They could still ship them on trains or trucks to major hubs, then send the car on its way from there. It would make buying in states like Michigan much less of an issue.
This is what I was thinking for the rest of the country. When I contemplated shipping Model 3's to China this way over the frozen oceans in the North Pole, I realized the miles on the car and battery at delivery would be past when most cars would be sold as worthless or at least majorly diminished. I then realized a hybrid approach would work out well. For me, basically on top of the Fremont factory, delivery to me would be less than 1 daily commute for me, but then again, I plan to put 50K miles/year on it.
A hybrid approach to a far flung destination:
- Car drives itself out of factory, to initial charging, to initial curing (they have a lot of chemicals that might not cure right away, although if I were them, I'd try to spec fast-curing chemicals), to initial loading onto any type of rail transport. Then, it might get off-loaded at a boat. If it's a local rail yard or boat yard to load at, the car could just drive there. Let's say any leg of travel for long distance transport that's under 50 miles is acceptable, with less than 150 miles for final dock, and less than 500 miles to customer, 250 miles for urban customers, would be considered acceptable.
- Car drives itself onto boat, if boat involved. No loaders needed.
- Car drives itself off of boat, onto any type of train or truck, as needed.
- Car drives itself off of train (or truck), as needed.
- Car drives itself onto truck (as needed).
- Car drives itself off of truck (as needed).
- Car drives itself to customer.
Insert a final inspection in there around step 6.5 or 4.5 or so, and it's done. If I were Tesla, I'd have a final inspection point at step 1, 3, 4.5, and 6, each re-inspecting the vehicle (perhaps with computer assisted inspection), each with its respective probability-built fixing facilities. The facilities would be better equipped with higher economies of scale nearer to the bigger hubs (boats, trains) than the smaller hubs (trains, trucks), and thus, would catch early big-money errors sooner with more ability to inexpensively handle it, and as it gets more expensively further away from the factory, the ability to fix can go down, if it gets checked along the way. Final inspection would be a skeleton crew only needed to really finalize that it is in good condition, and in the very unlikely event that the last leg introduced problems, fix it and report it (so that those problems don't keep happening), then send it on its way. Customer would receive it with less than half a thousand miles on it: a very good way to make deliveries a lot cheaper. Maybe a discount from Tesla for the price of the car per mile driven to the final docking point would be fair, to incentivize Tesla to keep those miles low; this would be estimated at ordering time for the ship-to address, explicitly. Anything from final docking point to customer would be considered customer's cost, and should be calculated into the estimated miles at delivery during ordering time, explained by the web site.
This would keep miles low on the self-delivery, keep delivery costs low, and keep efficiency high.
I feel like this process will take hours to weeks, depending on destination and origination.
Eventually, Tesla will build more overseas factories, such as Asia, Europe, and if things go well, other places too, like Australia, Africa, and South America, as well as The East Coast of North America.
