Dual Motor and White Interior options arriving after 5k/Week Production

[mberta74]

Trust me, you won't be happy...

I owned and A6 and recently an A4 before purchasing a Model S 75D... the dual motor Tesla is superior to the driving performance of an Audi

Good Luck on whatever you do

 

[Visscher]

Bye Felicia!

Drive a Tesla for a week and I guarantee you won't consider a BMW or whatever again.

 

[Electroman]

Canada is definitely lacking enough service centres. I'd be willing to bet a lackluster amount of configuration invitations have been converted to orders since so many people here want SR and/or Dual Motors

Wondering why would so many Canadians with their harsh winters prefer SR? 220 mile EPA is only 140 miles on a typical winter day with margins and buffers. Meaning I wouldn't take my family on a 15F day beyond a 70 mile radius.

Yes great for daily commute, but falls very short for everything else on a cold winter day which is 6 months a year over there.

 

[Moderatefan]

TSLA already rented a large vacant tilt-up building parking lot near the factory. It is almost full of 3's and S/X. A friend of mine that works in the adjacent building texted some photos last week. They said they've posted a 24/7 guard there now.

If they need more buffer space, they can rinse and repeat elsewhere in Fremont. We have room.

The hope is that they don't pile up cars there permanently, but rather move them quickly and only use extra parking at the end of Q2, so it doesn't cost them much. On the other hand, if they invest into their own lots that might be needed later for 5K or 10K production rates then maybe it's not a waste of money.

AIRC they were delivering 7 days a week there then.

Given the abysmally small average delivery rates per SC for Q1, seems this was hardly needed...Of course, they could be delivering 7 days a week large numbers in CA and only 2 days a week somewhere in NC.

Since TSLA is prioritizing cash flows to avoid another capital raise - dilution or debt - they aren't going to do huge buffering at the end of a Q - then Wall Street will not be happy with their financials - only if it's fairly close to saving the full $7.5K for another Q will they do so - just my thinking.

The Wall Street should see all the undelivered cars in the "in transit" bucket and at that point it will be very clear why that happened, so there's probably not going to be harsh feedback. But yes, as far as cash flow it may not look so good, I believe Elon stated in the past that 2.5k/week deliveries is needed for break even. So, if they stage half of that, they will have losses for the quarter.

 

[Daniel in SD]

I really doubt Tesla is going to rent extra space just to store cars for 4 weeks. Maybe they can start to deliver to Europe?
It seems like they might have trouble delivering 5k/week in the US and Canada without adding many more delivery and service centers. They have added separate delivery center here in San Diego.

 

[bpjod]

Wondering why would so many Canadians with their harsh winters prefer SR? 220 mile EPA is only 140 miles on a typical winter day with margins and buffers. Meaning I wouldn't take my family on a 15F day beyond a 70 mile radius.

Yes great for daily commute, but falls very short for everything else on a cold winter day which is 6 months a year over there.

1. Many have ICE SUVs/Trucks as a second vehicle that they'll be using for long winter road trips and for hauling trailers, boats around in summer. The SR is perfect all the rest of the time.
2. If heading out for a road trip and you can plug in/overnight at the destination (hockey tournaments, visiting relatives, etc.) the range is much better than when out running errands where the car frequently is turned off and cold soaking. Charge up to 100% and preheat the battery and the range hit won't be so bad. This now gives you say a 140 mile trip out, charge up and return home. That may be sufficient for many.
3. Those that aren't active on the forums may not realize just how much of an impact winter has on their range.

 

[jgs]

I owned and A6 and recently an A4 before purchasing a Model S 75D... the dual motor Tesla is superior to the driving performance of an Audi

My previous car was an A6 and I endorse this message.

TSLA already rented a large vacant tilt-up building parking lot near the factory. It is almost full of 3's and S/X. A friend of mine that works in the adjacent building texted some photos last week. They said they've posted a 24/7 guard there now.

If they need more buffer space, they can rinse and repeat elsewhere in Fremont.

Related, some may remember back in January a brief bit of excitement (well it was exciting for me, OK?) at a new round of reports that Tesla was going to build a Detroit-area service center for realz this time. That never made much sense because they can't do that and still comply with Michigan law (grumble, humbug). An InsideEVs poster suggested it was a staging area:

"While this certainly could be the foundation for a future service center, the current plans seem to indicate it’s nothing more than an expansion of what they already have nearby – an indoor parking facility for staging vehicles going to and from service out of state. All the blueprints mention are “Parking Areas”. There’s no office space, customer lounge, or service bays shown. It’s essentially just an open space with a couple bathrooms and wash-up areas. They will probably wash and detail cars returning from service too, but that’s the extent of the work they can carry out under current law."

 

[Moderatefan]

I really doubt Tesla is going to rent extra space just to store cars for 4 weeks. Maybe they can start to deliver to Europe?
It seems like they might have trouble delivering 5k/week in the US and Canada without adding many more delivery and service centers. They have added separate delivery center here in San Diego.

I think it's too late to divert to other locations like Europe. With the wait time between configuration and delivery plus extended logistics challenges for shipping overseas the cars may only reach there like in June, so you won't sell many. Then if U.S. market is primary, you have to halt deliveries in July and explain that to pissed people who just saw some of their neighbors get the car...put logistics on hold...seems unproductive

As far as opening whole bunch more centers...can they sustain 5-10K/week deliveries after they work through all the current reservations? If not, maybe investments to a whole bunch of new SCs will add to the losses. They could go cautiously about it and open only part of what they need for 400+k reservations. Instead, keep current SCs open 24*7

And btw, if they delivered less than 2 cars/day on average in Q1 per SC that means they can easily handle 5x the Q1 volume with the current number of SCs. It's just some regions dont have enough SCs, but not everywhere.

 

[Daniel in SD]

I think it's too late to divert to other locations like Europe. With the wait time between configuration and delivery plus extended logistics challenges for shipping overseas the cars may only reach there like in June, so you won't sell many. Then if U.S. market is primary, you have to halt deliveries in July and explain that to pissed people who just saw some of their neighbors get the car...put logistics on hold...seems unproductive

As far as opening whole bunch more centers...can they sustain 5-10K/week deliveries after they work through all the current reservations? If not, maybe investments to a whole bunch of new SCs will add to the losses. They could go cautiously about it and open only part of what they need for 400+k reservations. Instead, keep current SCs open 24*7

They could start shipping the cars before configuration. There are hardly any configurations! But if they haven't yet legalized (?) them for the EU then it's probably too late. Hopefully the Model 3 is much more reliable than the Model S/X or they're going to need many more service centers just to do warranty repairs. The wait times are already quite long around here.

 

[WierdMobile]

If Tesla doesn't have space at their service centers to store enough cars to push #200k into July, I for one am willing to let them store one at my house for free. I'm sure there's enough people with reservations willing to store a car to pull it off without having to rent a bunch of parking lots.

 

[Zaxxon]

If Tesla doesn't have space at their service centers to store enough cars to push #200k into July, I for one am willing to let them store one at my house for free. I'm sure there's enough people with reservations willing to store a car to pull it off without having to rent a bunch of parking lots.

In fact, they can keep two at my house. I think I can come up with some more volunteers among my neighbors, as well. #problemsolved

 

[dziny]

LOL! Now there's a reliable source.....

I'm sure it's perfectly reliable! Just based on his previous tweets add 3 months to his schedule and them multiply everything by 2!!!!

 

[DavidP]

Wondering why would so many Canadians with their harsh winters prefer SR? 220 mile EPA is only 140 miles on a typical winter day with margins and buffers. Meaning I wouldn't take my family on a 15F day beyond a 70 mile radius.

Yes great for daily commute, but falls very short for everything else on a cold winter day which is 6 months a year over there.

Easy answer...12 000 CAD is a huge amount of money for a car option.
It's more than 25% of the car cost.

 

[dsvick]

There's only 74 service centers in the US.... I dunno the "typical" size but the one around here looks like it'd be hard pressed to have more than maybe a couple dozen "stored"... IIRC they got a shipment of 18 in and had to park several on the street due to space limitations.

Let's say that's unusually small and they can handle say 3 times that many- that's still barely more than 3500 cars nation-wide... (which makes 5k a week production awkward too unless they get a bunch more SCs up quickly, or they can handle a lot more cars than that...)

Tesla has 6 service centers in Canada... total.

Why are you only considering service centers? They can also store cars at their store locations, not as many but I'm sure some of them could handle a dozen or so. Galleries, not so much

As has been mentioned also, I'm sure they would have no problem renting part of a nearby parking lot for a month if they needed to.

 

[Electroman]

12 000 CAD is a huge amount of money for a car option.
It's more than 25% of the car cost.

Agreed.. but you can't categorize 'Range' as one of the "options" along with leather, better audio or even air suspension or AP.

The ability to drive the car further is fundamental as in - the car takes you from A to B, and extra range makes it a 'real car' closer to ICE.

A 350 mile range car with ZERO options, even with no audio is still a great EV. On the other hand, all the fancy options with only 80 mile range (aka Leaf) is useless except for local short commutes in winter.

 

[Tony_YYZ]

Agreed.. but you can't categorize 'Range' as one of the "options" along with leather, better audio or even air suspension or AP.

The ability to drive the car further is fundamental as in - the car takes you from A to B, and extra range makes it a 'real car' closer to ICE.

On the flip side, some people may just want a short distance commuter car which offers what Tesla's do. And depending on where you are in Canada, you may not experience really harsh winters. Here in the Toronto area, we certainly don't experience harsher winters than those in the Northeast USA.

The ability to charge at home and at work may also negate too much range loss during the winter as well.

 

[ForeverFree]

Trust me, you won't be happy...

I owned and A6 and recently an A4 before purchasing a Model S 75D... the dual motor Tesla is superior to the driving performance of an Audi

Good Luck on whatever you do

I came from 330xi, S4, and S5.

Driving and ownership experience not even close to Tesla.

 

[Knightshade]

Why are you only considering service centers? They can also store cars at their store locations, not as many but I'm sure some of them could handle a dozen or so. Galleries, not so much

As has been mentioned also, I'm sure they would have no problem renting part of a nearby parking lot for a month if they needed to.

I don't know how it is elsewhere- but here the "store" is basically one smallish showroom, one medium sized back room that had room for about 2 cars in it, and a tiny attached bathroom and tiny attached "office"

I mean there was parking out front, but it was public parking, not someplace I'd really trust to store new not-delivered-to-customers cars.

And it's basically sitting just across the road from the larger service center.

Looking over the list of stores, they seem to correspond not quite 1:1, but fairly close, to the # and location of service centers.... which to me implies that that's probably not an uncommon situation and relatively few stores actually have significant storage space for dozens of extra cars without using public parking.


I'm sure they could rent private lots in various cities, though cost/logistics might be a pain depending how/where they do it since they'd then be transporting it, storing it for weeks or months someplace secure, then transporting it for delivery again.

 

[ThosEM]

I didn't see anyone here clamoring for the base model battery and appointments. Is Tesla's idea of a VolksEV a chimera? It will be interesting to see how the demand balances out when the full price range is available.

 

[voip-ninja]

I didn't see anyone here clamoring for the base model battery and appointments. Is Tesla's idea of a VolksEV a chimera? It will be interesting to see how the demand balances out when the full price range is available.

Tesla probably has a better understanding of what the demand is for the current version they are building than we do since they can see what reservation preferences their reservation holders have and how that matches up with reservations that have not yet executed.

I don't think the demand for $50K+ version of Model 3 is 100's of thousands of units in the USA per year but again Tesla knows better than we do.

The real balancing act for them is improving their cash flow by selling the higher profit LR version of the car without completely alienating the customers that Elon promised a $35K Tesla to.

Ideally they don't build and ship a single stripped down $35,000 SR car until they can turn a tiny profit on it.