Demand

[Papafox]

Bonaire and all,
Using your methodologies for estimating demand, can you use similar methods with VIN numbers for estimating production output? When I compare VINs for Model S production completed dates I'm getting something like 3200 S cars for the 30 day period, which is low compared to where it should be. Just curious what you see in the data to confirm or not confirm the production numbers that Tesla is giving (2000 combined S and X vehicles/wk, etc.). Thx. I'm mostly focusing on Q3 and with about 25 days from confirmation to beginning of production for Model S, I feel good about demand to take us through quarter at desired rate. What I'm trying to do is get a double-check on production output.

 

[Spidy]

I'm mostly focusing on Q3 and with about 25 days from confirmation to beginning of production for Model S

If you sort by confirmed orders you will see that it's down to 15, although this could change quickly.

Which to some extent might also answer the other question. My impression was that around end of July Tesla focused a lot on Model X production and S production moved rather slow and then a few days into August they really seemed to ramp up S production. For me these things seem to be a bit easier to see on a day to day bases as when sorting, because the amount of entries which is random can give a wrong impression.

I usually prefer to look at for how many weeks or production Tesla has orders for, like if the build 1k Models S a week do they have orders for 1, 2, 3... weeks?

 

[Spidy]

Destination & Doc Fee • /r/teslamotors
Workin' hard to get me in the door. • /r/teslamotors

Seems like Tesla has is running a "Order today and we waive the destination fee" promotion.

 

[bh1783]

I think S.Korea would be a poor market. The S-class buyers are heads of large companies who are driven around in comfort. Just like in China, the rear passenger space is more important than driving dynamics. Source: watch a lot of Korean drama.

No. Korean companies are pretty nationalistic, heads of large companies have an unwritten rule where they only buy Korean cars for business. That means that the 1700 S-Classes sold per month are being bought by regular people or entrepreneurs, not by heads of large companies.

 

[pGo]

Destination & Doc Fee • /r/teslamotors
Workin' hard to get me in the door. • /r/teslamotors

Seems like Tesla has is running a "Order today and we waive the destination fee" promotion.

Promotions from past few days confirms the VIN theory where production is running ahead of demand (mostly a short lived thing until AP2 hits). There goes margins for q3. Now I wonder if they are on track to deliver AP2 in a month or two.

 

[Odebek]

I'm actually astounded that the spreadsheet is so stable and trustworthy with thousands of people editing it per year, anonymously.

Great, now we are going to have to deal with all the Alphabet (goog) shorts coming in and telling us how bad google docs is and how it will never take over Microsoft Office and how google is a bubble and a cult...

 

[dennis]

Can one of you VIN meisters explain this? A salvage Model S with the refreshed nose and 210 miles, sold at auction on 8/18. But the VIN is GF168668, about 15K ahead of what we have seen. Conspiracy theories welcome!

2016 TESLA MODEL S lot #26862656 Copart - Buy salvaged cars at Copart

 

[Todd Burch]

Can one of you VIN meisters explain this? A salvage Model S with the refreshed nose and 210 miles, sold at auction on 8/18. But the VIN is GF168668, about 15K ahead of what we have seen. Conspiracy theories welcome!

2016 TESLA MODEL S lot #26862656 Copart - Buy salvaged cars at Copart

Ha, that's 210 miles of rated range left on the charge, not 210 miles on the ODO!

 

[dennis]

Ha, that's 210 miles of rated range left on the charge, not 210 miles on the ODO!

You're right! My bad. Now back to the original question...

 

[vgrinshpun]

Can one of you VIN meisters explain this? A salvage Model S with the refreshed nose and 210 miles, sold at auction on 8/18. But the VIN is GF168668, about 15K ahead of what we have seen. Conspiracy theories welcome!

2016 TESLA MODEL S lot #26862656 Copart - Buy salvaged cars at Copart

...Manufactured 3 months ago...

 

[dennis]

...Manufactured 3 months ago...

Yeah, I saw that. But why the way out of sequence VIN?

 

[vgrinshpun]

Yeah, I saw that. But why the way out of sequence VIN?

I guess the obvious answer is that Tesla does not always assign VINs sequentially. I believe that it is done on purpose, in order to control the granularity of the information available to the public. This is why, after being a proponent of VIN counting in 2013 and being burnt, I has been very skeptical about accuracy of the information that can be gleaned by VIN watching.

 

[techmaven]

I guess the obvious answer is that Tesla does not always assign VINs sequentially. I believe that it is done on purpose, in order to control the granularity of the information available to the public. This is why, after being a proponent of VIN counting in 2013 and being burnt, I has been very skeptical about accuracy of the information that can be gleaned by VIN watching.

I concur. VIN counting works.. until it doesn't. And you have no visibility into the holes, nor into any leaps ahead. If you think it worked at one point, you would likely get burned the next time you try to use it.

 

[Spidy]

I will become sceptical about VIN counting when we actually see more than 1 VIN (here and there) out of order. So far nobody has posted such a VIN in the sheet in the last months nor have I seen a single Inventory car with such a VIN. I think it's most likely some kind of error and at some point is was easier to go ahead rather than reassign a new VIN. Maybe someone hit the 6 instead of the 3 on the numpad for the second digit, who knows. But so far it's the exception to the rule.

 

[sdtslafan]

I concur. VIN counting works.. until it doesn't. And you have no visibility into the holes, nor into any leaps ahead. If you think it worked at one point, you would likely get burned the next time you try to use it.

I believe vin tracking been pretty predictable over the past year. This unexpectedly high VIN is quite a surprise to me. I can't quite explain or understand why it exists. I guess I not can't fully exclude the possibility that production is higher than we thought and tesla is trying to keep it under wraps. We know tesla didn't release q3 guidance. Could we all be in for a surprise to the upside? That would be the first in a long time and I won't believe it till it happens.

 

[Matias]

I think they need a back seat designed in China, or specifically for China. Could use the same model for Korea. Auto-show has a lot of cars with very refined back seats, high end Kia comes to mind, with very limo-like personal controls in the back seat.

Tesla had executive back seats, but to my understanding, not any more

http://insideevs.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/tesla-executive-rear-seats.jpg

 

[Todd Burch]

You're right! My bad. Now back to the original question...

Not your bad--their bad. It was listed as 210 on the odo in the listing. The listing is now gone--at least it doesn't come up for me now.

But anyway, I was thinking that if they can't get that right, maybe the VIN is incorrect also.

 

[vgrinshpun]

Not your bad--their bad. It was listed as 210 on the odo in the listing. The listing is now gone--at least it doesn't come up for me now.

But anyway, I was thinking that if they can't get that right, maybe the VIN is incorrect also.

VIN is visible on the Manufacturer's sticker, along with the manufacturer's date, which is May 2016. The listing includes photo of the sticker.

 

[schonelucht]

Those pictures are an absolute surprise. We know of literally 1000's of VINs issued and this is the very first one that is out of sequence, more then 250 his quarter alone. Clearly, if it happens, we can pretty much ignore the influence one out of bounds VIN has. The proof there is that we have been ignoring it (because we didn't know about it earlier) yet the VIN predictions have correlated exceptionally wel with actual reported numbers. If this is a new practice, then we will soon enough see this happen again, at which point we must reconsider.

 

[schonelucht]

Also, if Tesla were really building VINs out of sequence, that means that the VINs assigned is even more sparse than we assumed (146k build or so, 166k+ assigned) Which would force us to lower, not increase, our estimates of builds/orders and deliveries based on the inline VIN sequence.