2017 Investor Roundtable:General Discussion

[MP3Mike]

During the 4 Jan. Gigafactory Tour, Mr Musk did not mention stamping dies. Hid did mention the press. I reported the quote earlier; the gist was that there were two sets of inputs not fully ready: the press from Schuler to be put in the Model 3 production line, and the seats; he also said that given the six month window yet remaining, both those items remained on target to be ready.

@AudubonB Really? At about 15:15 in the recording I have Elon says: "the riskiest long lead items ... the stamping dies for the A class body panels and the seats." Then he goes on to say that there are a lot of machine shops in the world so they should have good luck solving that.

 

[dirtyofries]

275/30ZR20 in dirtyofries' link
235/35ZR20 in Audie's GF pic on Jan 4.

Can't tell if Audie's is a front or rear tire. dirtyofries' looks like a rear to me. Is the car set up for staggered wheel sizes?

Went looking - this was the best angle I could find from the party - looks like you might have nailed it on staggered. I think that's a 235?

 

[AudubonB]

Gack...now I can't remember either - front or rear. I'm vaguely thinking I started at the rear tire, but the data weren't positioned where I could read them so I went forward to the front.

 

[racer26]

Went looking - this was the best angle I could find from the party - looks like you might have nailed it on staggered. I think that's a 235?

Clarity on that one isn't great, but it does look to me like a 235/35ZR20.

 

[racer26]

Of interest:

235/35ZR20 and 275/30ZR20 are exactly the same size, except that the 275 is 16% wider.

 

[AudubonB]

@AudubonB Really? At about 15:15 in the recording I have Elon says: "the riskiest long lead items ... the stamping dies for the A class body panels and the seats." Then he goes on to say that there are a lot of machine shops in the world so they should have good luck solving that.

Re-locate that transcription for me, please - I want to listen to my recording while I read through what someone else has transcribed. Thanks.

 

[mmd]

You're just purposefully obtuse all the time. It gets tiresome.

The marketing expenditures, divided by the number of cars sold = $6. Pretty straight forward. When you do the same for other automakers, the result is a much larger number. Discounts etc are accounted for separately in both cases, so it is indeed a fair comparison, even if it doesn't capture the full reality of it. Its not surprising that Tesla wins here - how many TV Spots, or full-page ads in magazines, or billboards, or whatever do you see for Tesla?

Since you brought it up, you are a lot more obtuse than I thought you were.
I can also say that no other car company needs to use their customers as sales people in an Amway-style of selling cars.
Instead of paying for TV ads and google/facebook ads directly, they are paying its customers to place ads on Facebook and elsewhere. What difference does it make? It is the same thing ultimately.
This is a lot worse, as the company has no control how each customer sells the car and what kind of wrong information they dole out to potential buyers. It might come back and hit them someday.

Multi-level marketing - Wikipedia

Multi-level marketing (MLM), also called pyramid selling,[1][2][3][4] network marketing,[3][5][6]and referral marketing,[7] is a controversial, pyramid-shaped marketing strategy where profit is theoretically derived from two revenue streams: from direct sales to customers and from commission based on the sales of recruited team members, also known as down line distributors.[8] MLM salespeople are expected to sell products directly to consumers by means of relationship referrals and word of mouth marketing. They are also incentivized to recruit others to join the company as distributors.[5][9][10]

And.. the network ads just began on electrek Adding link, to avoid an ycopyright issues .
Help Electrek get a Tesla P100D, use our code for $1000 off and you could win $10,000 Arachnid wheels, & more

 

[Lessmog]

Re-locate that transcription for me, please - I want to listen to my recording while I read through what someone else has transcribed. Thanks.

Uncorrected, first approx:

Elon: [15:00] The Gigafactory I actually feel pretty good about. In terms of pack production, motor production, drivetrain, power electronics that all seems pretty good. I’d say one of the riskiest long-lead items is actually not the super fancy technology stuff there, it’s actually the fairly basic stuff, it’s the stamping dyes, the stamping dyes for the A class body panels and for the seats. That’s the knowledge that I have, I think [..] it will take 6 months or so to solve that and there are a lot of machine shops in the world so […] pretty good about solving that and shela? needs to come-in on time on the stamping press so shela? is delivering the advanced stamping press for us in J1[?] so if shela? meets their timeline on the stamping press in, then I feel pretty good about the schedule.

JB: [16:20] There is a huge amount of work happening in Freemont, It’s just less obvious than perhaps than here, because its reconfiguring things inside the factory.

Later edit on same page:

Elon: [15:00] The Gigafactory I actually feel pretty good about. In terms of pack production, motor production, drive units (basically integrated drivetrain / power electronics) that all seems pretty good. I’d say one of the riskiest long-lead items is actually not the super fancy technology stuff there, it’s actually the fairly basic stuff. The longest lead items are the stamping dies, the stamping dies for the A class body panels and for the seats. That’s the best knowledge that I have. I think [..] it will take 6 months or so to solve that and there are a lot of machine shops in the world so […] pretty good about solving that and the Schuler needs to come-in on time on the stamping press. So Schuler is delivering the advanced stamping press for us in Q1 so if Schuler meets their timeline for bringing the stamping press in, then I feel pretty good about the schedule.

 

[MP3Mike]

Re-locate that transcription for me, please - I want to listen to my recording while I read through what someone else has transcribed. Thanks.

No problem, here is the transcript: Transcript of the Gigafactory Q&A - Great stuff on GF1 • /r/teslamotors

The way that person transcribed it is: "Elon: [15:00] The Gigafactory I actually feel pretty good about. In terms of pack production, motor production, drivetrain, power electronics that all seems pretty good. I’d say one of the riskiest long-lead items is actually not the super fancy technology stuff there, it’s actually the fairly basic stuff, it’s the stamping dyes, the stamping dyes for the A class body panels and for the seats. That’s the knowledge that I have, I think [..] it will take 6 months or so to solve that and there are a lot of machine shops in the world so […] pretty good about solving that and shela? needs to come-in on time on the stamping press so shela? is delivering the advanced stamping press for us in J1[?] so if shela? meets their timeline on the stamping press in, then I feel pretty good about the schedule."

So he mentions the press getting installed after mentioning the stamping dies.

 

[racer26]

It is of course possible that Elon did not actually mean the dies themselves are what's holding up the show, but simply that Schuler not installing the press (the thing which uses the dies to produce car parts) until sometime in Q1 is the holdup. They're a pretty easy thing to conflate.

 

[MP3Mike]

It is of course possible that Elon did not actually mean the dies themselves are what's holding up the show, but simply that Schuler not installing the press (the thing which uses the dies to produce car parts) until sometime in Q1 is the holdup. They're a pretty easy thing to conflate.

I really doubt it since he referred to all the machine shops in the world that could help them solve the problem in 6 months. I don't think there are that many advanced press companies around.

 

[racer26]

Since you brought it up, you are a lot more obtuse than I thought you were.
I can also say that no other car company needs to use their customers as sales people in an Amway-style of selling cars.
Instead of paying for TV ads and google/facebook ads directly, they are paying its customers to place ads on Facebook and elsewhere. What difference does it make? It is the same thing ultimately.
This is a lot worse, as the company has no control how each customer sells the car and what kind of wrong information they dole out to potential buyers. It might come back and hit them someday.

Likening Tesla's model to Amway is a bit of a stretch. Many car companies offer 'family and friends' discounts very similar to what the referral program does.

I will grant you that promotion is promotion is promotion, but some types of promotion are much costlier than others. The point is that Tesla chooses, and is successful with only using low-cost promotion tactics.

I would argue that no other car company could use their customers for promotion in the way that Tesla does, for the simple reason that the product does not make a compelling argument all by itself. It works, because its not the customer selling the car, its the customer takes their friend out, and the car makes such an impression that the friend wants one - so the customer says, "you get $1000 off if you use my referral code".

 

[MitchJi]

It is of course possible that Elon did not actually mean the dies themselves are what's holding up the show, but simply that Schuler not installing the press (the thing which uses the dies to produce car parts) until sometime in Q1 is the holdup. They're a pretty easy thing to conflate.

Sounds impossible to me.

If that's the case why would he talk specifically about the seats and body panels and also talk about the machine shops, which would make the panels but not the presses.

Edit Addition:
MP3Mike nailed it first:

I really doubt it since he referred to all the machine shops in the world that could help them solve the problem in 6 months. I don't think there are that many advanced press companies around.

 

[EinSV]

Elon already announced that they will have a part 3 M3 (I don't remember what he called it, something like the AP 2.0 hardware), in about March or April. They won't reveal the final spec's and prices until they do a final production reveal immediately before delivery because they don't want to Osborn the MS-MX.

Mitch, the statement I recall from Elon was during the Solar City shareholder event and is about as equivocal/hedged as you can get:

“Today is not the time for that announcement. Uh but I mean it’s probably, yeah, I don’t know, um, beginning of spring, or something. Yeah – 3-4 months from now.
​

Tesla is aiming to hold Model 3 unveil ‘part 3’ in ‘3-4 months from now’, says Elon Musk

Not exactly definitive (unless I am forgetting another statement.)

Again, I am in speculative territory here but I think it is at least as likely as not that the "Delivery Event" will be the next Model 3 unveil. Could be wrong

 

[dandurston]

Dan, that is a possibility but it seems a little odd to have two events on the Model 3 so close to one another. Why have a "Model 3 delivery event" a few months after a "Model 3 unveil/reveal"? If Tesla were planning a Q2 cap raise a March/April unveil would make some sense, but I still don't see why they'd have a second Model 3 event a few months later.

Tesla knows that a slow drip of information keeps us in a lather.

In March/April I expect Tesla will show off the final design (exterior and interior) but still won't give us specs on range, price, performance kWh etc other than reiterating $35g. So we'll all be left wondering if we'll see a sub-3 second M3, what the battery sizes are, range etc. High tech stuff like the HUD and FSD might be demod in a movie but not really functional at this time.

Tesla will disclose most specs internally a few months later, so the first employee orders can be built (recall Tesla took employee reservations first). Then around August they'll hold the delivery event where all these specs are broadcast to the world. Tesla will generate additional headlines like "M3 goes further than Chevy Bolt" and "Tesla's M3 P80D smokes BMW's M3".

Tesla can't cancel the spring unveil and keep everyone in the dark until deliveries start in August or later, because concern that the M3 is late is the #1 investor worry right now. If they cancel the spring unveil after referring to it many times, everyone will assume the M3 is very late and the stock may tank, causing big problems if Tesla needs capitol.

 

[Ovulation]

Sounds impossible to me.

If that's the case why would he talk specifically about the seats and body panels and also talk about the machine shops, which would make the panels but not the presses.

Edit Addition:
MP3Mike nailed it first:

Stupid question, isn't a stamping press a stamping dies (English is not my first language)

 

[GoTslaGo]

Stupid question, isn't a stamping press a stamping dies (English is not my first language)

Sounds like a question for our "stamping" expert: calling @Krugerrand !

(FWIW, I don't have the foggiest either...)

 

[AlMc]

Stupid question, isn't a stamping press a stamping dies (English is not my first language)

Press provides the power to stamp images into the metal used for, in this case, body panels. The dyes that form the pieces needed are 'removeable' so if you want to change a shape or need to replace/repair you only have to change/exchange the dye.
Press provides power
Dye forms the piece

 

[Lessmog]

Not a Native either, but I'm thinking it's from die as in those cubes one throws in casinos, you know dice? Alea iacta kind.

 

[mrdoubleb]

275/30ZR20 in dirtyofries' link
235/35ZR20 in Audie's GF pic on Jan 4.

Can't tell if Audie's is a front or rear tire. dirtyofries' looks like a rear to me. Is the car set up for staggered wheel sizes?

Went looking - this was the best angle I could find from the party - looks like you might have nailed it on staggered. I think that's a 235?

Wow! All this research must have been really tiresome!

PS: Yes, I went there...