EM Conference Call Quotes Mean M3 Design is complete,More likely to meet the schedule

[MitchJi]

Hi,

From the Conference Call about 55 minutes
Question:....with what you've gone through over the past few years in bringing this car to market, does this change your thinking at all over the longer term when you think about the pace that you will bring M3 to market....?

EM:
still aiming to have M3 in about 2 years, so but I think the cadence of future products should improve, as we have more resources to shorten the critical path on things like I was mentioning earlier like stamping tools and molding dies, the things that tend to drive our schedule, because from the time a car is designed it can take almost 2 years to get fully tooled up, that seems like a crazy amount of time to us and we want to try to reduce that significantly.

I believe that EM's statements above, combined with his decision to be more cautious about announcing schedules indicates that the design of the M3 is basically complete (except for ongoing minor changes), and they have already taken and are currently taking substantial steps to reduce or eliminate the potential M3 ramp issues.

 

[Cosmacelf]

Yeah, if Elon doesn't change things partway through, again. You'd think they would have learned speed to market lessons on the Roadster and Model S, but Model X rollout says they are still learning.

 

[anticitizen13.7]

Hi,

I believe that EM's statements above, combined with his decision to be more cautious about announcing schedules indicates that the design of the M3 is basically complete (except for ongoing minor changes), and they have already taken and are currently taking substantial steps to reduce or eliminate the potential M3 ramp issues.

The shareholder letter for this past quarter states that the company hopes to reveal the design at the end of March 2016, which is about 5 months from now. This would indicate that the design is close to complete.

 

[strider]

Yes but his statements don't fit if they're going to use steel or something other than aluminum then they have to climb the learning curve all over again. Stamping steel and stamping aluminum are NOT the same thing. Also, his statement that they're trying to shorten the time means that the design is NOT done but they can still ship Model 3 in 2 years because they will "reduce that significantly." Just have to put your Elon translator on Model 3 will absolutely not ship in 2017. I don't consider delivering 5 hand-built Founder's cars as "shipping" and even that will be a stretch. We'll be lucky to see Model 3's in 2018.