I want to add some of my thoughts on the accounting for GF3. First some background on me: I have held CFO roles at 2 Fortune 50 companies in my career (now retired). Not the top CFO role but CFO of divisions/regions in these organizations. I also ran a manufacturing facility at one of these companies (not the finance role ....the GM). I am pretty well versed in manufacturing Cost Accounting.
Having also worked in Public Accounting for one of the Big Accounting firms for 10 years, I can tell you that even though there are Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) for cost accounting, companies often have slight variations in how they apply and interpret GAAP. So my comments below may not be consistent with what Tesla is doing but it should be very close.
I could write pages and pages but let me hit on some of the areas that I see sometimes misunderstood by some members.
GF3 Costs are all Inventory/COGS: If a facility is dedicated to production, all costs at that facility will go to Inventory/Cost of Goods sold. None of the costs will go to SG&A. That means that general management, finance, HR, security, IT personnel in Shanghai will be part of overhead applied to production costs. Telsa has its China corporate office in Beijing....these costs go to SG&A. Tesla Sales Locations costs go to SG&A. All costs at Shanghai will go to Inventory/COGS. The only situation I have seen where costs do not go to COGS at a facility is the gain or loss on sale of equipment which is recorded in Other Income/Expense on the income statement. But we should not see any of this at Tesla at this moment.
Inventory vs COGS: Cost at the factory are classified as Material, Labor and Overhead (some fixed, some variable) and they all get capitalized to Inventory as the car is being produced. So all these costs sit on the balance sheet as Inventory until the moment the car is sold (ownership transfers to customer) and then at that point the Inventory gets released to Cost of Goods Sold (COGS). This allows for the matching of Revenues with COGS at the moment of sale.
So all of the GF3 costs thus far in 2019 are either on the balance sheet as Equipment or Inventory. There is one exception: The costs to train production workers (including their payroll) go straight to expense (does not get capitalized to inventory). So even it GF3 had no sales in 2019 (no revenue) they might still have slight COGS for training. But most likely no more than $2m.
Stat-Up Facility impact on Margins: When a new facility begins to ramp up, costs are typically higher. Material costs can be higher due to higher waste or rework of errors, Labor may be higher as new workers are not at top efficiency (taking more hours to complete a car as they get up the learning curve) and Overhead costs get spread over less units. For example Fixed Overhead cost in a month of $10m spread over 4,000 cars is $2,500 per car. But if you were to produce 12,000 cars, the $10m in Overhead would only be $833 per car. So the margins will be lower during the factory's start-up phase.
On this last point, my opinion is that although margins at Shanghai will be lower at start-up, they will still be positive. Meaning that if at full capacity the facility delivers $5,000 in gross profit per car, it is possible that at Start-up it is about $3,000 per car. The point I want to make here is that even if Tesla ships vehicles in December, it will not hurt financials. Margins are lower but they still make a profit.
Anyway - sorry for the long post - but I hope it helped.