General Discussion: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[dakh]

I hope new line will be combined Y/3 line to allow flexibility. Though I expect Y to outsell 3. And personally, I will probably sell M3 for truck.

I don't think this is in the cards. Model Y is being designed very differently, with an approach where designers of the car itself and designers of the production line are effectively the same team. It will be both designed and manufactured differently from anything that's been done before.

Now they might go ahead and redesign Model 3 to follow the same pattern but I doubt that would be a priority any time soon.

 

[BioSehnsucht]

If the 3 and Y ever share a line, it will be after the 3 is refreshed to share the Y's production methods (even less wiring than the 3 already reduced to, etc). However, I think at the volumes 3 and Y are planned to operate at, the compromises of shared lines outweigh the benefits, unlike the S/X (and really, might have been the right move at the time for S/X, but perhaps when S/X eventually are refreshed they should split the lines too ... they're already partially split though so perhaps they just stick with the partial split)

 

[elasalle]

If the 3 and Y ever share a line, it will be after the 3 is refreshed to share the Y's production methods (even less wiring than the 3 already reduced to, etc). However, I think at the volumes 3 and Y are planned to operate at, the compromises of shared lines outweigh the benefits, unlike the S/X (and really, might have been the right move at the time for S/X, but perhaps when S/X eventually are refreshed they should split the lines too ... they're already partially split though so perhaps they just stick with the partial split)

I thought EM was convinced to keep the Y the same as 3 in design? Easy time to market with less new issues cropping up.

 

[Waiting4M3]

I thought EM was convinced to keep the Y the same as 3 in design? Easy time to market with less new issues cropping up.

The confirmed that they're getting rid of the 12V battery, and redesigning the wiring harness for the MY, so those will present some significant changes in production.

Tesla Model Y is coming to market sooner using Model 3 architecture, says Elon Musk

 

[elasalle]

The confirmed that they're getting rid of the 12V battery, and redesigning the wiring harness for the MY, so those will present some significant changes in production.

Tesla Model Y is coming to market sooner using Model 3 architecture, says Elon Musk

Great, can't wait for prototype to be revealed - once M3 production issues are behind - like start of 3Q

 

[Waiting4M3]

Just a reminder, the bears are not going away:

 

[RobStark]

It would be great if the line was brought up and made 3's while the final tooling/ testing of Y was occurring. Then Y hits the ground running, and the line is never idle. The fly in this ointment is that if the line is not at Fremont, it means duplicating the stamping dies, or shipping stamped parts from Fremont... Although... That could work if the Y line was at GF1, since there will be all the empty trailers from hauling packs and motors to Fremont that need to go there anyway...

Edit: They would need collapsible dunnage to make this work (or else trailers that gross out instead of cube out).

I think they will need GF3 and Auto Plant 2 for Model Y.

Model S3X fills Fremont and S3X plus TE fills GF1.

BTW GF2 is Buffalo and GF3 will also be needed for Semi.

 

[ls7corvete]

I think they will need GF3 and Auto Plant 2 for Model Y.

Model S3X fills Fremont and S3X plus TE fills GF1.

BTW GF2 is Buffalo and GF3 will also be needed for Semi.

They are only using 1/3rd if GF2 now, afaik. How will S3X and TE fill the completed building?

 

[John W. Ratcliff]

I don't know if I'm the only one around here who invests in bitcoin, but I gotta say I am continuously amazed by how much the TSLA market behaves like the bitcoin market.

 

[sundaymorning]

I keep having to remind myself that the past couple days hasn’t been “a run” for Tesla, we’re merely making up for lost grounds on rumors & FUD. The “run” I’m hoping for will occur before we ramp, or when there’s market confirmation that 2,500 is at steady rate during April/ early May timeframe. I think that the market will likely react positively way before the ramp is confirmed, much in the way that we dropped on speculation that the ramp was much slower than expected. Now that we have a firm grip on what VIN registration looks like, the market may react even swifter as more VINs are registered and accounted for. I will be much bolder and more decisive as the quarter progresses and confirmation comes flowing in. Good luck to everyone.

 

[RobStark]

They are only using 1/3rd if GF2 now, afaik. How will S3X and TE fill the completed building?

Cause right now Tesla is producing 2k Model 3s per week and miniscule BES.

In the foreseeable future Tesla will sell ~500k Model 3s per year plus a sh!tload of BES.

 

[Dennisj00]

I’m happy to learn tonight that our local Audi dealer gives free manicures on Thursdays in the service department.

Maybe they’ll do some diesel testing while you wait!

 

[woof]

In honor of Ms. Krug's avatar...I should (but won't) change mine to this:

that's "Colonel the Corgi". Time to make that new thread!

 

[Krugerrand]

In honor of Ms. Krug's avatar...I should (but won't) change mine to this:

that's "Colonel the Corgi". Time to make that new thread!

Badass > Cute

I win.

 

[Waiting4M3]

As promised, I reworked my chart on VIN assignments now we have a week more data. The data range is from March 8th till today, 1 day shy of 4 weeks. View attachment 291528

For each day, I graph the maximum VIN assigned that day (green), the minimum VIN assigned (red) and the average of all VINs assigned (blue). In addition I added the trend lines for each series.

The green line (maximum VIN assigned) tells us something about line speed : how fast do model 3s roll of the line. That rate over the given period is from 9400 to 15300, or just over 1500/week. The assumption is that each top VIN represents a car that goes through quality control exceptionally fast and needs no rework. Ie, that car is nearly immediatly after production complete available for customer assignment. R square is .9 or a good fit.

The blue line (average VIN assigned) tells us something about production speed where production includes regular quality control and rework. This rate is from 8000 to 12200 or 1100/week. R square is .85 or a reasonable good fit

The red line (lowest VIN assigned) tells us something about quality control issues. How slow is Tesla in reworking cars that don't pass quality control on the one hand. The spread of this line with the green line tells us if Tesla has sufficient capacity to rework cars as they roll of the line. This rate goes from 6300 to 8500 or just below 600/week. R square is .3 so not really a good fit.

My conclusion : the run up to 2000/week was recently enough that it doesn't yet show in the VIN assignment numbers. Rework and quality control is growing but because production rate is growing as well, it's too early to tell if this is sign of a significant backlog, especially with such a weak trendline.

I tried some modeling based on your hypothesis that max VIN could indicate line speed. For each day, I find the max VIN reported up to that day, then I used a linear regression (Excel LINEST) of the max VIN vs date over the previous 14 days, and used the resulting slope as a daily production rate. I then add the daily rate for each day to get weekly and cumulative production. I used 14 day window for the regression since max VIN jumped around a lot before mid March, and smaller window would give very noisy results. I tested this method using Troy's data for Q1, some highlights of the model results around end of quarter:

• Daily rate ~250-280 for last week (since 3/30)
• 7 day total from 3/27-4/2 is 1803, 217 lower than actual, likely because LINEST is looking at trailing 14 days data, so lagging a little. I think it's still working much better than Bloomberg's model.
  
• Total production in Q1 up to 3/31 is 10,105, ~340 off, or 1+ days of production at end of Q1 speed.

Daily, weekly, and cumulative production in 2018 based on this model are plotted below:

Daily trend still jumps around quite a bit up till mid March, you can kinda see the Feb shutdown, and potentially a 1 wk shutdown sometime in Jan.

Weekly rates have some noise in Jan-Feb also, but March rates may be pretty close to reality IMO. Dates shown are the last day of week, for example, 1/7 is Jan 1-7 week (Mon-Sun)

Total in 2018, just to check how we match up against end of quarter

 

[stef]

Possible arrival of Grohmann line on March 7th (in Oakland) • r/teslamotors

 

[sundaymorning]

Possible arrival of Grohmann line on March 7th (in Oakland) • r/teslamotors

Here’s a follow up tweet:

Twitter

 

[aubreymcfato]

Possible arrival of Grohmann line on March 7th (in Oakland) • r/teslamotors

@hoonable on Twitter is the original source. I follow him on twitter and it's amazing the amount of paperwork he's capable of scanning to scoop these details.
Yesterday he posted this:
Very unscientific but here is where the 382 sea shipments coming to Tesla in March came from. (According to the source I can access).
Source: Bozi Tatarevic on Twitter

 

[schonelucht]

The 18650's from Japan don't show up at all?

 

[Reciprocity]

The confirmed that they're getting rid of the 12V battery, and redesigning the wiring harness for the MY, so those will present some significant changes in production.

Tesla Model Y is coming to market sooner using Model 3 architecture, says Elon Musk

Yes but the wiring is a part of the line, not the whole line. It very well could use the same line up to the point where wiring is put in by people vs machines. This is why they are charging the wiring and changing to the 48v system. Model 3 could also inherite this at some point, but it's not critical as it will be about half the volume of the Y and even the future pickup. The 5 most popular vehicles in the US are pickups and the rav4 and Nissan rogue.

My hope is that the majority of the line can be shared with new robots added for wiring. Model 3s go left to manual stations, model Y guess right to automated wiring harness install then circle back to join the model 3 where the interior is installed.

This does not mean it will be simple. But it should be quicker to ramp and less capex then model 3. The lines would need to be expanded because you will have demand of North of a million 3s and Ys in US alone with a line that seems to Max out at 500k. Do they even have room? I know they seem to have built a second parts supply tower at the other end of the factory. Moving parts out of the main factory could save some space. The problem is that robots take up more space than people in most cases. Tough Tesla's methodology of going 3D could level that disadvantage. Some reports are that the robots are so dense that you can't see the car through all the robots. This would be 5x more space then people but this robots night be doing multiple stations worth of tasks which makes up for the space lost.