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.
> 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. What about all the promises that have been made that never came to fruition? Do we just exclude those from this formula?
"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.
Well, it depends on a lot of initial conditions that outsiders can't see. If Tesla wants to throw up a steel frame building in an already empty field in Texas or Oklahoma, that's not hard to do. It would take a few months. And during the Model 3 production ramp up, Tesla put together an entirely new assembly line using on-hand spare parts in a matter of days. So if they have an entire Model Y assembly line sitting in storage rooms in California, Nevada, and New York, which very likely they do, it might only take a few weeks to truck all of that to Texas or Oklahoma. Of course that completely ignores quarantine complications. Which might actually help Tesla. Right now, red states are so eager to get positive "restart the economy" news and millions of recently unemployed people are so eager to get jobs that Governor Abbott of Texas might cut mountains of red tape to green light whatever Tesla needs. I would say it's totally feasible for Tesla to be producing Model Y's from a new facility in Texas by the end of 2020. Certainly not at high volume. Potentially from a tent in the parking lot of an unfinished factory building. They've done it before.
"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
Rest of the companies doing that are in more or less the same boat. Tesla ahead of all of them in bringing some pieces of the autonomy to market.
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…
Hey, it's the guy who called Tesla a "good corporate citizen" just a few months ago. Let's add: breaking stay-at-home orders, called the US government "fascist" while praising China, hired people to hack the personal computers of a whistleblower (as reported in a recent deposition filing), extorted the California government, and forced their workers back to the factory floor amid the pandemic to the list of "good" th…
Still stand by what I said. COVID response by Alameda County was overblown (including extended stay at home orders), California chose not to provide $600k in training funding to SpaceX after Tesla and SpaceX have created tens of thousands of jobs in the state (because they're non-union shops), and Fremont is following rigorous guidelines to mitigate the threat of COVID infections on the factory floor. Your only legitimate complaint is pursuing a whistleblower (that's fair, and uncalled for on Tesla's part).
How unreasonable must your jurisdiction be before you're permitted to take your business elsewhere and it isn't slandered as "extortion"? OSHA regulations apply in all 50 states, and both taxes and land costs are legitimately lower in Texas. Is every other company that has moved out of California extortionist?
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
In some vague "regulations" way, possibly, but the published hourly rates of Tesla Fremont workers are not especially high. (I just googled the average as being less than twenty dollars, which can't possibly be right, but I do remember the figure being low by autoworker standards) The thought that they might pay even less in Texas is depressing.
$20/hr for blue collar work in a lot of Texas is very high. For example, Amazon was paying $12/hr in the San Marcos facility until they raised wages recently, and that was considered decent pay. $8-10/hr is pretty common for unskilled labor here. We have a lot of tech and oil and gas that influences the average income but tons of people here are working for way less than $20/hr.
"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.
Keep in mind, this isn't a brand new line/model. They have an existing line in place in China at least, they just need to copy it. They also built a new line in a giant tent in CA in a few weeks.
"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.
From the article I read on Electrek on this, they speculated that in the first phase this could be a general assembly only. Considering they built an additional line in a tent in Fremont once, 6 Months is not crazy.
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, a…
He wasn't off his rocker as much in 2013 as he is now. Sleep deprivation and possibly drugs really do wonders for mental health long term....
Do you think you might be oversimplifying complex human behavior to a fault? Especially with no real insight into his behavior?