Found a LOT of Model 3's in a Tesla lot - Pictures inside

[israndy]

So the new bottleneck is shipping now

Man that is a hard sentence to read. How about "So now shipping is the new bottleneck"

I kept reading, and since you didn't quote anything, I kept thinking someone had mentioned a bottleneck that was in the cars that are now shipping...

-Randy

 

[Zorg]

Man that is a hard sentence to read. How about "So now shipping is the new bottleneck"

I kept reading, and since you didn't quote anything, I kept thinking someone had mentioned a bottleneck that was in the cars that are now shipping...

-Randy

Grammar Nazi.

 

[engle]

I think it is funny Tesla doesn't want you filming at their secret stash site. All those cars ready for distribution should really be something they would want to report, but nooooooooo, it is almost like they want to promote that everything is super secret, it adds to their mystique. Tesla is a car maker the likes of which we have never seen before!

Tonight I learned that a friend's co-worker's father (enough nouns for you?) who works graveyard emailed the Doug Fields "fire-up the troops" email ("prove the haters wrong") from his Tesla company email account to his son.

According to my source, the father is now under investigation by Tesla. Fortunately, the son did not trade TSLA on the information. Regardless, I expect the father will be terminated for violating his employment agreement. It's unfortunate, since I imagine he just wanted to share his excitement with his son. IMHO, Tesla needs to do a better job of educating their employees - including those working on the line - what they can and cannot do. If TSLA uses something like G-Suite, there is no email privacy at all unless somebody knows how to encrypt, which would raise a red-flag anyway.

We don't need leaks since we can see with our crowdsourced eyes what leaves that factory.

Meanwhile, another source confessed they have been trading on that secret stash site -- close-to-expiration option contracts no less -- since towards the end of Q1! I pointed out to them Trump can push a button whenever he doesn't like the media cycle which can move the market, so they're basically just gambling.

 

[Electroman]

So that employee's son leaked it to Press?

 

[engle]

So that employee's son leaked it to Press?

No, Electroman, (next Marvell superhero??) Tesla found out. Their "Warp" system must be monitoring all internal email sent outside. It's trivial to filter on something like "*** TESLA COMPANY PROPRIETARY - DO NOT FORWARD ***" or whatever they are using or tagging inside the email headers themselves. A more sophisticated filter would include a database with a list of sentence fragments contained in proprietary emails.

PS. My guess based upon accumulated knowledge... Learned to code BASIC/Fortran at 12 in 1971, UNIX/C at 18 on Bell Labs research Unix 6.X and onward, sideways, and upward from there... Meanwhile, microwave engineer dad invented a system that tracked "targets" via triangulation of harmonic signals returned from a diode placed on said "target. This was in the late 1960's so you can imagine what the "agencies" can do now. DOD Mom managed the Ada language and the MCF (Military Computer Family) programs. Never let me see what was in her locked briefcase. Gotta get back to my Delaware articles of corporation now. Edited Alphabet's since I like the idea of B shares getting 10 votes!

Seriously, I wasted about two years of free time on the Model X forum waiting for that, but it was so worth the wait! Elon always over-promises and under-delivers the schedule. It's like he makes the false assumption that Elon clones are doing all of the work instead of mere humans!!!

 

[wdolson]

That was my initial thought, but there are ways this could be mitigated.

The cars could self drive in convoys (human driver in lead car, making stops to get recharged at specific destinations) and Tesla could leave the protective shipping film on the cars, along with some other things in place until the car delivered itself.

Final delivery could/would include having someone scheduled to show up and detail the car and do final QC check.

The real icing on the cake would be if Tesla offered buyers the choice of paying $1,000 for "normal" delivery where it is trucked to a delivery center for handover or if the customer was willing to waive the delivery fee if the car delivered itself.

Self driving cross country would cost more than trucking or train. A car driving itself costs more per mile per car than an electric truck loaded with 8-10 cars.

Like you say, once self driving is a possibility they may move them relatively short distances on their own, but you won't see cars being delivered by themselves unless they originate from a local delivery center. Having delivery to your door from a delivery center might be convenient for someone who lives an inconvenient distance from the nearest service/delivery center. Here in the Northwest there is one service center in Portland and two in the Seattle area that server two states.

It's 5 hours from Spokane to Seattle and a couple of hours from Eugene to Portland. On the PDX Tesla forum owners in southern Oregon and eastern Oregon find it a hassle to go into Portland to get to the service center. Ranger service can take care of some of it, but anything requiring a lift needs to be done at the service center.

There will be more service/delivery centers as Tesla expands its reach (there are rumors Oregon and/or SW Washington will get at least one new service center soon), but for a while at least it won't be profitable to have facilities in remote areas. That is one advantage the established companies still have. There may or may not be a Subaru dealership to go to in the middle of rural North Dakota, but there probably is a Ford dealership not far away.

 

[wdolson]

Yah, Vert-a-pac is not so FSD friendly, but I like it

Wow, now that you mention it, 1,000 3's are basically 3 miles long..

Fremont is going make over 3 miles of car a day!
I mean WHOA!

(yes other OEM make lots of cars, they are also impressive)

Car carrier cars are three decks. The cars are 89 ft 4 inches long and a Model 3 is 15ft 5 in long. That works out to 5.7 cars per deck (5 with some slack in reality) so 15 per car. That would be a little over 66 rail cars for 1000 cars per day. It's a lot of cars per train, but other car makers do it on a routine basis.

No way to get cars into the middle without splitting the train or having special ramp cars. The cars would drive on from the back at 1 MPH ( only takes an hour to load 1 mile at single level). The load speed is so slow, it could be done with summon.

I'm not sure they actually strap the cars down due to the train tracks being pretty smooth. Images show deep wheel pockets for some transports.

According to this video, they move considerably faster than 1 mph:

A quick pan up to the upper deck shows a truck tied down with what look like pegs that pop up and trap the wheels. That would prevent a vehicle breaking loose in transit and damaging other cars or the rail car. The video is a 2 level car carrier which are used for taller vehicles like pick ups.

This video shows a car being loaded with a speed limit sign on entering the train saying 10 mph.

Here is a company that makes wheel chocks for railcars:
https://www.holdenamerica.com/chock-systems/

Finally a site about the automotive railcar market:
The Automotive Railcar Market An Introduction | Greenbrier

 

[SageBrush]

I kept reading, and since you didn't quote anything, I kept thinking someone had mentioned a bottleneck that was in the cars that are now shipping...

Huh. I thought Teslaquilla was available for purchase.

If you haven't yet, grab the book "Eats leaves and shoots."
Funny and educational.

 

[Waiting4M3]

Car carrier cars are three decks. The cars are 89 ft 4 inches long and a Model 3 is 15ft 5 in long. That works out to 5.7 cars per deck (5 with some slack in reality) so 15 per car. That would be a little over 66 rail cars for 1000 cars per day. It's a lot of cars per train, but other car makers do it on a routine basis.



According to this video, they move considerably faster than 1 mph:

A quick pan up to the upper deck shows a truck tied down with what look like pegs that pop up and trap the wheels. That would prevent a vehicle breaking loose in transit and damaging other cars or the rail car. The video is a 2 level car carrier which are used for taller vehicles like pick ups.

This video shows a car being loaded with a speed limit sign on entering the train saying 10 mph.

Here is a company that makes wheel chocks for railcars:
https://www.holdenamerica.com/chock-systems/

Finally a site about the automotive railcar market:
The Automotive Railcar Market An Introduction | Greenbrier

Nice info, thanks! In your video I timed ~9 sec per car. It would mean 2.5 hrs to load 1000 cars. 66 cars * 89.4 ft = 1.11 miles. Fremont factory is ~0.5 mile in length, so they'll probably need to have 3 separate trains. Divide the 2.5 hr by 3 trains, add some overhead, it's reasonable that they can load a train in under 2 hours. This is a lot more promising than I initially thought. If they can implement this, it seems that shipping cars should not be a bottleneck at all.

 

[israndy]

I am sure others have checked it out, but 48401 Fremont Blvd is down Fremont Blvd from the factory, just past the big delivery center there. It used to look like this:

I guess all those spaces we just calling out to Tesla.

I was at the Delivery Center this AM for an Owner Symposium and on the way out I drove by and ALL those spaces (except a few spaces directly in front of the bigger building) were full of mostly Model 3s



The photos don't do it justice, unlike the 600 car factory parking lots they load from, you can drive thru this lot, and to seeing all those cars around you is CRAZY.

I saw some guys drive a van in and then out with two Teslas, so probably they move them to the delivery center as they are ready for them.



When I was there the Delivery Center had its share of cars staged at the door, already to be detailed and charged. Never saw the supercharger my car claimed to have been charged at before I owned it. Must be inside.

-Randy

 

[SMAlset]

Have to say that's a whole lot of great looking Teslas.

 

[dc_h]

I am sure others have checked it out, but 48401 Fremont Blvd is down Fremont Blvd from the factory, just past the big delivery center there. It used to look like this:

View attachment 294494

I guess all those spaces we just calling out to Tesla.

I was at the Delivery Center this AM for an Owner Symposium and on the way out I drove by and ALL those spaces (except a few spaces directly in front of the bigger building) were full of mostly Model 3s

View attachment 294497 View attachment 294498

The photos don't do it justice, unlike the 600 car factory parking lots they load from, you can drive thru this lot, and to seeing all those cars around you is CRAZY.

I saw some guys drive a van in and then out with two Teslas, so probably they move them to the delivery center as they are ready for them.

View attachment 294499

When I was there the Delivery Center had its share of cars staged at the door, already to be detailed and charged. Never saw the supercharger my car claimed to have been charged at before I owned it. Must be inside.

-Randy

How many cars can they deliver a day at the Fremont delivery center? Is this a weeks supply, a month?

 

[HG Wells]

As Dave said when looking at the Monolith in 2001 a Space Odyssey

MY GOD, It's full of cars !

2001's 50th anniversary. Will be rereleased in 70 millimeter theaters this may

 

[mongo]

As Dave said when looking at the Monolith in 2001 a Space Odyssey

MY GOD, It's full of cars !

2001's 50th anniversary. Will be rereleased in 70 millimeter theaters this may

Piece of trivia stuck in my brain: in 2010 that is played as his last words, and he says it in the book 2001, but Dave never says that in the normal release of the 2001 movie.

 

[McFlurri]

Where are the pictures!?!?!?

 

[mongo]

Where are the pictures!?!?!?

Calm down, the sun doesn't rise in Fremont for another 30 minutes.

 

[AustinPowers]

Man that is a hard sentence to read. How about "So now shipping is the new bottleneck"

I kept reading, and since you didn't quote anything, I kept thinking someone had mentioned a bottleneck that was in the cars that are now shipping...

-Randy

You obviously didn't see the Tesla website update to the Model 3 features page. Latest addition you get with the PUP is a
- hand crafted bottleneck matching the interior trim option

 

[drawfour]

Calm down, the sun doesn't rise in Fremont for another 30 minutes.

It has now been well beyond 30 minutes. We demand action!

 

[SMAlset]

Pouring rain where I'm at and by the looks of Wunderground radar map it is in Fremont too.

 

[kengchang]

Someone must know Thermo Fisher employee where we can set up a web cam in his cubicle?!