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Tesla opens the Model 3 reservation floodgates

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Re: Tesla opens the Model 3 reservation floodgates

#81

Post by windexh8er »

wpietri wrote: post #77
jillesvangurp wrote: post #56

The way I see it, logistics aside, Tesla has awesome cars that are loved by those that manage to get one delivered, customers are actually lining up to buy them to the extent of paying just to get in line for that years ahead of time, and they are pretty much guaranteed to sell anything they ship for the foreseeable future. Better still most of their would be competitors are either not shipping at all right now, year…

> they are pretty much close to the promised rate of 5K cars/week They might hit that goal, but I'm very concerned about how they're getting there. Toyota was the company that really figured out how to make good cars economically. They came out of Japan's post-war economic devastation to kick the asses of US carmakers. Their thinking was so alien to traditional approaches that Detroit spent decades trying to catch on…

Toyota embraced Deming/Kaizen, it wasn't their idea. Beyond that Tesla is a more extreme version of those ideas. Toyota doesn't need to, but it's likely they also wouldn't, build an entirely new line to meet a goal. That would be out of the focal range of their 'softer' implementation of continual improvements. Musk on the other hand is not averse to continual improvements that are on the extreme end of the spectrum. This is very evident in how they've built the car. For example when Consumer Reports identified a braking issue with the Model 3 Tesla had an OTA software fix in days. What other manufacture would do that, let alone could?

Re: Tesla opens the Model 3 reservation floodgates

#83

Post by empath75 »

danso wrote: post #71
ben_w wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have nothing to compare against, so if I was in the market for a $35k car [1] I’d probably be fine with this. [1] I’d prefer to invest most of the money and have a cheaper second hand car, and if I had enough spare that $35k was pocket change, I’d be more interested in a tiny aircraft or a small liveaboard boat.

The cars being assembled now are not being sold for $35K, are they?

No. They’re all upgraded model 3s

Re: Tesla opens the Model 3 reservation floodgates

#84

Post by windexh8er »

catherinezng wrote: post #65
jillesvangurp wrote: post #56

The way I see it, logistics aside, Tesla has awesome cars that are loved by those that manage to get one delivered, customers are actually lining up to buy them to the extent of paying just to get in line for that years ahead of time, and they are pretty much guaranteed to sell anything they ship for the foreseeable future. Better still most of their would be competitors are either not shipping at all right now, year…

Tesla lost ~$2B last year, owes ~$10B in debt, and owes >$400M in interest payments per year alone. Moody’s downgraded Tesla’s bond rating because Tesla will need to raise more money this year, at least $2B (which is an extremely conservative figure), to avoid Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Elon Musk also owes >$600M in personal debt that he financed using Tesla stock as collateral. This means that if Tesla stock dips below…

All the major players operate under a debt and profit cycle. It's just that nobody else is also building a new car company and one that is a paradigm shift.

https://simplywall.st/stocks/us/automobiles/nyse-gm/general-...

On top of the fact they were bailed out.

Re: Tesla opens the Model 3 reservation floodgates

#85

Post by rsynnott »

ben_w wrote: post #7
sschueller wrote: post #4

Someone tweeted this video[1] of the tent production line a over a week ago. It looks a lot less clean than the picture Elon tweeted thats in the article. I don't know if I would purchase a 35K+ car that was assembled outside in the open. Also it appears quite chaotic with chassis being transported around also in the open. [1] https://twitter.com/IspyTsla/status/1009134913881190400?s=19

I have nothing to compare against, so if I was in the market for a $35k car [1] I’d probably be fine with this. [1] I’d prefer to invest most of the money and have a cheaper second hand car, and if I had enough spare that $35k was pocket change, I’d be more interested in a tiny aircraft or a small liveaboard boat.

It's not a $35k car; there is no $35k option that you can buy, and no timeline for such an option existing.

Re: Tesla opens the Model 3 reservation floodgates

#87

Post by jcranmer »

windexh8er wrote: post #81
wpietri wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they are pretty much close to the promised rate of 5K cars/week They might hit that goal, but I'm very concerned about how they're getting there. Toyota was the company that really figured out how to make good cars economically. They came out of Japan's post-war economic devastation to kick the asses of US carmakers. Their thinking was so alien to traditional approaches that Detroit spent decades trying to catch on…

Toyota embraced Deming/Kaizen, it wasn't their idea. Beyond that Tesla is a more extreme version of those ideas. Toyota doesn't need to, but it's likely they also wouldn't, build an entirely new line to meet a goal. That would be out of the focal range of their 'softer' implementation of continual improvements. Musk on the other hand is not averse to continual improvements that are on the extreme end of the spectrum.…

> For example when Consumer Reports identified a braking issue with the Model 3 Tesla had an OTA software fix in days. What other manufacture would do that, let alone could?

Why should that be a good thing? Consider what this means:

* Safety-critical systems are not air-gapped. (Granted, Tesla is far from the only offender here).

* The fact that the fix was turned around in such a short time would seem to suggest that it was relatively quick to diagnose and debug. Why wasn't it caught before release?

* On another note, it also calls into question how rigorous their update fix testing is. I've seen plenty of "this must go out fixes" that broke a lot of stuff by collateral when people felt it was too important to get out quickly to do the full testing.

Re: Tesla opens the Model 3 reservation floodgates

#88

Post by 0xcafecafe »

pg_bot wrote: post #49

I know then tent is getting a lot of criticism from the public but it is a smart move. The tent gives extra space to add more individual steps to the assembly line and humans are best suited for tasks that are rapidly changing. I think someone finally realized that you can have as many steps in the assembly line as you want so long as no single step exceeds your quota divided by the time per day. (i.e. need to make 1…

Aka the throughput vs latency discussion

Re: Tesla opens the Model 3 reservation floodgates

#89

Post by prostoalex »

catherinezng wrote: post #65
jillesvangurp wrote: post #56

The way I see it, logistics aside, Tesla has awesome cars that are loved by those that manage to get one delivered, customers are actually lining up to buy them to the extent of paying just to get in line for that years ahead of time, and they are pretty much guaranteed to sell anything they ship for the foreseeable future. Better still most of their would be competitors are either not shipping at all right now, year…

Tesla lost ~$2B last year, owes ~$10B in debt, and owes >$400M in interest payments per year alone. Moody’s downgraded Tesla’s bond rating because Tesla will need to raise more money this year, at least $2B (which is an extremely conservative figure), to avoid Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Elon Musk also owes >$600M in personal debt that he financed using Tesla stock as collateral. This means that if Tesla stock dips below…

> shareholders sued Tesla board members for breaching their fiduciary duties

Starting a lawsuit is easy. What’s under-reported is how many of such lawsuits are won.

Re: Tesla opens the Model 3 reservation floodgates

#90

Post by jmull »

thisisit wrote: post #63

This is interesting. Lot of people complain when Tesla bad news are reported. The refrain being - this is clickbait and will media make a news out of this if it was another company or ICE car. But in this thread I see no complains about why this also not clickbait. How often do we see another companies car launches - electric, ICE or otherwise getting so much attention on HN? So, for Tesla fans I can only say this -…

Aren't you are cranking up the debate on biased media in this thread?
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