We need another Tesla blog entry
^^ Whole thing seems sketchy to me. Folks are combining rumor with unsupported assumptions.
We know, from multiple reports reliably sourced to Tesla employees that the production "ramp up" is going slower than planned.
I am not aware of evidence that Tesla has delivered ANY cars to customers, other than the 10 delivered at the Freemont event.
Troy Wolverton, of Mercury News fame, just reported that NO cars have been delivered since, and I am inclined to believe him.
Wolverton: Tesla's new Model S luxury sedan is a sweet ride - Inside Bay Area
We know that Tesla is working frantically to address issues developed as a result of customer feedback (such as opportunity consoles) in these very forums, and it should be obvious that Tesla has been gathering a ton of real world data and feedback with the Get Amped tour. None of these look to be a big deal, and most seem to involve aesthetics and other minor details that can be quickly addressed.
Given the reports of a delayed ramp up, known changes in the pipeline, and lack of additional customer deliveries it would be fair to assume that the production line is shut down at the moment and NO vehicles are being produced for customers (there might be some being built for Tesla stores or for other company uses). If Tesla is making modifications to the vehicle it wouldn't make sense to be building cars that are now off spec.
Given no production at the moment, that inevitably leads to push back on delivery dates, which we again have anecdotal evidence of.
The June start date was agressive, and the scheduled production ramp up was extremely conservative. As a result, Tesla has a sizable buffer to step back and make the car more perfect, while still being able to meet production goals.
Any argument linking additional founder series cars to production delays is the worst kind of rank speculation, and especially so in light of the fact that there are solid reasons for those delays that do not require some conspiracy theory.
Because of how Tesla uses batch production, and the nature of their ramp-up plans, I think it's simply not true that slotting in additional founders series cars would lead to a substantial delay in the Sigs. The bottleneck is the slow ramp up, and founders already had most (or all) of those slots. Once you get past the initial phases of ramp up an additional 100 vehicles represent maybe a week of production, and eventually just over a day.
So the first few Sig's might see a delay of anywhere from a week or two, but the vast majority would likely not see any appreciable delay at all. But even that is arbitrary. Tesla is more than capable of speeding up production to eliminate possible delays. The planned ramp up was extremely conservative, and I've always felt it was more of a fudge factor to let Tesla have a flexible response to reality (as they appear to be doing), rather than a strict requirement on the critical path for production ramp up.
Of course, none of this has anything to do with diluting the value to the Sig's. It seems to me that it does to a certain extent. But there was always a Founders series which was a more exclusive "brand" than the Sig. To me it seems that the dilution to the Founders affects that class far more than it does the Sig. But if additional Founders cars are being made, they will be going to the Justin Biebers of the world, which drives up the value of the Tesla brand itself, and indirectly improves the value of the Sig's along with all other Tesla models.
To my way of thinking, most chicks wont know the difference anyways. A Tesla Model S Signature Performance with all the gizmos is a pretty hot car, period. (And yes ladies.. dudes think you look sexy driving it too :wink
