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Musk to review all of Tesla's expenses in new cost cutting plan

reuters.com

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Re: Musk to review all of Tesla's expenses in new cost cutting plan

#211

Post by hef19898 »

proee wrote: post #101

I worked for a company that had a similar take on spending. The company was extremely profitable and brought in greater than 1 billion dollar in revenue. Yet any PO that was greater than $100 needed approval by the CEO. Not only that, the PO had to be typed on a manual typewriter (this is 2007) using carbon paper, and hand-delivered to a number of people to start moving up the chain. The process intentionally took MO…

I had two cases like this in my career. The first one was a cost cutting initiative during which the managing director of the second largest production site signed POs for office material. At the same time procurement, strategic and operational, signed frame contracts and created POs against these worth millions for raw material and stuff like that on group level.

The second case was a company in which every single drop ship order from there customers had to be ordered individually from the dropshipper. Every such order had to created manually and needed managing director EMEA approval in writing.

Re: Musk to review all of Tesla's expenses in new cost cutting plan

#212

Post by hef19898 »

whyenot wrote: post #18
dd36 wrote: post #12

https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/bq50s8/elons_a...

Your link is to what is represented as the authentic text of the memo. If genuine, to me, this seem like the most important bit: "It is important to bear in mind that we lost $700 million in the first quarter this year, which is over $200 million per month. Investors nonetheless were supportive of our efforts and agreed to give us $2.4 billion (our net proceeds) to show that we can be financially sustainable. That is…

Shit, that would mean, if read it correctly, that the 2.4 billion gave Tesla a runway of 10 months. Starting now. But that would mean that Tesla was almost bankrupt when the money was raised? Or do I interpret that completely wrong?

Re: Musk to review all of Tesla's expenses in new cost cutting plan

#213

Post by freyr »

digsy wrote: post #185
taf2 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* 1000 to 10000 people making those $100 purchases maybe not too extreme? Said they posted over a billion so I’d guess pretty large number of employees

The issue isn't the $100 limit - the issue is having the CEO give approval. I would expect that such a small amount would be approved by someone much closer to the engineers on the hierarchy. Not to mention what a poor use of the CEOs time!

> what a poor use of the CEOs time!

Not if it keeps him off Twitter.

Re: Musk to review all of Tesla's expenses in new cost cutting plan

#215

Post by kisstheblade »

I don't get whats so special about Tesla anymore. Eg. you can get cars like this from mainstream car producers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP7of0p-GGU

And on the lower end a friend has a Renault Zoe. An excellent car on all accounts. I saw a base level black model 3 the other day parked and I tought what a cheap looking car, it was truly underwhelming (where I live there aren't many Teslas). Then I saw that it was a Tesla which costs about 50000$ here...

I don't care about model S ludicrous mode acceleration, nobody actually needs that kind of acceleration from traffic lights. Well maybe if you have low self esteem and try to compensate for something?

Re: Musk to review all of Tesla's expenses in new cost cutting plan

#216

Post by panpanna »

clouddrover wrote: post #150
proee wrote: post #101

I worked for a company that had a similar take on spending. The company was extremely profitable and brought in greater than 1 billion dollar in revenue. Yet any PO that was greater than $100 needed approval by the CEO. Not only that, the PO had to be typed on a manual typewriter (this is 2007) using carbon paper, and hand-delivered to a number of people to start moving up the chain. The process intentionally took MO…

> This resulted in engineers that would purchase their own equipment and bringing it to work to use because they couldn't wait a month for a $200 piece of equipment. That's a mistake. You should never pay other people's costs. If the company wants to put itself in a position where work is delayed by a month for the sake of $200 then that is the company's cost to pay.

We once built a CPU farm using own parts. It was stupid but you have to get the job done.

Unfortunately this meant that we later had to fight management really hard to pay for cloud services. We lost that battle.

Re: Musk to review all of Tesla's expenses in new cost cutting plan

#217

Post by Proven »

Too little, too late. When money stolen from taxpayers is decided, it becomes obvious this company doesn't make products that can be sold at a profit.

It's going to be fun watching all the fanatical investors hang onto their Tesla shares until they become worthless.

Re: Musk to review all of Tesla's expenses in new cost cutting plan

#218

Post by hef19898 »

zaroth wrote: post #184
bondolo wrote: post #138

A friend who worked on the charging system for the Model S reported that a few weeks before the vehicle shipped they were way behind schedule for building vehicles and falling further behind as the release date approached. One Sunday morning the entire engineering team was on the manufacturing floor helping the struggling manufacturing team build vehicles and Elon appeared trailing a gaggle of execs. They started pok…

I believe the last paragraph. The original powertrain in the Model S was an epic failure. By comparison, Elon claims the drivetrain in the Model 3 is the same unit that they are putting in the Semi, and that they test it to 1 million miles.

The Semi is their truck, isn't it? Why would someone put a small sedan drivetrain into a towing truck?

Re: Musk to review all of Tesla's expenses in new cost cutting plan

#219

Post by hef19898 »

jmpman wrote: post #209
zaroth wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Tesla Model 3 at $27,500 would have been such an absurdly sweet deal the demand would be ludicrous. If they could have snapped their fingers and manufactured as many as they needed, I would guess based on passenger vehicle sales numbers, they could have sold 300,000 in a single quarter at that price. They barely build that many in a year. I’m sorry, you were never going to see a Model 3 for $27,500. With the way th…

I was certainly in the top few people placing my reservation. High enough that if they were delivered in order of reservation, I’d have my $27,500 Model 3. They opted to maximize their revenue by delivering the expensive versions first. A Tesla won’t be my next purchase.

That alone tells a lot about their costs as well. My personal conclusion was that Tesla failed to make a profit from the 35k $ version and pushed the higher priced versions.

Re: Musk to review all of Tesla's expenses in new cost cutting plan

#220

Post by soup10 »

atq2119 wrote: post #111
soup10 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The domestic oil boom and the fact that we are now a net exporter of oil makes the transition to electric cars less urgent.

This ignores the fact that EVs are currently the only viable path towards road-based transport that is compatible with the continued existence of our species. The transition isn't urgent due to oil prices. It's urgent due to greenhouse gases making the planet inhospitable for humans.

"less urgent" doesn't mean its not important at all. When we were constantly at the brink of war and supporting all kinds of terrible governments to secure stable access to oil and keep the petrodollar intact.. There was more pressure to quickly develop alternatives to oil.
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