Although the reasons may not be obvious, there must be a tremendous advantage in making most deliveries in the last month of the quarter. Otherwise, they would not keep doing it. In fact, the commitment seems stronger this year than ever before.
Some things:
- always full trucks leaving the plant, cheaper delivery logistics
- can hire temp help for 1-month instead of staffing full time
- can push employees harder for a few weeks in a more efficient manner getting ready for Model 3 larger volumes, eventually
- Plant production runs harder early in the quarter and if for some reason it faulters or runs out of some parts, there is slack so that it can be fixed without affecting sales numbers "much".
- delayed satisfaction allows customers to "fester" a little bit making the final delivery "more exciting" (chatting online and expectation experience sharing is "part of the purchase" - the online "saga" versus the joy of walking a 200-car lot and picking "that one there" -- and paying full price for a "my car" order and watching it through the whole process is worth $thousands in revenue than bantering about price and driving a discounted deal at the sales center)
- making inventory at the front of a quarter while "captured" customers with locked in deposits wait until end of quarter for delivery. One other post on TMC indicated that sales of inventory off the lots accounts for up to 50% of all sale (not made to order as much as early years). Full-price captured customers with locked-in deposits aren't going anywhere - but to get more volume, tire-kickers need physical cars to choose from. (you gotta think like a sales manager).
I work in some projects where the Agile "Sprint" mode of development is not much different than the whole Tesla delivery cycle. Employees have lulls and then ragged 12-hour, or more, days. Does nothing good for personal lives especially the managers who have to oversee things.
