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Prediction competition for 2014

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I still can't believe how low TM has priced the S in China. I'm currently in the 'denial' phase and think the price will go up once TM realizes costs in delivery are higher than anticipated. But hope it won't since it is so cool!

Didn't Elon mention in some interview that because there are so many containers returning from U.S.A. empty to China freight costs are pretty low ? (that is by the way a very concrete way of looking at the trade deficit).

That may of course change, an while the cost may be lower than usual, it won't be for free of course.
If they start a battery pack factory in China they might avoid some of those freight costs too (Japan-USA-China).
 
Elon likes to lowball with good numbers: like suggesting they will make around 35k in 2014.
He knows exactly that each Qx report in the 2014 that slightly beats the expectations is rewarded over proportionally in the stock price.

My guess is 45k, I expect Elon to announce that "Demand is much higher than expected" which leads to more positive news (Elon is a marketing genius)
And its really much easier than people think, Fremont is running on only two shifts right now. So adding a third shift for a few quarters will give make it possible to achieve that kind of production rate.

The problem there is we end up with another situation like Q3 2013. If everyone always expects them to under promise and over perform then eventually they will come in even (or dare I say under) and it is going to KILL the stock. Nothing wrong with being a little conservative, but he shouldn't be too conservative.

They were also long term expecting demand to be 60k (20k us, 20k Europe, 20k Asia). This year? With them suggesting 1/3 to be China, and we had a solid 20k US, I could see them doing 40k, but will be conservative and happy with 38k.
 
Went to a Tesla talk last night put on through a technology club in Victoria (which is how I found out about it, not through Tesla)

Anyhow they had representatives from Tesla there (too bad no one mentioned AT ALL at the talk there were test drive events today and tomorrow which would have been nice, and also too bad they had not reached out to reservation holders to inform them of the talk or test drive ) and the gentleman, Lance (cannot remember last name but said he has been with Tesla for five years) , said the production rate currently is 600 cars/week and gave guidance of 25 000 for this year when questioned after the official talk. Seems low, but those were his words.
 
Went to a Tesla talk last night put on through a technology club in Victoria (which is how I found out about it, not through Tesla)

Anyhow they had representatives from Tesla there (too bad no one mentioned AT ALL at the talk there were test drive events today and tomorrow which would have been nice, and also too bad they had not reached out to reservation holders to inform them of the talk or test drive ) and the gentleman, Lance (cannot remember last name but said he has been with Tesla for five years) , said the production rate currently is 600 cars/week and gave guidance of 25 000 for this year when questioned after the official talk. Seems low, but those were his words.

Well 25,000 is the safe spot... because they basically did that number last year. Even if they stick to 600 a week you are looking at a MINIMUM of 30k cars this year. This number will not remain the same for long so I would expect it to rise the question is by how much???

700 a week would be over 35k
800 a week would be over 40k

If they hit the 800 a week, this would make them reach their already stated goal of 800, plus the scale to hit 40k which is where they will be happy with for the moment IIRC. So suggesting an average of at least 700 a week.
600 a week for Q1 - 7800
700 a week for Q2 - 9100
800 a week for the rest of the year - 20800.

Total 37700 which would be an average of 725 a week for the year.

Unless something amazing happens, I wouldn't expect much more than this.

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I am willing to make 37700 my number tentatively. I might change my mind after the meeting in Feb.
 
What's the max they can achieve with two shifts? That's the question. They'll only add a third shift if there's a business case for it. Right now there at 8.75 cars per hour with 700 cars per week and two shifts. A 14% increase gets them to 800 per week.

I don't see them hitting 40K unless they can do it in 2 shifts. Save the third shift for a step jump in production from say 800 to 1200 per week. Eventually, if they hit 10 per hour and run four 36 hour shifts per week, they'll hit 1440 cars or 72000 per year.

So the other question is how much are they constrained by suppliers?
 
Went to a Tesla talk last night put on through a technology club in Victoria (which is how I found out about it, not through Tesla)

Anyhow they had representatives from Tesla there (too bad no one mentioned AT ALL at the talk there were test drive events today and tomorrow which would have been nice, and also too bad they had not reached out to reservation holders to inform them of the talk or test drive ) and the gentleman, Lance (cannot remember last name but said he has been with Tesla for five years) , said the production rate currently is 600 cars/week and gave guidance of 25 000 for this year when questioned after the official talk. Seems low, but those were his words.
Makes sense at that production rate the can all take off for a 12 week vacation or if they go as high as the 1200 a week musk mentioned in Germany they can all take a 6 month vacation
 
This run rate talk ignores something, I think.

TM will produce a number of cars which is the least of:
1) The cars that were ordered (demand limited)
2) The amount of cars they have batteries for (Panasonic production limited)
3) The amount of cars (minus batteries) they can make (Fremont limited)

We believe that #1 has never been a problem. (it will be someday maybe, it is always out there lurking. We assume they can increase demand with a bit of advertising if needed). Since they have claimed that they are battery constrained, at least in Q3, we may really not know what there car run rate is. I have to think that maybe the small amount of Q4 upside was batteries coming in and consuming either idle car capacity or actual idle cars built and waiting. For all we know the car building is outpacing Panasonic's output. I suspect it isn't a lot, since they wouldn't have a big reason to get too far in front, and battery-less car inventory would show up on financial docs somewhere. This suggests that if the Panasonic supply is lumpy and coming in faster we may find that the car capacity is already 800/wk when we get a surprise upside some quarter. I guess I am saying I see a scenario where we get a non-linear step up in production if the constraint swaps from batteries to cars.
 
While they might be able to easily ramp up production of more cars, I wouldn't think they were overbuilding them. Because to get them that far along in the building process that all they need is a battery, you have added so much to the car (specifically the paint job and at least the interior) that you at the very least have 1 order for each car waiting for a battery. Which leads me to think that they are making them at the rate that they are getting in the supply of batteries.

Keep in mind that the frame/body gets painted rather early on in the production cycle. The seats are also put in rather early. plus you have the pano roof vs no pano roof. I would think that you would have too much of an overstock of cars with various options waiting which would be impossible to hide from the balance sheets.

More likely panasonic send them a shipment once a month of X number of batteries, They then build as many cars as they get in batteries (with a few spares to go out to other sources, like the service centers and such). They then chalk out that for that month they can make X number of cars, and target a production run for that month that coincides with the total number of cars they could make. Then about 1 week out from the end of the month, Panasonic would likely tell them how many they are expecting to be able to ship to Tesla, so they can start prepping for the next months run when the batteries arrive.

What I am guessing is, when Panasonic sent in those last few shipments of batteries for Nov and Dec, they were able to chunk out more than expected so Tesla ramped up to match.

This is all just fancy guesswork but from a production standpoint makes the most sense. Then you are only ever using up people's time and the other supplies as you need them so you don't end up with any waste (both in time and supplies).

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All that being said, I would assume that they could ramp up to full capacity for each line based on specific limitations that the production line can handle. What I am guessing, as I have heard others guess as well, is that across 2 shifts on the one single production line, they can do 800 cars a week (or 400 per shift). This is likely why they are targeting 800, since that puts them cleanly into the 40k a year run rate, which Elon has said in the past that they could do with little CapEx on a 2 shift run of the one line. Anything beyond that, he said they would need a second line. (This is my memory of what was said back I wanna say Q2 2013.)
 
The numbers don't matter right now. They haven't since early last year. At this point it's all about driving the cost of the battery packs down. The fastest way to accomplish that is using Solar PV which has the option to use the 30% ITC on the solar storage.

Tesla may crank out 40K cars this year, but that will be dwarfed by the stationary storage units. The story at Tesla since 2012 has been that they are supply constrained, not demand constrained. I expect we'll find out that the storage project has been growing in tandem with the Model S and now the former is about to eclipse the latter in production needs.

At the same time SolarCity will announce Q4 GAAP profit with projected continuous profits going forward. This will drive up the value of both companies. SolarCity will acknowledge income from the solar storage pilot projects and savings from acquiring ZEP along with Paramount Solar's backlog of customers and existing customers.

SolarCity fronts the capital to purchase stationary storage packs from Tesla matching SolarCity's growth. TSLA and SCTY both jump more than 50% followed by additional stock offerings which will be used to cover the cost of the Gigga Factory.

This symbiotic relationship drives the cost of the packs down 10 years faster than just building cars would. ITC goes away right around the time Tesla would be pushing the Gen 3 through volume ramp.
 
Alright folks, for those who want, let's cast our final votes for total delivered cars by TM (including Model X) for the full year of 2014. If you have already voted then just edit your first post. Last chance to vote will be right before the markets close on Wednesday. I will then post a summarization of everyones vote in the first post in this thread. Good luck to all.