Electric cars

zeupater

AdrianC wrote: »

There appears to be a difference between "built" and "delivered". 29,870 vehicles delivered, but only 24,565 built. Especially in the US, that's a very significant difference, because dealers tend to supply cars from their local stock, rather than place factory orders. Remove the 3,380 cars heading to dealers from that, and only 21,185 of the Q4 production has been delivered so far.

We finally have a full Q4 figure for 3 production, to add to the pre-Q4 222 cars. 1,935 cars in December, for a total of 2,647 cars to the end of the year... That's a grand total to date of half a week's production at even the half-scale production rate being forecast, and a long, LONG way below the original forecast of 100k by the end of the year, and half of Martyn's 5,000 guesstimate back in post 467. Just 1,550 delivered in the quarter - and how many of them are Tesla staff, dealer demos, and other priority "insiders" who jumped the queue, rather than denting the launch deposits from real customers?

Hi

As previously mentioned, the difference between build & deliveries in Q4 would have been due to a previous build-forward in anticipation of production changes, this is standard practice in the automotive & any other large manufacturing sector prior to any major process or model change.

The official Model 3 production, as stated was ...
Q3 - 260
Q4 - 2425
... therefore total production (Q3+Q4) is 2685 vehicles.

Your totals of 222 pre Q4 doesn't stack-up with Tesla's own released figures and 2647 for the total build also seems to fall short .... however, what does stand out from the official release is that ...

... During Q4, we made major progress addressing Model 3 production bottlenecks, with our production rate increasing significantly towards the end of the quarter. In the last seven working days of the quarter, we made 793 Model 3's, and in the last few days, we hit a production rate on each of our manufacturing lines that extrapolates to over 1,000 Model 3's per week. As a result of the significant growth in our production rate, we made as many Model 3's since December 9th as we did in the more than four months of Model 3 production up to that point. ...

http://ir.tesla.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=1053245

So, what do the official Model-3 figures say? .... production Q4 vs Q3 shows a ten-fold increase and current production is running at around 20% of that planned ... a typical example of ramping-up production whilst settling-in new building, plant, process & supply chain whilst employing & training a completely new workforce from scratch ...

Maybe a little slow, but better slow and safe than hasty & irresponsible!

HTH
Z

AdrianC

If it makes you happier, I'll cheerfully clarify to "Model 3s are not being delivered to real retail customers in anything remotely approaching meaningful numbers". Can we shake hands and agree on that?

As for the semi "test drives", I've not found a video of anything beyond https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1afVsM-rnk and the like. Perhaps you could oblige with something more convincing? It's almost trivial to swap the drivetrain from an off-the-shelf diesel truck chassis with a decent-size motor and some batteries, which leaves us with a styling mock-up on top of an off-the-shelf cab. <shrug>
I see St Elon hasn't lost his fixation on silly doors, though. Suicide doors on an artic? Please!

That slightly-smoother bonneted design isn't going to be remotely viable over here, btw - we have cabovers almost exclusively because of total length restrictions.

Martyn1981

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

So, what do the official Model-3 figures say? .... production Q4 vs Q3 shows a ten-fold increase and current production is running at around 20% of that planned ... a typical example of ramping-up production whilst settling-in new building, plant, process & supply chain whilst employing & training a completely new workforce from scratch ...

Maybe a little slow, but better slow and safe than hasty & irresponsible!

HTH
Z

Hi Z, according to this article, they built 793 cars 'in just the last few days of the month', so that seems to also confirm that the ramp up has reached 1,000+/week, so looking good for 2,500 and 5,000 /week as we head into 2018.

AdrianC

Great news on the 3 production, then. In the very last few days of the quarter, they reached a production level 10% of the final rate, and 20% of where they were forecast to be by then!

Herzlos

AdrianC wrote: »

Great news on the 3 production, then. In the very last few days of the quarter, they reached a production level 10% of the final rate, and 20% of where they were forecast to be by then!

Shock horror! Company is slightly late with a ramp up schedule.

Is there a point to all this garbage beyond pretending to be correct? Does it matter?

Martyn1981

AdrianC wrote: »

As for the semi "test drives", I've not found a video of anything beyond https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1afVsM-rnk and the like. Perhaps you could oblige with something more convincing? It's almost trivial to swap the drivetrain from an off-the-shelf diesel truck chassis with a decent-size motor and some batteries, which leaves us with a styling mock-up on top of an off-the-shelf cab. <shrug>
I see St Elon hasn't lost his fixation on silly doors, though. Suicide doors on an artic? Please!

So to be clear, you post a vid showing one of the truck runs with guests inside (there was a long queue for both the truck and Roadster), but still claim to be unaware of any test drives on the night?

You still pretend that it's only a mock up, but if you search further you'll find you-tube vids of phone films from under the trailer, of the 4 motors and the two gearboxes. This may interest you as it appears from the spec plates that the two gearboxes have different ratios, so there would be a torque boost at start off - seems strange to go so far with a mock up?

Suicide doors are now getting quite common on vehicles, as they provide much easier entry and exit. They've made a come back by simply preventing use whilst moving.

AdrianC wrote: »

That slightly-smoother bonneted design isn't going to be remotely viable over here, btw - we have cabovers almost exclusively because of total length restrictions.

I think you'll find, if you take a closer look, that the Tesla truck design is actually far closer to a cabover than a bonneted, or bull-nose truck.

Edit - European orders have already been placed - Asko First Norwegian Trucking Firm To Reserve Tesla Semi

zeupater

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Hi Z, according to this article, they built 793 cars 'in just the last few days of the month', so that seems to also confirm that the ramp up has reached 1,000+/week, so looking good for 2,500 and 5,000 /week as we head into 2018.

Hi

No need to go to any article, the link I referenced is the official Tesla quarterly release from which all of the others take their information ... it says ...

" ... and in the last few days, we hit a production rate on each of our manufacturing lines that extrapolates to over 1,000 Model 3's per week .."

... so that confirms that they can now run the process at around 20% capacity with a workforce which is still being trained, addressing new process issues as they're identified & ramping-up a completely new and component-unique supply chain ...

Interestingly, manufacturing 1000 vehicles/week just about matches Leaf production in Sunderland, so not unreasonable ... and something which should be of interest to some is that Nissan seem to have started production of the new leaf in mid-December, yet first deliveries aren't planned until early February. The advantage that Nissan have is a fully trained workforce and the convenience of being able to allocate resource to volume production of existing or new model lines on a rolling-change basis which tends to mask many of the issues which Tesla are experiencing whilst ramping-up production ...

HTH
Z

AdrianC

Martyn1981 wrote: »

So to be clear, you ... still claim to be unaware of any test drives on the night?

Now where did I say that?

You are accusing me left, right and centre of making things up - even when I provide relevant sources. Meanwhile, you are repeatedly saying things that are in direct contradiction to relevant sources.

zeupater

AdrianC wrote: »

Now where did I say that?

You are accusing me left, right and centre of making things up - even when I provide relevant sources. Meanwhile, you are repeatedly saying things that are in direct contradiction to relevant sources.

Hi

Pot, kettle & black come to mind here ...

AdrianC wrote: »

I've not seen any December production figures. But November was 345 cars, for a total of 712 in the four months since the first batch of 30 at the end of July. That's half a day's production at the rate being aimed at...

To increase the monthly production to 4,300 - more than twelvefold - in one go? Yeh, good luck with that... It's possible. Is it likely? No.
...

So, 4300/month?, approx 1000/week .. a twelvefold increase in one go? .. Is it likely? ...

" ... and in the last few days, we hit a production rate on each of our manufacturing lines that extrapolates to over 1,000 Model 3's per week .."

.. Despite the continual pessimism, Tesla seem to be saying it certainly is possible! ... above that, they seem to have achieved that rate already - they just need to keep with the training/learning process as every other company does on a new site with new equipment, processes and operators.

Pie & humble also come to mind as components of appropriate proverbial idioms ..

HTH
Z

AdrianC

zeupater wrote: »

Pot, kettle & black come to mind here ...

<raises eyebrows>
Let's put the context back in, shall we?

AdrianC wrote: »

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Actually it's more like 5% (estimates of ~5,000 cars)

I've not seen any December production figures. But November was 345 cars, for a total of 712 in the four months since the first batch of 30 at the end of July. That's half a day's production at the rate being aimed at...

To increase the monthly production to 4,300 - more than twelvefold - in one go? Yeh, good luck with that... It's possible. Is it likely? No.

So, 4300/month?, approx 1000/week .. a twelvefold increase in one go? .. Is it likely?

Did Martyn's claimed 5,000 cars total by year end happen? No.
Did they increase December's production to 4,300 cars? No.
Did they even hit one single full 1,000 car week? No.
Did they hit that 12-fold increase in production between November's 345 cars and December's 2,425? No. I make it a dog-end over 7x.

So let's go back to that "is it likely?" - it looks a lot like the answer was... No, it wasn't likely.

Apology accepted. Oh, wait a sec...

Despite the continual pessimism, Tesla seem to be saying it certainly is possible!

Yes, they're claiming it's possible. They claim a lot of things are possible.

They claimed they'd have built 100k cars by the end of 2017. Was that possible? No.
They claimed 5k cars per week by the end of 2017. Was that possible? No.
They claimed 5k cars per week by March? Is that possible? They're now saying "H2".
They claim 10k cars per week. Is that possible? They're refusing to even guesstimate when.

Pie & humble also come to mind as components of appropriate proverbial idioms ..

Well, quite.