As a soon to be Tesla MS owner, I'm hoping this author is OFF BASE...
Why Tesla Model 3 Will Be Elon Musk's Undoing | Fox Business
Why Tesla Model 3 Will Be Elon Musk's Undoing | Fox Business
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Tesla 3 - The Undoing of Elon? [external link]
- Thread starter habanero69
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Xenius
Active Member
We will see. Very few successfully make the transition, but some do. The good news is that Tesla is first mover in the space, and seems to be far ahead in the guts of the electric car, so far. Since they are going to own half of the batteries produced on Earth soon, I'm not certain how their competitors are going to build enough cars to complete in the mass market. Can you build an electric car, if you don't have batteries?
jeffro01
Active Member
Doesn't matter what Tesla does, those who want to see it fail for one reason or another will still want to see it fail... This is not going to change until Tesla has delivered millions of vehicles and even then it still won't stop for everyone...
Jeff
Jeff
HookBill
Member
Opinions are like belly buttons, everyone has one. This is his and only time will tell. If he is right, he is free to gloat until the cows come home and I will pat him on the back for having such a clear crystal ball. However, if he is wrong, I would invite him to publicly come out, in print, and state how SO-O-O wrong he was and how all that evaluation experience he has did him no good in this case. Like all the naysayers, he'll never do it and simply move on to his next 'target of the week'.
Unfortunately, a lot of what he says makes sense. Even though I just bought a S60, I am worried that frenitic expansion will kill the company. How many start ups have done well in the initial phase and collapsed at a too rapid expansion? Many S and X don't do as well as a Honda Civic in a quality inspection. Plain and simple, the 3 has to equal a Civic in initial quality to sell in the numbers proposed. Average people will not buy a $40,000 car that doesn't equal the quality of a $25,000 car. To me it is simple, Tesla solves this problem or fails. I have a 3 reserved, so you know where my hope lies.
I hear you on initial quality, but that is hardly the whole show. In just a few years, the Honda will be a heap. This isn't the 1980's when Japanese cars had much higher quality parts, so they lasted forever. Honda has their 6 sigma black belts, working on a process that hasn't changed much in 50 or 100 years. Even Honda's quality drops the first year of a new redesign. There are more Honda Civics sold in 1 month then Tesla has sold cars, right? Tesla is inventing the process, and then working to improve it. The good news is that constant improvement, and management of robot factory lines, are well understood problems. Tesla is hiring people from the big auto companies and stealing their ideas. They might not be number 1 on initial quality anytime soon, but you can already see the Tesla quality improve.
And as I wrote above, there aren't enough batteries on Earth, outside of Tesla's supply, to allow a competitor to challenge Tesla in the mass market right now. Even this quality is likely good enough.
He got a lot of the facts wrong. Like:
"When the Model S sedan was announced in 2008 Opens a New Window. , it was supposed to “hit the roads at the end of 2010” and “sell for around $60,000,” according to the company. The Model S actually started shipping in mid-2012 and sells for an average price of $106,000." - The Model S did cost under 60k at launch, and today you can buy it for 66k, with a lot of improvements over the 2012-version. He is however correct it was late, but this was Tesla's first car designed from the ground up. I would cut them some slack.
"The Model X was also about 18 months late and, instead of costing less as planned, actually costs more than its predecessor." - There was never a plan that The Model X would cost less than the Model S. It was always intended to cost a bit more. Elon said in Germany once "low single digit percent more expensive". The X60D is 1.3% more expensive than the S60D, and the X90D is 6.7% more expensive than the S90D, so he pretty much nailed it. But it is again true that the Model X was late - the Model S rampup took priority over adding a new model to the lineup.
"Even at those prices, Tesla has never made an operating profit or been cash-flow positive." - Tesla made a profit in Q1 2013, just to show they could. Since then they've plowed every dollar they've made into growing the company.
Maybe he should try to get the facts straight before trying to seem like an expert.
"When the Model S sedan was announced in 2008 Opens a New Window. , it was supposed to “hit the roads at the end of 2010” and “sell for around $60,000,” according to the company. The Model S actually started shipping in mid-2012 and sells for an average price of $106,000." - The Model S did cost under 60k at launch, and today you can buy it for 66k, with a lot of improvements over the 2012-version. He is however correct it was late, but this was Tesla's first car designed from the ground up. I would cut them some slack.
"The Model X was also about 18 months late and, instead of costing less as planned, actually costs more than its predecessor." - There was never a plan that The Model X would cost less than the Model S. It was always intended to cost a bit more. Elon said in Germany once "low single digit percent more expensive". The X60D is 1.3% more expensive than the S60D, and the X90D is 6.7% more expensive than the S90D, so he pretty much nailed it. But it is again true that the Model X was late - the Model S rampup took priority over adding a new model to the lineup.
"Even at those prices, Tesla has never made an operating profit or been cash-flow positive." - Tesla made a profit in Q1 2013, just to show they could. Since then they've plowed every dollar they've made into growing the company.
Maybe he should try to get the facts straight before trying to seem like an expert.
I'd love to buy a full-electric car with the range, price and performance of the Model-3 and with an attractive look and high-tech features like Tesla offers from ANY manufacturer on this side of 2019. However, I will not hold my breath for such competitor car to actually hit the streets from any of the big car makers. Sure, they'll talk about it, may even show some concepts at auto shows but the actual production vehicles so far have been limited to compliance cars (see my avatar for an example) and I see no sign of this trend to change...
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Totally one person's opinion. Could he be right? Perhaps. Could he be wrong? More likely in my opinion.
I will admit that the ambitiousness of model 3 ramp makes me a little nervous, but when you look at the big picture and long term, its clearly the right move.
While Elon is always clearly overly optimistic on the timing of his vehicle's production ramp up, it is also totally ridiculous in my opinion to conjecture that someone else could come in and execute better than him. It's ludicrous. He will execute better than any manager because he has way more skin in the game than any manager would.
Also, I love how the article ends talking about the lack of leadership, and fails to mention Jason's experience with Google. Would be hard for Tesla to find someone with more leadership and experience in finance than him that would be willing to join such a relatively new and small company.
I will admit that the ambitiousness of model 3 ramp makes me a little nervous, but when you look at the big picture and long term, its clearly the right move.
While Elon is always clearly overly optimistic on the timing of his vehicle's production ramp up, it is also totally ridiculous in my opinion to conjecture that someone else could come in and execute better than him. It's ludicrous. He will execute better than any manager because he has way more skin in the game than any manager would.
Also, I love how the article ends talking about the lack of leadership, and fails to mention Jason's experience with Google. Would be hard for Tesla to find someone with more leadership and experience in finance than him that would be willing to join such a relatively new and small company.
Skotty
2014 S P85 | 2023 F-150L
Nay they say. Nay yesterday and nay today. While those they nay lead the way. Hey, that's okay. We do not sway. We love and support them anyway.
True about the battery situation. If anyone saw/heard Elon at the Giga launch last Friday, when Giga 1 is up to full capacity, it will produce more Li-ion batteries than all of the worlds other factories combined. Imagine if they double when Giga 2 is someday built? Heck, why can't they make batteries for other makes/models of cars and sell as a commodity? The bottom of every EV car should just be a open sledbay for loading a flat battery pack. Nothing real special about that I don't think.
It took 5 years to build 2500 Roadsters, what's the chance that they'll ever be able to build 10,000 Model S per year?
Everyone harps on the exit of executives as a sign of a company going down. IMHO, one has to consider where the company is in it's growth cycle.
An executive that maybe excellent in the early history of a manufacturing company may not be a perfect fit for the company as it grows and transitions to a more mature company. I am comfortable with the transition of executives as it fits with Tesla's goals to become a large scale producer. Point of fact, is the increased production to 2k vehicles/week under new VP for production (formerly of Audi--sorry I can never remember his name) which will ultimately be 2.4k/week.
That's why it's the same old FUD. Yes ambitious goals and expansion is always risky, but the article doesn't balance it's arguements with important positives, such as additional Panasonic investment and strong partnership developments described by Panasonic with Tesla.
An executive that maybe excellent in the early history of a manufacturing company may not be a perfect fit for the company as it grows and transitions to a more mature company. I am comfortable with the transition of executives as it fits with Tesla's goals to become a large scale producer. Point of fact, is the increased production to 2k vehicles/week under new VP for production (formerly of Audi--sorry I can never remember his name) which will ultimately be 2.4k/week.
That's why it's the same old FUD. Yes ambitious goals and expansion is always risky, but the article doesn't balance it's arguements with important positives, such as additional Panasonic investment and strong partnership developments described by Panasonic with Tesla.
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