Model S Delivery Issues and Communication Concerns

[STxTesla]

And....if you were at a restaurant and the chef noticed that he burned your food....
would you want it as is...NOW... or would you want to wait a bit to get it perfect.

Elon Musk is making certain that all of his products are perfect. This is a good thing for all of us.

 

[AnOutsider]

Maybe they had intended on doing it one way, only to find out it wasn't possible to do it that way. Maybe lots of things, but it's just like people to think the worst and that it's intentionally done to upset them specifically.

Which, as my communications with Tesla would indicate, is precisely what happened. You know what would have cured all (most?) of this though? A simple blog post or email communication that went along the lines of "So, we're finally ready to deliver Model S and we're going to work hard to make sure everyone gets theirs in order. There may, however, be some out of place deliveries as we take into account the batching of options and geographic locales for deliveries. ...blah blah, fluff, blah blah".

I just don't get why they continue to shoot themselves in the foot like this. Maybe they thought no one would notice *shrug*

And....if you were at a restaurant and the chef noticed that he burned your food....
would you want it as is...NOW... or would you want to wait a bit to get it perfect.

Elon Musk is making certain that all of his products are perfect. This is a good thing for all of us.

Not exactly sure what that has to do with delivering out of order? More about the delay in deliveries, which I think everyone is well over by now.

 

[Tesla229]

Shouldn't all these delivery issue comments be in the "Delivery Issues & Concerns" thread? This "Delivery Update" thread keeps getting polluted with all these extraneous comments...

(deaton 52 excepted)

 

[Arnold Panz]

Which, as my communications with Tesla would indicate, is precisely what happened. You know what would have cured all (most?) of this though? A simple blog post or email communication that went along the lines of "So, we're finally ready to deliver Model S and we're going to work hard to make sure everyone gets theirs in order. There may, however, be some out of place deliveries as we take into account the batching of options and geographic locales for deliveries. ...blah blah, fluff, blah blah".

I just don't get why they continue to shoot themselves in the foot like this. Maybe they thought no one would notice *shrug*.

+1. I don't think this was an unreasonable assumption, and a blog post explaining how the production would work really would have stopped a lot of the speculation and unnecessarily negative feelings towards Tesla because people didn't understand why their cars were being produced/delivered out of order from when they were ordered. And not to sound snooty, but this impacted (so far) people who put down $40k and are paying $100k for their car, and many Roadster owners, and these people probably feel a bit more entitled to this kind of information given their investment and overall cost of the car.

My understanding is that a blog post from GeorgeB on this should be coming out soon to explain this process. I would have thought today (still could, I guess), but hopefully by the end of the week. So none of the Rs or Ps should have the same level of uncertainty that the Sigs did during this phase. That's a good thing!

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Congrats, Arnold, ddenboer, Bifff67!

Hoping for some more of the 'old-timers' - AnOutsider, Charged_up among others - to get the good news soon...

Very kind of you, gg! I saw DPeilow's first post in forever earlier today and was thinking about how much TMC has changed/grown since I found it. That's a good thing, too!

 

[Charged_Up]

"This kind of comment bothers me to no end for a lot of reasons. "

I don't know why it bothers you - it should bother Tesla. It's one thing for someone to tell you that all orders for a state are batched together. It's another to say that someone whose reservation came almost a thousand vehicles after mine is receiving a car earlier - with no apparent rhyme or reason. I don't think they are intentionally trying to upset people or fool with them but most clearly thought that their reservation # was roughly in line with production. Even if that wasn't true, you don't let people hang and not return calls or emails (both have happened to me recently) - you just tell them what you know. No matter what you may think, I'm entitled to a little information, having put down $40k nearly three year ago for a $100k vehicle - partly on the promise of early delivery. I'm not asking for much - just a little info about an exciting product that I went out on a limb for a long-time ago. It's just good common sense customer relations - and my bigger point is that a little information would eliminate a lot of frustration - especially for short-timers - which hurts people's willingness to proselytize for the brand. And believe me, you can't count the number of people to whom I have excitedly explained why I'm getting a Model S.....

 

[Krugerrand]

Which, as my communications with Tesla would indicate, is precisely what happened. You know what would have cured all (most?) of this though? A simple blog post or email communication that went along the lines of "So, we're finally ready to deliver Model S and we're going to work hard to make sure everyone gets theirs in order. There may, however, be some out of place deliveries as we take into account the batching of options and geographic locales for deliveries. ...blah blah, fluff, blah blah".

I just don't get why they continue to shoot themselves in the foot like this. Maybe they thought no one would notice *shrug*

What *you* think is important, isn't necessarily what *I* or *someone else* thinks is important.

For instance, *I* don't actually need a blog to clarify any of 'this' for me. *I'm* well aware of the logistics. *I* can come up with an infinite number of reasons why things might not be going a certain way. And *I'm* really okay with not having my hand held or being given regular updates on issues that *I* find can be explained away with common sense.

*I* don't see this as Tesla shooting themselves in the foot. Not even a little bit, and *I'm* also making an educated guess that Mr. Blankenship has his plate pretty full on a daily basis and that, if and when, he finds a moment of time (like he has in the past), he'll address those who think the forest is on fire simply because someone struck a match.

Secondarily, it's right there in plain writing and no where does it say that reservation numbers are delivery order numbers.

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I don't know why it bothers you

If you don't know why it would bother me, then I couldn't possibly explain it.

Best wishes!

 

[brianman]

I didn't see anyone else mention it, so I will.

Let's say for example that someone 400 reservations after mine had my exact configuration but a different interior, and gets his/her vehicle earlier due to batching.

Shouldn't I be given the opportunity to pick the "earlier" interior?

Better yet, why can't I choose "silver or gray, whichever gets me my vehicle faster" when choosing 21" wheels? In addition to offering the best batching opportunity for my vehicle, it would have removed one almost meaningless (to me) decision from the equation.

 

[jhs_7645]

It doesn't seem possible to me that Tesla could know up front what might be the best way to batch production. Supply issues are usually one of the biggest reasons. So how would they know that when they begin ramping, that supply of the red pin stripe leather on the black performance cars is constrained, or that a large batch of dark performance wheels are exhibiting defects which means they need to re-order them. The bottom line (at least to me) is that Tesla is doing what it can to deliver the cars the fastest it can. Can they do a better job of communicating to everybody whenever an issue arises? Sure, but that doesn't change reality.

 

[Beavis]

I didn't see anyone else mention it, so I will.

Let's say for example that someone 400 reservations after mine had my exact configuration but a different interior, and gets his/her vehicle earlier due to batching.

Shouldn't I be given the opportunity to pick the "earlier" interior?

Better yet, why can't I choose "silver or gray, whichever gets me my vehicle faster" when choosing 21" wheels? In addition to offering the best batching opportunity for my vehicle, it would have removed one almost meaningless (to me) decision from the equation.

I was thinking that too but then thought of all the mayhem it would cause. It's a little bit of a moving target. If they say the white cars come first, then everyone switches to white, resulting in white being out of stock, so they produce red first instead and everyone switches to red from white. Better to just keep the batching sequence a mystery.

 

[KBF]

While I agree with this in principle (there are several options I would change if it meant a difference of 2 weeks even), could you imagine the practical migraines that would occur on the line? I guarantee that apart from what Tesla mentioned (regular suspension, Sunset Red, off the top of my head), they simply didn't know what the hangups were until the line was running (because they have ramp up goals, but it isn't precise, not knowing what snags may arise). Imagine people quickly changing interiors last minute, which would in turn change batch numbers, and people expecting to get something earlier because of a change might still end up on the wrong side of a batch. If a supplier had last-minute issue and it delayed carbon fiber for a month, there would be a mass of changes that would guarantee mixups and miscommunications. It would end up worse than before. I kind of doubt the wheels are making a difference in timing (unless, again, their supplier gets behind, which is not under their control). The big ones will be paint, interior, leather type, performance/non, pano roof). The only way I see it working is if all Sigs were identical (Red, white interior, obeche wood/cf depending on Regular/Performance, pano roof). We as a community made it clear we wanted options and Tesla gave those options (mostly) to us.

I didn't see anyone else mention it, so I will.

Let's say for example that someone 400 reservations after mine had my exact configuration but a different interior, and gets his/her vehicle earlier due to batching.

Shouldn't I be given the opportunity to pick the "earlier" interior?

Better yet, why can't I choose "silver or gray, whichever gets me my vehicle faster" when choosing 21" wheels? In addition to offering the best batching opportunity for my vehicle, it would have removed one almost meaningless (to me) decision from the equation.

 

[NigelM]

Let's say for example that someone 400 reservations after mine had my exact configuration but a different interior, and gets his/her vehicle earlier due to batching.

Shouldn't I be given the opportunity to pick the "earlier" interior?

Good question, but it always depends on the exact numbers. Maybe so many people would change that the batches would be reconfigured and extra supplies of the available interior would run short, starting a complicated spiral of changes. As production turns to 100s of cars/week it would be increasingly hard to keep track of changes without causing further delays. Didn't someone work out the number of possible combinations of all the options? IIRC it runs into the hundreds already.

 

[strider]

Hmm. All this talk of batching has me questioning my standard stereo choice. We only listen to the news and children's music on our stereo so didn't see the value of the $950 but if they're going to batch us based on the stereo that would suck. I'd pay $950 to have my car by Thanksgiving.

 

[ckessel]

Not that it'll make anyone feel better, but it's basically a flavor of the early adopter penalty. When the factory is running at speed, all batch combinations will be produced fairly quickly. At this early stage with low volume, batching plays havoc with order sequence. Tesla could be more transparent in how they're batching, but it wouldn't change things, and trying to adjust orders on the fly to get into an earlier batch would probably make things worse.

 

[JRP3]

It does seem that Tesla is screwing things up by not providing some simple communication to people that handed them a substantial amount of money on little more than a promise. There are just too many complaints about lack of communication. Even if they just made a general statement saying "We are scrambling a bit right now, things will be out of order because of X, Y, and Z, but it's the best we can do at the moment" that might help placate a lot of people.

 

[Arnold Panz]

I didn't see anyone else mention it, so I will.

Let's say for example that someone 400 reservations after mine had my exact configuration but a different interior, and gets his/her vehicle earlier due to batching.

Shouldn't I be given the opportunity to pick the "earlier" interior?

Better yet, why can't I choose "silver or gray, whichever gets me my vehicle faster" when choosing 21" wheels? In addition to offering the best batching opportunity for my vehicle, it would have removed one almost meaningless (to me) decision from the equation.

Brianman, I actually made this exact point to the Tesla folks that I spoke to over the last few weeks. I basically told them, "Tell me what magic configuration would get me my car faster and I'll switch to that configuration!" I mean, I'm not that married to my exterior or interior color choice that I wouldn't have preferred the car a few weeks earlier. Especially when the only reason I'm paying the Sig premium (>$7500) was to get earlier delivery. As it is, it's probably no more than a month's difference, and maybe less.

I mean, as a Sig owner I had almost no choices when it came to options (basically fully loaded other than pano roof and rear seats), and color choices were extremely limited. The whole point of which, I thought, was to avoid serious batching issues where someone with a reservation well after mine got their car first.

No need to beat a dead horse, but a blog post explaining this before people started getting notifications with no particular relationship to their reservations number would have helped placate many of these concerns.

 

[AnOutsider]

What *you* think is important, isn't necessarily what *I* or *someone else* thinks is important.

+1. I don't think this was an unreasonable assumption, and a blog post explaining how the production would work really would have stopped a lot of the speculation and unnecessarily negative feelings towards Tesla because people didn't understand why their cars were being produced/delivered out of order from when they were ordered.

It does seem that Tesla is screwing things up by not providing some simple communication to people that handed them a substantial amount of money on little more than a promise. There are just too many complaints about lack of communication. Even if they just made a general statement saying "We are scrambling a bit right now, things will be out of order because of X, Y, and Z, but it's the best we can do at the moment" that might help placate a lot of people.

Well then. *I'm* so glad that *I'm* not alone in what *I* felt was a reasonable suggestion to help end confusion.

 

[Jkam]

I contacted another early Sig reservation holder (SSL) that I know and he doesn't know when his car will be delivered. He doesn't follow this board or the Tesla forum. I told him about how Tesla isn't necessarily delivering the cars in reservation order and there are some wide swings (I see Sig #915 has a delivery window).

When he found out that cars in the 800-900 range were getting contacted, he was pretty upset. He didn't believe that Tesla would deliver in an order different than the reservation order. He was disturbed by the lack of respect by Tesla to such a loyal customer. The conversation went further, but you can get the gist of it. Tesla is really pissing people off by not communicating to the customers who put down $40k to an iffy company at the time. This guy is as pro-Tesla as can be, and now he is disillusioned.

 

[bonnie]

And did you point out to him that the queue number, by Tesla's earlier communications, meant that was the order that people would be contacted to configure their car (and not the VIN order)? Hopefully.

An easy mistake to make, but my reservation papers were clear when I actually went back and read them.

 

[JRP3]

However I think one could make a reasonable assumption, as many did, that confirmation order would equate to vehicle order.

 

[bonnie]

However I think one could make a reasonable assumption, as many did, that confirmation order would equate to vehicle order.

I agree. An easy assumption to make, especially if you are unfamiliar with the challenges of manufacturing so many different configurations/geo delivery. That's why I went back and looked at my paperwork.