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Highest production VIN in the wild

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Yeah but total cars delivered in Q4 last year was under 1800, so yeah, not 3000 in December. Cars manufactured take 2-3 weeks to deliver depending on where they go. Max delivers for all of December are probably 3100, which would be done Dec.
No....listen carefully. VIN numbers around 3000 were being reported here in this forum. Its been 3 weeks since then so.....VIN numbers around 6000 should be seen here in the forum. That would make sense at 1K per week.
 
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VIN number is not necessarily production order.
I understand exactly what you are saying. For instance:

If tesla produced 1000 brown Model 3's and no one wanted one, then they started producing other colors and folks start taking them - That would throw the numbers off. The problem I'm having is that folks are still today taking delivery of cars in the 3K range.

do you think that this thread is "useless"?
 
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do you think that this thread is "useless"?

Yes. I remember once someone did a study about the health of the economy by studying semis on I-75.

Maybe a better approach would be to strategically place TMC forum members at various freeway overpasses with high speed cameras to capture semi's loaded with model 3's 24/7. The current approach of borderline trespassing at times after stumbling out of bars at 2:30am is more humorous and entertaining however. All in the name of the god VIN.:D
 
I understand exactly what you are saying. For instance:

If tesla produced 1000 brown Model 3's and no one wanted one, then they started producing other colors and folks start taking them - That would throw the numbers off. The problem I'm having is that folks are still today taking delivery of cars in the 3K range.

Whether 3k was reported 3 weeks ago is semi-irrelevant unless you also know if all vehicles less that 3k were delivered. They could have made VIN 4,096, that would not mean we should see 7k now.

VINs registered leads production, production leads delivery, delivery leads reporting.

If there is a 2 week lag between rolling off the line and into someone's garage, then we should only be seeing VINs from early January (3 days of production with New Years off). Given that <3k were made last year (and 860 were in transit), being in the 3k range now is somewhere between spot on and ahead of schedule (or the lag is shorter). If they are at 1k/wk now, in 2 weeks we should see VINs increasing by 1k per week, assuming the delivery pipeline is moving and not pre-buffering at SvCs.
 
I’m slow on the reply, sorry @ywg2san ...

I ordered online on announcement day pretty much as soon as possible (after the servers weren’t crashing). Car #4114 was ready a bit over a week ago. There were about 18 cars waiting to be picked up, and I can pretty much guarantee they weren’t moving 100 or even 50 on that day (Wednesday)

Also took a tour of the factory and while impressive, there was no way hundreds of model 3’s were being rolled out of there that day. So I think the deliveries are quite bursts but I’d be amazed if it were 1k per week (ducks...)

That said, the car is really nice. Much nicer that me 2013 S 85. I was hoping the wife would say she didn’t want it but alas I guess I can drive it on weekends.

Slow start or not, they are gonna sell a zillion of these cars. I think of the S as car 2.0 and the three as a whole newer version (car 3.0). It’s that much more refined...
 
I’m slow on the reply, sorry @ywg2san ...

I ordered online on announcement day pretty much as soon as possible (after the servers weren’t crashing). Car #4114 was ready a bit over a week ago. There were about 18 cars waiting to be picked up, and I can pretty much guarantee they weren’t moving 100 or even 50 on that day (Wednesday)

Also took a tour of the factory and while impressive, there was no way hundreds of model 3’s were being rolled out of there that day. So I think the deliveries are quite bursts but I’d be amazed if it were 1k per week (ducks...)

That said, the car is really nice. Much nicer that me 2013 S 85. I was hoping the wife would say she didn’t want it but alas I guess I can drive it on weekends.

Slow start or not, they are gonna sell a zillion of these cars. I think of the S as car 2.0 and the three as a whole newer version (car 3.0). It’s that much more refined...

It's quite possible that production is being staged and queued up so that they can run in bursts. If you think about how they will make incremental improvements, they will have to run at greater and greater speeds to see what breaks and where variances occur. Let's say they are still having some supplier constraints or still some pack issues, they would queue up enough parts for the day based on a 1200/week rate. Now this night take a couple of days so production could run, but slowly during that time, then burst for a shift at 1200/week rate. If all goes well, they make the adjustments to go to 1400 and start the process over. The only way to improve the rate is too try it, fix the issues that arise and try again. The blended rate could have been 600-700 in the first week of the year and is now finally at 1000 blended rate with periodic bursts over 1200. Or maybe not. There is really no way to know for sure. To me, it doesn't seem that a lot is progress has been made but that could change very quickly once what ever bottle neck occurs, because of the noted process above. The second the bottle neck clears, they can quickly move to to the highest reliable burst rate. One way to tell this might be happening are recent invites, VIN registrations over 8000+ and signs of the dual motor version on the site (discovered though not public) and with 20 vins registered for test vehicles? Also model 3s in show rooms. You don't parade the car out there is you can't make then, it would be like pouring gas on the dumpster fire.

1000 per week is only 200/day and word from all over the country is deliveries are scheduled before month end with some locations gave 10 and others just a couple. Cars are moving and some people all across the country are getting deliveries which is much different than Dec 31st when it was solely California. One guy posted 10 in Decatur, GA. That's not insignificant.
 
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It's quite possible that production is being staged and queued up so that they can run in bursts. If you think about how they will make incremental improvements, they will have to run at greater and greater speeds to see what breaks and where variances occur. Let's say they are still having some supplier constraints or still some pack issues, they would queue up enough parts for the day based on a 1200/week rate. Now this night take a couple of days so production could run, but slowly during that time, then burst for a shift at 1200/week rate. If all goes well, they make the adjustments to go to 1400 and start the process over. The only way to improve the rate is too try it, fix the issues that arise and try again. The blended rate could have been 600-700 in the first week of the year and is now finally at 1000 blended rate with periodic bursts over 1200. Or maybe not. There is really no way to know for sure. To me, it doesn't seem that a lot is progress has been made but that could change very quickly once what ever bottle neck occurs, because of the noted process above. The second the bottle neck clears, they can quickly move to to the highest reliable burst rate. One way to tell this might be happening are recent invites, VIN registrations over 8000+ and signs of the dual motor version on the site (discovered though not public) and with 20 vins registered for test vehicles? Also model 3s in show rooms. You don't parade the car out there is you can't make then, it would be like pouring gas on the dumpster fire.

1000 per week is only 200/day and word from all over the country is deliveries are scheduled before month end with some locations gave 10 and others just a couple. Cars are moving and some people all across the country are getting deliveries which is much different than Dec 31st when it was solely California. One guy posted 10 in Decatur, GA. That's not insignificant.
All this, plus, think of the queue: there's a huge amount of queue in all that which you described. When we see VINs being registered, it may take some time for those to come to market, but: (a) already they passed through a lot of queue items (before VIN conception registration), and (b) (after VIN conception registration) there is much queue to go before car is birthed and more queue before owner fully experiences driving their new car. The "seed" money and orders are actually before VIN conception registration ... usually.
 
I'm pretty sure that they run 7 days a week. So it would be 143/day.
I was trying to disprove this, with my theory that they might take Sundays off, and I was wrong. The factory worker lot by the freeway side is a little over a quarter full of worker cars. They tend to park close to the factory bunching up by entryways, leaving many areas much more empty. There are two main bunches on either end of the building, with one by the weird lobby type area close to the SuperCharger, and the other out past the other side of the SuperCharger and store.

Coming in, the new vehicle storage lot past Thermo Fisher was mostly empty; since I was driving, I didn’t get a detailed look, but it seems a tenth full or less of new cars.

I didn’t spend long in back by the railroads, so I only have a very rough estimation of that lot, but it was 90% or so full, mostly new Teslas, many scattered CPOs, and about (hard to tell zipping by) a quarter Model 3, the rest evenly split between Model S & Model X, probably in relation to their sales ratios. Two of the three car carriers there (not rail, to clarify, but truck — I haven’t seen rail carriers here for years) were basically full & the other one basically empty. I saw a skeleton crew sized large enough to process that amount of car carriers; not sure what they were doing. Some cars were marked specially (trunk open). I think this continues to be a transfer logistics area, basically car carriers. If I were an AI computer, I’d probably also stuff some random stuff in here too; I don’t know what variances the humans decided on.

===

As I drove through Fremont Delivery Center, this is the first time I get a sense of normal operations there; neither in anticipation of the future, nor processing a first historic glut of load with overflow. Instead, I see sensibly parked and organized employee, customer, work, and new vehicle parking. Half the new cars parked in back are Model 3’s, and the rest Model X & S. I’d say there’s a higher ratio concentration of Model 3’s here than at the logistics yard by the railroads. However, the total number of new cars is far fewer, maybe a twentieth of the logistics yard; only 4 of the dozen or so parking rows has new cars in them, and they are neatly bunched in the two closest parallel lines.

I didn’t realize it until today, but they have an additional two rows worth of new Model X & Model S and at least one Model 3 parked in front by Fremont Blvd.

I didn’t happen to see any new customers driving out, but I saw a few in these two front rows. Those may be them taking delivery now, since they were doing what looked like delivery inspections; for some reason, I’m under the impression they were Model S’s being delivered. Today is a sunny day at 59°, so just right for being dressed up to take delivery. (Maybe the Model 3’s were rushed out earlier this weekend? Or maybe they’re mostly inside right now.) Literally after I hit Save, I saw a new Model 3 drive away. Then one the same color with a lady and her baby going the other direction (same one?).
 
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No....listen carefully. VIN numbers around 3000 were being reported here in this forum. Its been 3 weeks since then so.....VIN numbers around 6000 should be seen here in the forum. That would make sense at 1K per week.
I thought they took off the first week of 2018? Maybe I'm wrong.

Since VINS are ahead of # of deliveries, even if they have made 3k so far in 2018, we aren't seeing the last of those VINS assigned to people, since some are getting VINS from 2k-4k that never went out, for whatever reason.

So if they just these last 3 days made VINS 5500-6000, those aren't going to people yet, they are sitting in a parking lot somewhere, for at least a few more days. I'd expect something in that range to be assigned this week.

I think we saw somebody assigned a 53xx VIN, so I think that's about right.

And I think we've all agreed that when somebody gets their VIN, most likely it's not in the middle of production like you see with Model S/X, but already made, and then matched to the order specs.

The longest part of somebody getting their car after ordering a 3 is all the paperwork, and nothing to do with the car except for washing, charging, a little more QC, etc...

So long story short (too late), i think the latest VIN assigned is hundreds behind what's actually been produced.
 
For what it is worth, I received my Vin 39xx yesterday. The midnight silver S with aero wheels is to be delivered in San Diego mid next week. I stood in line on 1/31/16. I am an S owner but not otherwise affiliated with Tesla.
Standing in line for that long you should have been first to receive your car after employees.
 
I understand exactly what you are saying. For instance:

If tesla produced 1000 brown Model 3's and no one wanted one, then they started producing other colors and folks start taking them - That would throw the numbers off. The problem I'm having is that folks are still today taking delivery of cars in the 3K range.

do you think that this thread is "useless"?

You just answered your own question. Tesla only deliverd ~1800 in 2017. So your assertion that 3000 has some meaning is incorrect. If every single vin assigned and delivered was reported, you might have some point as you would know definitively that 3000 vins where promised to purchasers before Dec 31st. What if only 2000 of the 3000 where assigned with delivery dates and some above 3000 where assigned. There is no basis for you to draw a line at 3000.

Let's say I've part supplier was behind or Tesla changed a part and was making them in small batches internally while waiting for a supplier update. So the built cars in counts that they thought would be ordered and as orders came in, they were matched up with what was built and the parts made internally were consumed. The rest of the cars where stored but the vins would be all over the place at that point. As orders came in, Tesla would decide if it where best to match them to a car coming off the line or one in storage. Probably based off of numerous factors, like where they were taking delivery and when car carries where scheduled to take cars to certain locations and how much room was in those carries and at those locations.

The issue with your line in the sand of 3000 is that the only thing that is clear is that there is no fixed point for comparison. Based on 1800, it's more likely we would be seeing 4800+ publicly and we have, while vins in the 3000s are also regularly seen. I think base case scenario is 3000 deliveries for Jan with 3200ish manufactured and some still in transit/queued for delivery. Vins in the 5-6000 range could be seen by months end.

I know Tesla has claimed 2500/w by the end of Q1 and 5000/w by the end if q2, but 1000/w is a legit milestone. It happens to about how many model S or model X Tesla makes a week. Growing production 50% in 7 months is pretty impressive. Especially when you consider that in 2 months they very well could be doubling the 2k/week they did last year and added another 50% improvement matching total S/X weekly production in 10 months. Context matters and that is Impressive. At roughly 4k per week, Tesla will have doubled their revenues, the fastest growth the company has grown in recent years and at a time when it's market cap is larger then Fords.

Edit: kind vs line... That sentence was much more racist then was intended. Thanks again @mongo
 
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