Things such as credibility, honesty, respect, sincerity, honor, and unadulterated truth are on a fast track to be elements of the past.
Also to your previous statement “car making is an exact science”
I don’t know what’s your experience doing things that are novel/different/infrequent enough that despite the best minds planning, the estimates of what happens are just estimates, and your projections, models etc are tools for making ongoing trade-offs, not a story of the future.
Only kiddie project managers think their gantt bars line up nicely and portray a promiseable outcome on a final date. And only clueless customers take those project plans as a promise of delivery. You know, like time, scope, quality, and all that didn’t exist. Unless it’s predictable enough like making paper clips.
If you think truth and honesty are important, you wouldn’t be asking for a concrete “100% confidence” date, because you know that complex factors in supply chains, people, environment, tools, etc will change your plans every day. You’d be asking for a 95% confidence date, or a 80% confidence date or something like that, and understand why parallelizing software, cutting features, etc are all part of meeting the larger promise.
I think what irks you is the opacity, not the existence of the risks. what you ask for - a fixed date for “something” - as much as you feel entitled to it because of “principle”, or because of car lease timings, or fear the stock tanks etc etc- doesn’t really make rational sense. But I can respect it and see why others would think that way too.
I’d like to know too but I know why it’s hard to guess it right, and I’ve gotten used to the low confidence associated with the estimates typically shared by Tesla.
Out of curiosity, for forum members, how often and when was the last time a new company went from making 1k to 100k vehicles/year to 500k? I know they hire from each other and buy same robots etc so it’s not all improvisation. But Just wondering from historical perspective how infrequent this is
