No no and thrice no.
I like the drift of your recent comments but it is infused with FUD from the bear camp (the domain of investing mistakes to position an insightful investment strategy against).
Put yourself in Elon's shoes. There he is with this awesome product surrounded by a bunch of automotive journos and he apparently makes a wry comment that this is probably the hardest car in the world to build and it is so much better than it needed to be if the sole objective was just to sell it to people.
Do you think this guy meant:
A. This is more than just a car, this is a demonstration of Tesla's design and engineering authority. Nobody in their right mind makes something this good. Its beyond the capability of any other vehicle maker even to make this thing - with this we have pushed the boundaries of vehicle manufacturing to a whole new level, you cannot believe the hard work that went into this, nobody works this hard to make their customers happy and if it was just our intention to take people's money like every other grubby auto maker we could have saved ourselves a bunch of heartache and cut a whole lot of corners and still sold loads - and right here and now I want to come across as humble about the pride that is bursting out of my chest.
B. We screwed up and should not have made this over-engineered POS because now we are going to struggle to build it. Really?
Think. Especially considering the filter this information came through - via a bunch of auto journalists whose bread and butter is to write stuff that VW, Mercedes, Toyota, GM, Volvo, Jeep and Ford would like to pay for advertising alongside of which Tesla is the biggest click-bait and it does not pay for advertising. If you were a cynical hack what would you write to land fat Volvo XC90 and Porsche Cayenne ads either side of your Tesla article and a Mercedes GL on the back cover? That it's game over boys, Tesla is coming for your lunch? I don't think so.
Neither A nor B.
I follow the Model X sub-forum obsessively. Customer response to Model X has been extremely positive, so it is clear that Model X is an
exceptional vehicle and
not a pos. However, this does not mean that the car was optimally designed for ease of mass production. Everything from Elon's comments during the shareholder conference calls to his statements to the media to the rumors from suppliers implies that Tesla went "everything and the kitchen sink" on the Model X engineering, which has consequences for production. Even on launch night, one forum member here (I can't remember exactly who), stated that he spoke to Franz von Holhausen and that Franz looked utterly exhausted.
If there's one thing I've learned from engineering training (classwork, industry, etc.), it's that design and engineering has to take into account manufacturing. A microprocessor might be theoretically awesome, but how well does that design translate when the silicon comes out of the fab? The Pentium 4 "Netburst" architecture was created to run at clock speeds as high as 10 GHz. At the 180nm and 130nm nodes, Netburst was competitive but not decisively so. At 90nm the architecture basically ran into a thermal wall. If I remember correctly, the transistors used to implement the Prescott generation Pentium 4 were relatively leaky, resulting in even the top-bin silicon being unable to reliably run past the 4 GHz range. This is perhaps an extreme example of what can go wrong, but it drives home the point that designing a product to be easily mass manufactured to spec is an important part of the job.
None of my perspective is influenced by the "bear camp", as I generally do not read much if any financial media and take everything from the mainstream car media with a large grain of salt.
This is purely my taken from an engineering perspective.
What do I think Elon meant? My interpretation is this:
"Model X is awesome. If we (the Tesla team) had made different design choices, Model X would still be awesome but it would be a hell of a lot easier to build in quantity. Maybe we should have made different choices, but it is what it is."
Elon's statements about Model 3 being "less adventurous" are consistent with this, and it's why I have faith in Tesla. They learn from their mistakes.
- - - Updated - - -
Is it not possible that one of the things Elon was referring to as being "excruciating" was engineering the car in a way that it would be easy to build and would be reliable and not have huge warranty costs? If you look at it this way, the excruciating part is over, now it's time to print money. Elon is a smart guy, I tend to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Not in the context of what was stated in the conference calls and other statements, although I can't completely rule it out.
Even smart people can make unwise decisions.
However, given that Model X is an awesome product, I do expect that it is time to "print money". In my earlier posts I indicated my belief that a surge in gross profit thanks to Model X could come as early as the Q1 '16 report (due in May), bring free cash flow to the company, and push TSLA upwards onto a higher level. I have a good feeling about prospects for this year.
Got more stock at $217, but am now wanting to pick up more since it's so low. But have no clue if it will hover around where it is right now on Monday, shoot up, or keep dropping... Think my aim is to look at right at opening, and then either try to pick up around $210 if nothing's happening, or if it's dropping, wait for it to hit a sort of floor. Of course, this stock is crazy in the short term, so not sure how much anyone here can help us, but eager to read more opinions.
