Phew! That's quite a list.
First of all I wasn't expecting the GF closures, I never expected the complete shutdown and when the scheduled line closures were revealed they were for much longer than I would have expected. That said, all the work was completed ahead of schedule. I have no firm evidence to say the ramp up afterwards was slower than Tesla expected but I suspect that was the case. Nevertheless, the increased production level was immediately evident particularly for the MY Chinese domestic market - Q3 must hit an all-time record for China deliveries. The domestic car carriers are now almost a permanent feature at Shanghai South. As far as UK is concerned I am pretty sure Model Y will top the important September car sales figures by some margin.
I was expecting more ships in Q3 but the closures put paid to that. I was surprised by how late in the quarter UK and EU shipments left. I was also suprised at the number of shipments the UK received compared to EU. I suppose we should expect higher demand from the UK in Q1 and Q3 (a quirk of the UK registration system). We will have had 10 ships in Q3 to UK/EU which equates to about 45,000 vehicles. I suspect about 60-70% of those to be Model Y. There is a long list of waiting Model 3 buyers in the UK that I hope will have smiling faces in Q4.
The German Teslamag article was simply amazing and was probably as accurate as it could be at the time. It correctly told us the number of ships destined for the EU although the names of the vessels changed - RCC CLASSIC became RCC ANTWERP, GLOVIS SPIRIT became GLOVIS CHALLENGE, HELIOS RAY became GLOVIS CRYSTAL, GLOVIS CAPTAIN became GLOVIS SUN and GLOVIS CRYSTAL became GLOVIS COURAGE. The destinations were accurate (except for RCC ANTWERP which went to Koper instead of Barcelona). I have no idea as to whether the loads were correct but I suspect they were not far off the mark. I would love for the leak to be a regular occurrence and for it to include UK shipments as well!
The combination of the German leak and the exclusive use of Shanghai South for EU/UK shipments (apart from HOEGH ST PETERSBURG) cut down significantly the number of suspect vessels in Q3. This was also aided to a degree by the early VIN allocations, each 'shower' being fairly reliably allocated to an already identified ship that departed from Shanghai South. I'm pretty confident at the moment that we have not missed a shipment this quarter and it is possibly the first quarter where every ship was pretty much confirmed before it reached Singapore. For me personally, it's been the easiest quarter ever - I have not had to apply myself to the same degree as before. This has been due to the Tesla ships being pretty obvious, WuWa realising that videos of the docks have an audience, some outstanding research by
@Darreno and the incredible support of
@Frizzy and son. Thank you all.
As for Q4, I'm hoping to spot S/X transatlantic shipments to EU and about 12 ships from Shanghai to UK/EU. I don't think I'll be able to reliably track MIG shipments to UK or elsewhere. I expect it will be a bumper quarter, if nothing else but to get the numbers up for the year after the 'poor' Q2.
Having said all that, Q3 is still not over and there are still some unanswered questions eg will GLOVIS COURAGE head to Southampton after Barcelona??
