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Tesla plans to build a new car factory in Texas

arstechnica.com

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Re: Tesla plans to build a new car factory in Texas

#21

Post by foota »

_Microft wrote: post #14
outside1234 wrote: post #6

"But Musk is said to want to start construction extremely soon and aims to have Model Y vehicles coming out of the plant by the end of the year." That is just delusional.

According to Wikipedia (german article on Tesla Gigafactory 3), Tesla went from the ground-breaking ceremony at beginning of january 2019 in Shanghai to first cars produced there in november of the same year. They might be getting practice in building factories (what's the learning curve for car factories?).

I assumed this was due to Chinese experience building factories and a large labor pool, would be impressive to replicate that time here.

Re: Tesla plans to build a new car factory in Texas

#22

Post by rcMgD2BwE72F »

sidibe wrote: post #13
outside1234 wrote: post #6

"But Musk is said to want to start construction extremely soon and aims to have Model Y vehicles coming out of the plant by the end of the year." That is just delusional.

He has no sense of time. Every year they're supposed to have robotaxis by the end of the year and they've only just started to jankily handle stoplights

Back in 2013, they targeted 35GWh of battery production in 2020 for 500K/y vehicles (source: https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/blog_attachments/g...)

They've already exceeded that run rate on production and delivery (both batteries and vehicles) while being profitable.

They do have ~a million cars on the road but the software is neither capable of self-driving nor car sharing. They year isn't over, though, and the comment about robotaxis was that the car would be feature-complete[0], not operational.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_complete

Re: Tesla plans to build a new car factory in Texas

#23

Post by pplante »

Elon aims to be producing cars from the new factory by end of year. Is it possible that when he says factory they mean the tent structures they are using and continuing to build in Fremont? If so, then maybe his timeline isn't terribly far from reality. I agree that EOY might be ambitious, but by summer 2021 might not be. It all depends on the structure they build to meet that goal.

Re: Tesla plans to build a new car factory in Texas

#24

Post by ortusdux »

akmarinov wrote: post #5
S_A_P wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it be any different than how it is currently? I think it really could just reduce transportation cost I suppose?

Not really? They still have to ship them out of Texas to another state that will allow them to sell directly. Then customers will have to drive back to Texas.

Reminds me of the fact that Jack Daniels is produced in a dry county.

Re: Tesla plans to build a new car factory in Texas

#25

Post by toomuchtodo »

tech-historian wrote: post #16
toolz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they've already built a factory in under a year, but it's delusional to think they could cut that time by 30-40%? I don't think it's likely to happen, but delusional is a stretch.

Well, construction in China != construction in the US. US has permits, environmental reviews, inspections, labor laws, etc etc that all add time.

Texas is rolling out the mat for Tesla [1]. They will move faster on permitting and reviews. Tesla seems to be moving quickly with GF4 construction in Berlin [2], even with German labor laws (which is good! you still have to make sure labor regulation is adhered to). Texas is not California. The deadline is not set in stone; it is an aspirational goal to motivate.

Lots of oil and gas (O&G) construction/services folks looking for work right now in Texas [3], so it's a good time for Tesla to move in. Also, Texas has an abundance of cheap wind energy they can't export due to ERCOT interconnect capacity issues. The SpaceX McGregor engine development and static fire test facility is only 90 minutes north of Austin, and Tesla already has an Autopilot R&D office there for the engineers they hired from AMD. Good pick for the next factory. Maybe a SpaceX HQ relo is in future plans.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-tesla-... (Musk, Texas governor talk about potential Tesla move to Lone Star state)

[2] https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-gigafactory-4-berlin-ground-...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/business/energy-environme...

Re: Tesla plans to build a new car factory in Texas

#26

Post by nickik »

rory_isAdonk wrote: post #9
outside1234 wrote: post #6

"But Musk is said to want to start construction extremely soon and aims to have Model Y vehicles coming out of the plant by the end of the year." That is just delusional.

this is simply to keep the stock price at a certain level. half of everything he says is to feed into an image which keeps that stock at that level.

That is such nonsensical believe that is blows my mind that people actually think it.

Do you really think Elon has a whole communication strategy design to 'keep the stock high' but then tweets 'the stock is to high'. How exactly does that make any sense at all?

He does the exact same thing with SpaceX and there is no stock market there. Why would he do that?

This has been his method before Tesla was a stock company as well. The same for the Boring company that only has a few investors, mostly him.

The reason he says what he says is the same as it has always been and he has explained this 100 times already, he sets targets that are very optimistic and he sets them publicaly, and even if they are off by 10% it still very fast. You can't achieve high goals unless you set them, and that is what he believes and how he has run his companies.

Elon has also said 100x that the short term stock market really doesn't matter to him, and he has proven that over and over again.

The reason for the stock price is not because what Musk says but what people believe the company can do and because Elon makes it clear what the priority is for them. It does not mean more then 1% of inverters believe Model Y will actually roll of the line in Texas by the end of they year.

Re: Tesla plans to build a new car factory in Texas

#27

Post by cobookman »

I get the feeling this was already planned. Freemont doesn't have much spare land to increase manufacturing capacity. California has to be more expensive (Labor, Regulations) than manufacturing in Texas.

Even if you'd need to fly your R&D team between Texas and California, you'd still be saving money

Re: Tesla plans to build a new car factory in Texas

#28

Post by wastedhours »

tech-historian wrote: post #16
toolz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they've already built a factory in under a year, but it's delusional to think they could cut that time by 30-40%? I don't think it's likely to happen, but delusional is a stretch.

Well, construction in China != construction in the US. US has permits, environmental reviews, inspections, labor laws, etc etc that all add time.

Didn't they also have a factory that was a glorified tent whilst they were finishing one of their previous builds?

Re: Tesla plans to build a new car factory in Texas

#30

Post by eloff »

outside1234 wrote: post #6

"But Musk is said to want to start construction extremely soon and aims to have Model Y vehicles coming out of the plant by the end of the year." That is just delusional.

I think the rule with Elon Musk is all his estimates are extremely optimistic and you need to multiply them by two or three to get closer to reality.

But I'm sure it serves a purpose in giving his employees an aggressive target to aim at. Even if they miss it, at least they probably got there sooner.

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