2017 Investor Roundtable:General Discussion

[neroden]

EM taking requests from customers personally...and fulfilling them. What other company does this?

Plenty do, and they do very badly by doing so. It doesn't scale.

He has not, for instance, taken my request to FIX USB MUSIC.

This is actually a *weak point* for the company, and a very severe one. "Tweet at the CEO" is not a scalable method of problem resolution (he clearly never read my tweets). It is *BAD NEWS* for the company that they're still doing this sort of unscalable approach to problem resolution.

To put it in terms more people might understand: It's the customer service equivalent of building the cars by hand.

It's no good. It's the biggest risk factor for the company, period, and it's a *huge* risk factor. At some point if it isn't resolved it will kill the company.

At the moment, all the other "competitors" are flailing about so incompetently (dealerships, really?) that this doesn't matter, but I'm watching for a competitor that gets this right; that will be dangerous for Tesla when it happens.

 

[neroden]

There is a reason this company is THE MOST SHORTED STOCK IN US MARKETS. Think about that...there are companies worth nearly a trillion dollars...and they have less short money bet against them than Tesla.

Second-most shorted stock in the world, last I checked. Apparently the most shorted is Alibaba (which is also *completely insane*, they're the Amazon of China)

 

[dc_h]

Yep. It's possible...

5000 cars a week is 2 minutes per car. With 8 cars per truck they have to move a truck every 16 minutes. This is certainly possible, and not even out of line for an industrial facility. They'll have some problems with rush hour traffic, though.

10000 cars a week -- a car a minute -- means a truck has to move every 8 minutes. (Both in and out.) At this point the locals are going to get irritated at the level of truck traffic.

This is, of course, assuming that this is the only traffic to the factory. No parts coming in. No workers coming in or out. Since there are parts coming in, you probably have to double or quadruple the truck traffic load -- a truck in or out every 2 minutes -- and there's really no room left on the road for the workers. The locals will be screaming.

Musk has a blind spot when it comes to the economies of scale from railroads. (Perhaps the third largest corporate risk, after the fundamental communications failures and the incredible sloppiness in the software development department?)

There is a side rail in the back of the plant. Moved from original. You can see it in the drone flyover.

 

[neroden]

I just thought of something funny. There are literally 100 EV models coming by 2020. We all know that is joke and most will be scrubbed as manufactures go back to the drawing board, but let's say 20 models come out with decent production levels of 20,000/year in 2020/2021. That is roughly 800,000 non model 3s vs 1M/Y Teslas

Again, remember to count the Chinese production. With the exception of Nissan (who have managed to develop a bad reputation for battery failure) and possibly GM (we'll see), the non-Chinese manufacturers are simply not planning to produce in volume. But I haven't seen good projections on the Chinese electric car production. There might very well be four companies each of which is producing a million electric cars per year, *just in China*. I'm not sure. Just for perspective.

 

[JRP3]

"Tweet at the CEO" is not a scalable method of problem resolution (he clearly never read my tweets). It is *BAD NEWS* for the company that they're still doing this sort of unscalable approach to problem resolution.

Clearly not scalable as problem resolution per se but on the other hand it's great PR/advertising for the company and the brand.

 

[mongo]

Yep. It's possible...

5000 cars a week is 2 minutes per car. With 8 cars per truck they have to move a truck every 16 minutes. This is certainly possible, and not even out of line for an industrial facility. They'll have some problems with rush hour traffic, though.

10000 cars a week -- a car a minute -- means a truck has to move every 8 minutes. (Both in and out.) At this point the locals are going to get irritated at the level of truck traffic.

This is, of course, assuming that this is the only traffic to the factory. No parts coming in. No workers coming in or out. Since there are parts coming in, you probably have to double or quadruple the truck traffic load -- a truck in or out every 2 minutes -- and there's really no room left on the road for the workers. The locals will be screaming.

Musk has a blind spot when it comes to the economies of scale from railroads. (Perhaps the third largest corporate risk, after the fundamental communications failures and the incredible sloppiness in the software development department?)

I wouldn't be so sure about that blind spot. The last drone fly by shows excavation at the automated storage towers where the rail line used to be. Not sure what it is for, but could be rail connection for parts and/or vehicles.
Trying to transport that many cars to the east coast via highway seems too inefficient for Elon.

 

[neroden]

View attachment 270224
There is a side rail in the back of the plant. Moved from original. You can see it in the drone flyover.

Good to see!

There was definitely room for improvement in train loading by rearranging the tracks. You load an entire string of autoracks in one go, driving the cars literally through the railcars from one to the next. The old layout involved driving cars only through about five railcars, and then having to do switching to hook the groups of five railcars together into a full-size train. One really long siding could allow them to load an entire train at once, close it up, and pull straight out onto the mainline -- much faster than doing lots of switching, as well as more space-efficient.

Hopefully this is what they're doing.

The first reason for only loading five train cars at a time was apparently that it's kind of nervewracking and tricky driving a car through multiple train cars, but this is *well* within the abilities of Autopilot (it can at least make sure the driver doesn't hit the walls, making it relaxed). I've rubbished "full self-driving" but I've done so due to the highly uncontrolled nature of the road environment. Driving inside a train of autoracks is an *extremely* controlled environment. They absolutely could have the cars driving themselves into their positions on the train, easily. Maybe they already have them driving themselves onto the car carrier trucks? (Probably not, but they could do that too.)

I just checked and the second reason for only using short strings of autoracks was *exhaust fumes* -- again not a problem for Tesla!

The *third* reason was actually an optimization between driving time and walking time when loading the cars, but again, even the existing "Summon" will deal with that!

 

[Starno]

2018 I'm gonna work my a** off to get the most capital possible to accumulate TSLA.

 

[DurandalAI]

As far as I’m concerned for delivery, they could Fedex me all the necessary paperwork and drop the car off at the nearest strip mall parking lot, have me fire up the Tesla app on my phone and drive off with the car. I don’t “need” a delivery experience. Speaking of, I remember hearing rumors about there being plans of deliveries on that fashion eventually, but I’m guessing that got shot down.

 

[GoTslaGo]

IMHO, the delivery experience is important for first time Tesla buyers. Most, likely do not frequent TMC or tesla forums. The review of the car with first time buyers is important.

Our first Tesla buying experience was approximately 1 hour or so (this is even after my wife and I watched all the videos Tesla linked to us about the car).

Our second was easily 1/2 hour or less.

Tesla setting up deliveries to owners first, and then non-owners is smart, besides incentivizing customer loyalty. The current Tesla owners are more familiar with the interface and thus the deliveries are likely faster.

To deliver in volume to non-owners, hopefully they will have tested delivery education systems to make the deliveries much faster than our 1 hour first time experience.

 

[Reciprocity]

Again, remember to count the Chinese production. With the exception of Nissan (who have managed to develop a bad reputation for battery failure) and possibly GM (we'll see), the non-Chinese manufacturers are simply not planning to produce in volume. But I haven't seen good projections on the Chinese electric car production. There might very well be four companies each of which is producing a million electric cars per year, *just in China*. I'm not sure. Just for perspective.

I get what your saying but I'm not thinking of Chinese manufactures as traditional autos. And those batteries are stranded in China with Chinese autos, not GM or VW for example. It's clear that China gets it and wants to lead, at least in the mass market of EVs. But that also means the don't have excess to export.

 

[KLC13]

Was watching this Model 3 delivery video (I think its at the MDR location) and @t=48seconds the tesla rep at the front desk says they delivered around 40 Model 3's upto that time and quite a few more to go. This video was uploaded on Dec. 30th so assuming the delivery happened the same day, we could assume 100 Model 3's delivered from that location (MDR?) on Dec. 30th and probably the same on Dec. 31st.

 

[Ulmo]

The last time I checked on Model 3 (“reason for being of Tesla”) was

on December 10, 2017 at the Fremont Delivery Center, and then, I saw 8 rows of parked Tesla’s, mixed with mostly new looking models S, X & 3 (mostly Model 3) parked in a fairly full parking lot where they seem to only park new cars, and back then, they looked mostly closed, and I wasn’t scared to be harassed taking that video.

Today, I came back, between 2pm and 3pm, and this time, they are very much open, with about a dozen workers manning the parking lot (scaring me away from taking a video), and new Model 3’s being driven out of the delivery center by folks (new owners?) every handful of minutes. Employee and customer cars take up about 6 full + 2 half full rows of parking (including 2 rows spilled out into parking that looks like belongs to adjacent businesses), 6 rows of which were all almost completely empty back when I took the above video 3 weeks ago, and the 2 partially filled rows today had instead 1 of of those 2 rows full of newish Tesla’s. The 7 back rows of the original 8 rows of parking where the new Tesla’s were parked on December 10 still have new Tesla’s, but are now at around 60% full (that last 1 row is on the side and no longer seems to have new Tesla’s but instead more like employee parking). I see mostly Model 3’s missing compared to last time.

I think by now they must have moved or delivered the bulk of the Model 3’s that I formerly saw when taking the above video 3 weeks ago.

I will now drive across the freeway to the factory and buzz around that parking briefly to see if I can mete out anything different from numerous other reports already recently made; I’m not expecting much different info from the recent drone flyovers.

Edit 1: Ok, now 3pm, and I’m here by Thermo Scientific looking at the Tesla lot popular for drone flyovers, and it’s full of new Tesla’s except for the one row by the curb adjacent to Thermo Scientific property and a tiny ~8 spot row by the frontage road (probably employee parking). I’d say it’s at 97% to 98% capacity, discounting the row by the curb of Thermo (which I’m willing to bet is a good loading zone). The prior vids and pics I saw within the last few days claiming cars have left this lot seem to currently be false as applied to the current moment; I don’t know if they were true when they were taken; right now, this lot is what I would describe as nearly completely full. It seems fairly inactive; I’m not sure what activity looks like here, nor when, but I’m willing to bet December 31 at 3pm is not an active delivery loading time (since Holiday is coming). The cars are of all 3 Tesla models currently produced. It’s almost as if they’re being put in public view on purpose.

I drove past this lot again, and noticed 1/3rd of the lot
Is fenced off and empty. The parked cars are compacted into the front full section. I also remember seeing exactly this in the first drone flyover from a week or so ago.

I’m going to now try my wheel at some more parking areas.

Edit 2: Factory employee parking by the freeway is uncharacteristically around 4% utilization right now; it’s usually closer to 105% to 115% utilization when I’ve been here in the past. This is obviously holiday schedule.

Edit 3: Here’s something new since last when I looked many months ago: the back parking by the train tracks where they used to park mostly new cars is now almost completely empty. I see about 5% to 10% of this lot with new cars sitting in it. There is more empty space in this lot than there is parking (occupied or not) in the new parking lot full of new Tesla’s I mentioned in Edit 1 by Thermo. I see 8 car carriers sitting there now; I’m not sure what they’re doing, but the open air ones are empty, one closed one has trailer lights on, and earlier I saw 2 open empty ones driving around. Other than that, this lot seems inactive. Now I see two people operating the locking of the closed carrier with lights on (could be tag accounting or anything).

Keep in mind that a huge portion of Tesla parking that was used for employees (logical North of factory) was given to Fremont for their ultra high density housing development, so Tesla has probably been trying to replace that parking. Also, the new BART station recently opened, so Tesla has probably been trying to get employees to use those trains and/or parking lot, too.

 

[neroden]

There is a possibility that Tesla did something which is not uncommon. Suppose during production there is a supplier bottleneck but you don't want to shut the line down. So you produce a number of cars where a particular part will have to be retrofitted. You put those to one side, and then when the bottleneck is over, you go back to producing complete cars. A separate team works on the cars which need the retrofit. The cars produced after the bottleneck get delivered *before* the cars produced during the bottleneck. In this case, if this hypothetical is what happened, the bottleneck cars would all be employee deliveries. And they might be stored as they are being worked through, even while other cars are coming out and going straight to delivery.

It happens with other products.

 

[CaliBear1]

Here are two photos from my last visit to the FDC on December 28th. These Threes were tucked way in the back beyond the big staging lot, which was also still full of Threes. The entire facility was buzzing with activity.

 

[Ulmo]

I’m now at Palo Alto SC, and there are a handful of new Model X, a few new Model S, but no new Model 3 that I saw at ground level, except I did see one Model 3 parked in back. I can’t see the roof parking from the ground.

To me it seems like the stretch from Stanford to this block seems much more ghetto than ever before. Is Palo Alto in decline?

Anyway, the local Tesla shoppers must still be well to do and already have their Model S, X & Roadsters, and new crypto profits probably mean new Model S & X, not 3, from the current set of buyers. In the future, the Model 3 might trickle down to the older SC’s.

 

[larmor]

I’m now at Palo Alto SC, and there are a handful of new Model X, a few new Model S, but no new Model 3 that I saw at ground level, except I did see one Model 3 parked in back. I can’t see the roof parking from the ground.

To me it seems like the stretch from Stanford to this block seems much more ghetto than ever before. Is Palo Alto in decline?

Anyway, the local Tesla shoppers must still be well to do and already have their Model S, X & Roadsters, and new crypto profits probably mean new Model S & X, not 3, from the current set of buyers. In the future, the Model 3 might trickle down to the older SC’s.

Yes PA is crumbling, just visited a few weeks ago for work, went by PA center and in MP for work. Compared to san ramon-- very updated and of course no comparison to irvine. However irvine getting super crowded. FWIW, even a few weeks ago the dublin tesla gallery had alot of M3s...

 

[anticitizen13.7]

I'm guessing that deliveries are mostly done for today.

Unscientific poll in the Model 3 sub-forum indicates crowd belief that Tesla delivered between 1000-2000 Model 3 units this quarter: POLL:How Many 3's Got Delivered in Q4. It'll be interesting to see if how many + or - Tesla has shipped from the approximate median guess of 1500 units.

Enjoy New Years Eve. See you all in 2018!

 

[Starno]

I hope that the 2018 Model S and X will get those kind of tail lights :

The whole bar, it looks really good I think.

 

[Zaxxon]

Goodnight, thread!