poor.
Did you read your own link?
"The next day, I found a FedEx envelope on my doorstep. My refund had arrived — 61 business days after I cancelled my reservation.
Not every Tesla refund takes this long — or this much work. "It was easy," says Jeff Maggard, a former reservation holder from Ithaca, New York, who cancelled his deposit in February after a career change made it hard to justify buying a new car. His refund showed up on his credit card less than two weeks later. "I did it all online without talking to anyone. There was no number to call so I could be talked out of it by a representative. No dumb tricks to make me stay. It was great," Maggard says. "Very customer-centered."
I've waited much longer for refunds for a lot less than $1000 so I don't know what the gripe is all about.
In any case, it's clear that it's not everyone who had to wait a long time.
It's been suggested that a lot of the complainants may have had the credit cards used to place the reservation expire which would make a refund difficult.
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Did you read your own link?
I read the link. Tesla promised refunds within three weeks, then promised them again within two weeks on the phone, and failed to deliver on either promise. It's about setting expectations. People would be pissed off if they told them the truth, so instead they lie to potential future customers? Okay, if that works for them. But it sets a precedent.
You don't know if the refund delay was because Tesla didn't have the money or if there was a problem with the payment processors.
Tesla claims to have over 60000 net cancellations between the Model 3 reveal and Fall 2017.
If even a significant number of them were problematic, the message boards would be overflowing with chatter about it.
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You don't know if the refund delay was because Tesla didn't have the money or if there was a problem with the payment processors.
Yes, I do. I know because Tesla promised people checks within two weeks of their second call, which they then did not get. I know that problem is due to Tesla, not some payment processor. I also know that it's Tesla's responsibility, and if they can't choose a payment processor that processes payments, that's on them. Remember, Musk owns a payment processor. It's how he became massively wealthy in the first place! There is literally no room for excuses here.
Re: (Score:2)
How do you explain all the people who got timely refunds?
Going by Tesla's info, ~60000 would have cancelled between Apr 2016 and Dec 2017. How many of them are still waiting or took months to receive a refund?
"Remember, Musk owns a payment processor"?
PayPal? He's not been part of that for 15 years.
Re: (Score:3)
There is nothing trivial when a car company which took prepaid orders is years late.
It is a swindle.
They're not "years late".
No deposits for Model 3 were taken before Mar 31st, 2016 and at the time the start of production for North America was supposed to be Fall 2017.
So they're running months behind, not years
Re: Next - janitorial staffing updates (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. They're half a year late. Reservations have remained roughly constant at about half a million. And over on the Tesla forums, people are cheering the news about scheduled line downtime. Because you take lines down to upgrade them to be better / faster. Every time Tesla has taken the line down in the past, it's come back up much faster than previously. The last line downtime saw an over 2x increase in production.
I've been hoping to see news that Tesla would be taking the line down, as that would be the next sign of an upcoming production jump, and was very happy when I saw this today.
Re: (Score:1)
We were supposed to see 2K/week in November. Then it slipped to January. Then supposed to be for all of Q1. Now it's well into Q2 and we're taking lines down to try to get to that rate - when the claim back just a few months ago was that it would be near 5K/week around now...
The last time Tesla took a line down was stopping the X and S lines so they could try (and fail) to hit 2500 the last week of Q1. Maybe this is another surge just to try to hit 2500 in a week - when there is nothing else going on
Re: (Score:1)
There is nothing trivial when a car company which took prepaid orders is years late.
And takes orders for a $35K version that'll never be produced.
It is a swindle.
Indeed. Swindled to provide an interest-free loan that one may get back if the company goes bankrupt.
Re: (Score:2)
In other news, Slashdot temporarily shut down it's web site this morning. But no comment on that.
Because Slashdot shutdowns happen pretty often and many think it's a good thing, so it's not news worthy.
A production shutdown at Tesla doesn't happen too often and some might not think it's a good thing, making it news worthy.
Personally, I don't care about either.
Re: Uh, what? (Score:2)
Yet we hear that the ancient car companies can't improve because their lines are so inflexible. That's at least something that Tesla has promised to avoid.
Re: (Score:1)
Mostly you are spot-on. However:
As for mid-production product change, that's potentially worse than a manufacturing change, as you now have to let all your service centers know that the 2018.2 model is different than a 2018.1 model, what those changes are and, potentially, new parts you are going to need to service those changes.
While this stuff is technically true, Tesla has few service centers, and they are light-years ahead of other car companies in all other respects in regards to software — I'd bet their service documentation software is at least as good as anyone else's. To wit, when you insert the VIN into the software, it retrieves model- and vehicle-specific information from the main office. If a vehicle hasn't had a service recall, that will show up. When you look up parts, the number
Robots (Score:2)
Translation (Score:1)
the shutdown is intended to resolve some of the problems that have contributed to the numerous delays
Translation: They put everything they had into the last couple of weeks in the first quarter to make the numbers look less bad. Now they're out of parts.
Re: (Score:1)
Really /.? No more content than an LOL and a jab at the totally unrelated topics of an ex-president and an entire generation of people with no discernible purpose for the jabs other than "being a dick" and this gets modded up? Cool.