I have been watching this discussion, the price movements, and the bull and bear articles and analyst notes like a hawk, like many on here, and just thought I'd give my unimportant thoughts.
First, I am pretty agnostic on the stock. I love the idea, and have followed Tesla since the beginning. I waver from cautiously optimistic, to downright bearish on the company as various challenges come and go. Right now, I'm stuck right in the middle.
On the positive side, I agree with most on here that a two week, or two month, or even longer delay in volume 3 production really isn't that important to the long term success of the company. So they missed the 3Q guidance by some outrageous percentage. Who cares? That was what, 1300 units? Once things are moving, that will be a day of production. I don't think Tesla is nearly as outrageously excellent at manufacturing as some might hope, but there is absolutely no reason they won't get this figured out and be producing vehicles at the rate the line was designed for, which should be 5k/week.
On the other hand, the narrative really bothers me. Why the need to claim at the July delivery event that these were "not engineering validation units," or whatever he said. He claimed they were "production" vehicles. Why not just say that the production line wasn't operating and that these were 30 hand built vehicles made of as many production parts as possible, with the others using high quality components from prototype tooling, or whatever the case was? I am not filling in the blank. I don't know why, and I'm not accusing Elon of being the "great swindler" or a liar, or anything else. All I am saying is the narrative is creating one impression, but the truth doesn't line up, and it is hard to reconcile what Tesla gains by all the questions. Elon's actual words may have been technically true, but there is no doubt they created an impression to those outside the company that did not correspond to reality, for a benefit I don't see.
This was amped up last week with all this stuff about the WSJ article, etc. There were lots of virtual high fives when Tesla PR put out their statement and when Elon sent out the video. However, as many others have pointed out, they didn't specifically refute any of the hard allegations. I thought the video really seemed pitiful. I have read the earlier discussion on this, and I personally have experience in an assembly line operation and with industrial automation. This video clearly shows a robot during pre-production debugging. I can explain why if necessary, but I think earlier discussions on this thread hit most of what I would say. It doesn't in any way prove that guys weren't doing things by hand in September, or even that they aren't doing things by hand now. It just shows they do have robots installed and capable of running through portions of a welding routine at less than full speed. I won't bore anyone with the process of line design, equipment installation, commissioning, and all, but suffice to say that this video should have been made in June or July at the latest, if the line was really expected to be at full rate by the end of the year.
Which brings me back, to, why the need to push the impression that the line is running? Nobody (who matters) cares if the thing is even 6 months behind schedule. Heck, Adam Jonas, arguably the staunchest Tesla bull out there, didn't expect them to be at full production for a solid 6 months later than Telsa predicted. It just seems to me that it would be so much better if they just said, "wow, AJ studies our company so well he can predict our results better than we can. Sure enough, we are right on track to meet his delivery guidance." Meeting the guidance of a reliable bull wouldn't disappoint anyone, and it would bring a lot of credibility. I mean seriously, at the 2Q earnings call, Elon was still touting the same 30, 100, 1500, or whatever it was that he had a month before. Why wouldn't he reel in expectations then?
I know I am not in the mainstream of this forum, but I can honestly say I would have much more confidence in the company if there were no projections from Elon. Looking at the actual performance of the production ramp, it is nothing to be ashamed of. The only reason it is criticized is because if falls short of what Elon projected only a couple of months ago. It forces people to ask, "why." If we only had the ramp to go on, it is already moving much faster than X or S. For me, Tesla creates their own FUD by not being more transparent and providing updates when things don't go as planned.
