General Discussion: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[EinSV]

I think I just heard ~25k Canadians deciding to delay their Model 3 order 3 months.

That's funny, because I could have sworn I just heard a bunch of people from Ontario (~1/3 of the population of Canada) order their RWD Model 3 to lock in the $14,000 EV rebate in case it goes away after the upcoming election. Seems like our friend @Words of HABIT will have lots of company pulling the trigger on the Model 3 RWD to get delivery by June 30.

 

[Starno]

Just for the lolz Don't Expect A Tesla Model 3 Before The End Of 2018, Analyst Reckons

 

[Words of HABIT]

That's funny, because I could have sworn I just heard a bunch of people from Ontario (~1/3 of the population of Canada) order their RWD Model 3 to lock in the $14,000 EV rebate in case it goes away after the upcoming election. Seems like our friend @Words of HABIT will have lots of company pulling the trigger on the Model 3 RWD to get delivery by June 30.

No doubt. FYI pop. of Canada is 36.3 million. I think you meant to say 1/3 of M3 reservation holders for Canada?

 

[Ronist]

No doubt. FYI pop. of Canada is 36.3 million. I think you meant to say 1/3 of M3 reservation holders for Canada?

He's saying Ontario population accounts for ~1/3 of the population in Canada.x

 

[EinSV]

No doubt. FYI pop. of Canada is 36.3 million. I think you meant to say 1/3 of M3 reservation holders for Canada?

Sorry, I meant about 1/3 of the population of Canada is in Ontario (13.6 million of 36.3 million according to a quick Google search (37.5%)). I am still sipping coffee and too lazy to check the percentage of reservation holders.

Edit: What @Ronist said.

 

[Wnuk]

Is Tesla Ever Late? No, Not Really. | CleanTechnica

Good read

 

[ValueAnalyst]

View attachment 292590

Still behind imo, but finally it’s not showing half the rate the company said it is, a week after the company said it is.

 

[MTL_HABS1909]

I dreaded the day I would watch "Who Killed the Electric Car?". That day was today and it made me very mad. GM and the other fossil companies can go screw themselves. I am proud to be a Tesla shareholder and I hope for my childrens' sake that they succeed. Once we get the Model 3 we will replace a Corolla and we will be a 100% EV household (we also have a Leaf).

If you have not watched this great documentary yet, you can view it for free here: Who Killed The Electric Car? (123) : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive

This is why I will never buy another car from a legacy automaker (including EVs like Nissan Leaf). They ALL lobby to reduce emissions regulations and continue to push ICE over EV.

 

[ValueAnalyst]

One explanation is that Tesla started registering VINs at a much faster rate, so the time between VIN registration and first reported use increased.

Tesla's VIN registrations in that time period were:

March 20: 2042 new VINs (up to 15885) First report March 30 (10 days later)
March 23: 2655 new VINs (up to 18540) First report April 6 (14 days later)

The first report of the March 20 batch that I saw was March 30. This was in the middle of the week Tesla reported producing 2020 vehicles.

Since there were 2042 vehicles in that batch it would have taken Tesla 7 days to use up that range, but there was only a 3 day gap between registrations (March 20-23). This would leave an extra 4 days for the cars in that batch to be produced before Tesla needed the next batch of VINs -- 10+4=14, which is exactly the amount of time it took for the first report from that batch.

So one plausible explanation (not the only one -- it could be random variation or other things) is that before March 20 Tesla's production outpaced VIN registration, so the time from registration to first VIN assignment decreased. Since then, Tesla has increased production but increased VIN registration rate even more, so we are starting to see the time lag from VIN registration to production increase. Since about ~10K VINs have been registered in the two weeks since March 23 I would expect that trend to continue, unless Tesla changes the way it assigns VINs, which it could do at any time.

Do you expect your 10-14 day estimate to
hold going forward (and I understand that we can’t know for sure), which could mean that Model 3 weekly production rate is on its way to 5,000 by the end of April? I’m quite surprised by the surge in cadence of NHTSA registrations and hoping maybe you could provide a perspective that makes sense.

 

[goinfraftw]

So, Q - when do people think the market is going to consider Tesla a tech company rather than an auto-manufacturer? After doing a cross-comparison between NFLX and TSLA, the Price/Sales ratio difference is ~2.75 (generally, 11:4).

With the revenue potential increase of 2x this year, if they hit y-o-y targets just on the car side (without considering the solar roof), we're talking about a multiples potential of a 5x increase in the next 1-2 years.

Also, am I looking at this the right way?

 

[Ulmo]

I just had this shower thought:

Perspective makes things too easy to understand to be able to understand them well while in the midst of them the next time something similar happens.

Specific things must be logically applied to better understand the present with anywhere near the planning perspective wants.

I think during the shower, I meant to say this first:

Perspective makes things too easy to understand to be able to understand them while in the midst of them from the same mental ability required for perspective.

By the way, that's why I think more cameras makes sense, from a physical point of view. (My shower thought above applies to all information, whether conceptual or physical.)

 

[Ulmo]

Do you expect your 10-14 day estimate to
hold going forward (and I understand that we can’t know for sure), which could mean that Model 3 weekly production rate is on its way to 5,000 by the end of April? I’m quite surprised by the surge in cadence of NHTSA registrations and hoping maybe you could provide a perspective that makes sense.

I have a flippant reply to that: Tesla's provisioning system could be running faster. Taken out of all things else being the same speed, that could cause VINs to get registered earlier with respect to other events just by itself. Of course, it's not taken out of all other things being the same speed, but if true, would still be faster.

I got stuck in Tesla's Model S provisioning system, circa November of 2016 when I was ordering a Model S, with some parts provision flow issues for a few days, due to commands I gave the salesflows that got desynchronized and miscommunicated. Of course it got sorted out. But it made me aware of their parts provisioning process flow. Also, and I blame myself for this, but if they had done as I had asked for the main command I gave that got desync'd, I'd have half a million dollars right now, rather than be broke.

It could be unrelated in that the VIN is a description of the order, but then the parts would have to be confirmed for the order for there to be a VIN, so I do think they're basically if not in fact related, as in, parts provisioning then VIN or something like VIN after determining proper VIN then provisioning with VIN. Well, they're probably tightly linked somehow. Huh, they probably need to be able to have VIN already during provisioning, so they probably remove the need to know parts provisioning before provisioning, so they probably have a VIN determining program before provisioning. Ok, so that takes provisioning out of the equation, but then again, it could all be under the roof of post-order-processing or late order processing that is going more efficiently, so I return back to the it could be faster idea.

 

[Waiting4M3]

Production estimate based on VIN reported in Troy's sheet. At the very least, the 2k/wk rate looks strong and holding, we also see new high VINs close to 18000s in the last few days, which resulted in daily production rate increase in my model over the last 2 days:

Daily rate now ~350/day in the last 2 days, which correspond to 2450/wk.

Weekly total 2032 for 4/2-8 (Mon-Sun). If we look at 7 days from 4/3-9, matching the range mentioned in Tesla's delivery report, it could be ~100 higher due to increased daily rate in the recent 2 days.

I also continue to keep an eye on VIN reporting count. Now 8 days into April, it seems that April is definitely showing higher # of VIN report, as @Zhelko Dimic also posted. It looks to me ~50% higher than March.

 

[EinSV]

Do you expect your 10-14 day estimate to
hold going forward (and I understand that we can’t know for sure), which could mean that Model 3 weekly production rate is on its way to 5,000 by the end of April? I’m quite surprised by the surge in cadence of NHTSA registrations and hoping maybe you could provide a perspective that makes sense.

I think we may see the current 14-day period stay the same or increase before it decreases. If not, that would be one data point in favor of a ramp above the 2000/week range (but only one data point -- I think you have to look at the big picture).

Tesla registered 2655 VINs on March 23 (through 18540), 2041 more on March 30 (18541-20581), and another 4,793 on April 5 (through 25374).

If we see the next batch of VINs appear by about April 15 (16 days from March 30) that would be consistent with a solid 2000/week run rate (2655 VINs/9 days (April 6-15)*7 days/week=2065/week) -- any faster would be consistent with a run rate above 2K/week. But this is only one metric among many so I would caution against relying on it too much, especially since Tesla can decide to change how and when it assigns VINs to customers at any time and it also may vary based on geography, etc. Looking over short time frames can be especially prone to error. As one example, if they shut down production for two days to increase speed of the lines they might not need the next VIN batch as quickly so tracking VIN use might suggest a slowdown when in fact production rate has increased significantly.

But having said all that if we were to see the next batch reported in a week or so (~April 15) that would be one data point in favor of Tesla continuing to meet or exceed 2K/week.

As far as 5K/week I seriously doubt Tesla is targeting that by end of April and would be thrilled to see them in that range in July.

 

[Waiting4M3]

I think we may see the current 14-day period stay the same or increase before it decreases. If not, that would be one data point in favor of a ramp above the 2000/week range (but only one data point -- I think you have to look at the big picture).

Tesla registered 2655 VINs on March 23 (through 18540), 2041 more on March 30 (18541-20581), and another 4,793 on April 5 (through 25374).

If we see the next batch of VINs appear by about April 15 (16 days from March 30) that would be consistent with a solid 2000/week run rate (2655 VINs/9 days (April 6-15)*7 days/week=2065/week) -- any faster would be consistent with a run rate above 2K/week. But this is only one metric among many so I would caution against relying on it too much, especially since Tesla can decide to change how and when it assigns VINs to customers at any time and it already seems to vary quite a bit based on geography, etc. Also, there can be a lot of variability and looking over short time frames can be especially prone to error. As one example, if they shut down production for two days to increase speed of the lines they might not need the next VIN batch as quickly so tracking VIN use might suggest a slowdown when in fact production rate has increased significantly.

But having said all that if we were to see the next batch reported in a week or so (~April 15) that would be one data point in favor of Tesla continuing to meet or exceed 2K/week.

As far as 5K/week I seriously doubt Tesla is targeting that by end of April and would be thrilled to see them in that range in July.

Are you taking into account the batch of 2915 VINs registered on 4/6, one day after the ~4800 batch?

 

[elasalle]

Do you expect your 10-14 day estimate to
hold going forward (and I understand that we can’t know for sure), which could mean that Model 3 weekly production rate is on its way to 5,000 by the end of April? I’m quite surprised by the surge in cadence of NHTSA registrations and hoping maybe you could provide a perspective that makes sense.

EMs tweet from yesterday regarding awd,white interior suggests 5K goal is for end of June ~ cheers

 

[Ulmo]

Is Tesla Ever Late? No, Not Really. | CleanTechnica

Good read

Great while drinking coffee!

 

[EinSV]

Are you taking into account the batch of 2915 VINs registered on 4/6, one day after the ~4800 batch?

By the time we get to that batch I would expect the time period from VIN registration of a batch to first report of assignment from a batch to increase significantly unless they change how they assign VINs to customers (for example, by assigning them earlier in the process).

In other words, I don't think they'll be producing 5K Model 3s per week in the next few weeks.

 

[Ulmo]

I just learned MbS was in town for the week. Did e meet?

 

[Reciprocity]

EMs tweet from yesterday regarding awd,white interior suggests 5K goal is for end of June ~ cheers

EM is as always cagey in his response. He said dual motor probably in July. Then he said we have to hit 5000/w first. What he didn't say is how long they would be at 5k/w before introducing the dual motor configs or how long it would take to incorporate dual motor into the manufacturing process. In theory, they could get to 5k/w in June and take a few weeks to add in and shakeout the dual motor steps in the process.

Think about it this way. July 1st needs to be full tilt, 100% as fast as they can go because the fed tax credits will either start to phase out this quarter or next. That is 100% certain. To do that, they must have dual motor and/or the smaller battery or there is no one to sell the cars to in the US.

His comments could be taken a couple of ways. Elon makes it seem like there is some doubt about dual motor before july1. But to me that would be a serious problem. Because it could be a limiting factor in how many cars they can deliver in the US by the end of Q3. At this point, it's seeming less and less likely that the tax credit will be preserved by Tesla pushing out deliveries in Q2 to hit 200,000 in Q3. So dual motor and other options are critical before the end of June, because they will want a queue of orders ready to be delivered July 1st - if they push out the 200k deliver and even if they don't.

Is it possible that Tesla knows that the tax credit will be extended? Maybe some back channel negotiations and lobbying? If not, I would expect to see ramping of model s/x as well. 3 shifts and so on, to pump up the inventory in anticipation of the demand spike.