Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tesla Misses Model 3 Production Goals

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 107 posts

Re: Tesla Misses Model 3 Production Goals

#61

Post by refurb »

colechristensen wrote: post #53
kec wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is being ~80% under quota not news? Such a large miss means that either Tesla is being unrealistically optimistic about their production capability, or they have serious production problems.

There are something like half a million Model 3 preorders. They just started production, 200 or 1500 – both are but a rounding error compared to the actual full production rate. (order of 10k/quarter) It's something like criticizing someone for running 75 feet instead of 400 in the first 45 seconds of their third marathon because they had to re-tie their shoes.

Well considering sometimes tripping up in the beginning of a marathon can mean you lose the race, I'd say it's a very important number.

Re: Tesla Misses Model 3 Production Goals

#62

Post by Stratoscope »

modeless wrote: post #3

Actual source: http://ir.tesla.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=1042449 OT: Sad how difficult it was to find this. The media avoids linking to primary sources. For example, Engadget's 3 paragraph article contains no less than 5 links back to engadget.com and not a single mention of this source.

> Engadget's 3 paragraph article contains no less than 5 links back to engadget.com and not a single mention of this source.

That's Engadget's house style. They forbid external links the the body of an article, only allowing links within their own site. The best you can hope for is a single hard-to-find link at the end.

They've done it this way for years. It sucks. It's one of the reasons I never read anything on Engadget except by mistake.

Re: Tesla Misses Model 3 Production Goals

#63

Post by Animats »

Only 220 Model 3 cars in an entire quarter? There's a big problem somewhere. That sounds like some key part of the production line doesn't work at all, and something is being hand-built to get some product out the door. Tesla isn't saying what's not working. Has anything leaked out?

When something like this this happens, the manufacturer has most of the costs of full production with the revenue of tiny production. Profitability just got further away.

As of August 2017, there have been about 63,000 cancellations of Model 3 preorders.[1]

[1] https://www.recode.net/2017/8/2/16087432/tesla-model-3-elect...

Re: Tesla Misses Model 3 Production Goals

#64

Post by lafar6502 »

Animats wrote: post #63

Only 220 Model 3 cars in an entire quarter? There's a big problem somewhere. That sounds like some key part of the production line doesn't work at all, and something is being hand-built to get some product out the door. Tesla isn't saying what's not working. Has anything leaked out? When something like this this happens, the manufacturer has most of the costs of full production with the revenue of tiny production. Pr…

Yep, that’s why Elon is suddenly talking some random bs about rockets.

Re: Tesla Misses Model 3 Production Goals

#65

Post by lafar6502 »

prostoalex wrote: post #57
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…

> Valuing a company based on the accuracy of what is litte more than random noise makes you a bad investor Some investors will value on random noise, and some other investors will figure this out and capture the mispricing, if there's any.

So why bother about Tesla at all? It’s all hot air...

Re: Tesla Misses Model 3 Production Goals

#66

Post by adventured »

Animats wrote: post #63

Only 220 Model 3 cars in an entire quarter? There's a big problem somewhere. That sounds like some key part of the production line doesn't work at all, and something is being hand-built to get some product out the door. Tesla isn't saying what's not working. Has anything leaked out? When something like this this happens, the manufacturer has most of the costs of full production with the revenue of tiny production. Pr…

It's extremely unlikely there's a big problem in the sense that you mean it. The Model 3 is easier to produce than the Model S and less complex. There's practically nothing new on the Model 3 that would plausibly be a big thing that's not working as to hold everything up in the scandalous manner you're implying (leaks, hand-building, not working, big problems, oh my).

More likely is that Musk set an overly ambitious target, for the hundredth time, and what they're doing for the quarter they probably should not have been doing at all. They produced something like 60-80 Model S vehicles in the first month. Check back in two quarters, if the Model 3 production is down 80%-90% from projections, that will be something meaningful.

Re: Tesla Misses Model 3 Production Goals

#67

Post by [deleted] »

refurb wrote: post #61
colechristensen wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are something like half a million Model 3 preorders. They just started production, 200 or 1500 – both are but a rounding error compared to the actual full production rate. (order of 10k/quarter) It's something like criticizing someone for running 75 feet instead of 400 in the first 45 seconds of their third marathon because they had to re-tie their shoes.

Well considering sometimes tripping up in the beginning of a marathon can mean you lose the race, I'd say it's a very important number.

[deleted]

Re: Tesla Misses Model 3 Production Goals

#68

Post by whyenot »

lwansbrough wrote: post #48

Interesting that the author Tim Higgins writes almost exclusively stories of bad news regarding Tesla.

Maybe there hasn't been any recent good news from Tesla. It looks like Tim Higgins also writes stories on other things related to cars and tech[1].

1. https://www.wsj.com/news/author/8483

Re: Tesla Misses Model 3 Production Goals

#69

Post by kornish »

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.

The running joke that I've heard is that Elon operates on Mars years – if you multiply his projections by 1.88x, that's frequently closer to the mark. :)

Re: Tesla Misses Model 3 Production Goals

#70

Post by kurthr »

Animats wrote: post #63

Only 220 Model 3 cars in an entire quarter? There's a big problem somewhere. That sounds like some key part of the production line doesn't work at all, and something is being hand-built to get some product out the door. Tesla isn't saying what's not working. Has anything leaked out? When something like this this happens, the manufacturer has most of the costs of full production with the revenue of tiny production. Pr…

Rather than a bottle neck, I'd say the production line wasn't up for the majority of the quarter. At 220 cars in ~120days, that is an 8-12 hour average takt time. Since nobody does that in production, it's more likely that they take the line down, fix things, and bring it up again days later. I'd be more interested in the change in delivery rate over the 3 months. If 218 cars were delivered on the last day, it would be 6k/mo or 70k/yr, great! More likely progress has been slow and hopefully steady (30=>60=>90 per month) for their ramp.
Post reply on HN