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Tesla Misses Model 3 Production Goals

wsj.com

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Re: Tesla Misses Model 3 Production Goals

#31

Post by maxerickson »

colechristensen wrote: post #23
abakker wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it is news for investors. Missing productions goals as a startup is different than missing production numbers as a public company that is arguably quite overvalued. It matters because if it effects their share price, that can have important downstream effects on their eventual ability to execute (e.g. secure more loans). Edit: I am not trying to say that Tesla should be punished, but am specifically addressi…

It is especially not news for investors. It encourages terrible behavior when people focus on this sort of dumb number. Projecting problems and solutions at the beginning of production is more or less impossible. Valuing a company based on the accuracy of what is litte more than random noise makes you a bad investor, making it a headline news story makes you a bad editor. It's only news if it shows an _actual_ proble…

It's not news investors should give a great deal of importance to, but it is news aimed squarely at investors, by Tesla itself.

Re: Tesla Misses Model 3 Production Goals

#32

Post by gholevas »

mrgordon wrote: post #24
mattbeckman wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try this bookmarklet to treat it like a Facebook referral: javascript:window.location.href='https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u='+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);

This approach stopped working recently AFAIK. Does it still work for you?

I just tried it and it worked for me

Re: Tesla Misses Model 3 Production Goals

#33

Post by saimiam »

abakker wrote: post #22
pmarreck wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like there is an unaddressed business opportunity for a per-article micropayment option.

News organizations work because the interests of the many finance a broad array of articles. Micropayments for articles would disrupt and distort the motives of unbiased news. There would emerge a hierarchy of articles chasing clicks and editors that favored certain writers with privileged access to click-generating traffic. underperforming articles would cease, and eventually, we'd get CNN. Joking aside, the newspap…

Literally no entity with more than one line of business has each line of business growing at the same rate. This implies that the successful LoBs are "clickbait" to subsidize the less profitable LoBs.

Familiar (counter) example - loss leaders in supermarkets.

Re: Tesla Misses Model 3 Production Goals

#35

Post by anindha »

ams6110 wrote: post #25
anindha wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you consider accurate journalism as a necessity of a well functioning economy and democracy then an argument can be made that it should be government funded and independent. Think BBC. I don’t think the current model is working as well as it could.

Government funded is incompatible with independent. By definition such an organization is dependent on continued government funding.

As long as funding is guaranteed by law then it’s possible to be independent. BBC works like this.

Re: Tesla Misses Model 3 Production Goals

#36

Post by utopkara »

maxerickson wrote: post #29
colechristensen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a press release which was likely delivered to wsj et al through a wire service they pay to deliver them piles and piles of press releases. Nobody quotes those as sources because nobody but news organizations that pay for them has access to them. A press release is also a rather bad primary source unlike, say, a research paper or a blog post.

The text on the Tesla website mentions https://globenewswire.com/ Anyone can setup a real time account for free. Also the WSJ article pretty clearly used the press release as a source, so mentioning that is a separate issue from whether it is a good or bad source. (unless you think the WSJ called Tesla and verified specific facts like "4,820 Model S and X vehicles were in transit" vs "The company said 4,820 vehicles…

The newswire is the distributor of the press release. It is equivalent to Tesla emailing all major news outlets; just more convenient and reliable. In short, Tesla is the source.

Re: Tesla Misses Model 3 Production Goals

#37

Post by sjwright »

bisRepetita wrote: post #30
colechristensen wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is especially not news for investors. It encourages terrible behavior when people focus on this sort of dumb number. Projecting problems and solutions at the beginning of production is more or less impossible. Valuing a company based on the accuracy of what is litte more than random noise makes you a bad investor, making it a headline news story makes you a bad editor. It's only news if it shows an _actual_ proble…

Are you saying one should not value a company based on what they're saying? Then in Q2 when they wrote "Based on our preparedness at this time, we are confident we can produce just over 1,500 vehicles in Q3", then we should not believe them. So why do they bother saying this? If they got an uplift then, they get punished a bit now, that's fair, life goes on.

The only question is how this affects the ongoing production ramp-up. A relatively short delay on the delivery of a thousand cars is barely a rounding error to the underlying business case, and won't have any lasting consequences once they've ramped up production to full speed.

Re: Tesla Misses Model 3 Production Goals

#38

Post by utopkara »

colechristensen wrote: post #18

This isn't news, it's gossip. ~200 instead of ~1500 means the bootstrapping is a little off schedule. It's stories like this and the attitude that they're important which gets us very destructive behaviors like putting production quota ahead of quality. Production misses are news when they're for substantial cause. Like a 10% miss for an S or X might be news.

Yield is a real mass production problem, not an imaginary one. You can verify it with your local manufacturer. For new products, new facilities, and new production methods scaling up the production often requires engineering breakthroughs.

Re: Tesla Misses Model 3 Production Goals

#39

Post by kchoudhu »

nicolashahn wrote: post #15

Based on his track record, Musk often sets unrealistic timeline goals (and unrealistic engineering goals, but he usually meets those). This has happened multiple times with both Tesla and SpaceX, not surprised this happened.

You understand that missing material estimates has legal implications if you do it too many times? Regulators can and do start thinking that you have something to hide.

Tesla isn't a startup working out of someone's garage -- it is a large player in a heavily regulated capital market. Estimates and guidance are for investors, not for people on the street: they are supposed to mean something.

Re: Tesla Misses Model 3 Production Goals

#40

Post by rpedela »

ams6110 wrote: post #25
anindha wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you consider accurate journalism as a necessity of a well functioning economy and democracy then an argument can be made that it should be government funded and independent. Think BBC. I don’t think the current model is working as well as it could.

Government funded is incompatible with independent. By definition such an organization is dependent on continued government funding.

Aren't PBS and NPR government funded and independent?
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