UK Model 3 order page open!

[Jason71]

And that's fact and not opinion?

You've personally counted the VINs assigned and the RHD vehicles on Grand Dahlia and Grand Mark, and have access to the secret memos in Fremont?

Perhaps you can tell us what’s on the Grand Mark. There sure as hell seem to be no more LHD RWD LRs on that ship, but a lot of LHD SR+; the rest seems RHD but we'd like to know how many (because they're of no use to us ;-) ).

I don't have a dog in this fight but the registration of RHD VINS with the NTSB is pretty much a matter of record around 300 on May10th and 1000 on May31st so dependant on when the ships left port it would be possible to know, with reasonable confidence the maximum number of RHD cars that could be on them.

 

[interbear]

Trouble is, Tesla back-office software isn't great, so it doesn't work reliably to keep you informed, and thus customers call asking for updates ... which clogs up the call centre ... which increases the delays.

Tesla’s online presence is certainly sub standard given their sales/marketing model is very focused on customers ordering this way given the absence of a dealer network. I’m perfectly comfortable with the Tesla go to market model but they should sharpen up the website and communication generally. I’m not bothering to call them yet, I want to sort out my fuse upgrade and home charger before I chase the car. And I’m well down the order list anyway in terms of timing.

One other thought that cropped up this morning was this though - as the Tesla cars themselves are so software-centric, I hope they are far more rigorous and disciplined on quality control for their vehicle software than they are for their website. The website does not instil confidence in that respect

 

[WannabeOwner]

because they're of no use to us ;-)

Its OK, we're leaving EU ... can't tell you when though ... Elon time

the registration of RHD VINS with the NTSB is pretty much a matter of record

I've seen that, and agree it looks water-tight ... will be interesting to see if it turns out to be different for some reason (I mean, zero chance that Tesla have used LHD VINs on RHD cars? )

 

[sixela]

I don't have a dog in this fight but the registration of RHD VINS with the NTSB is pretty much a matter of record

Sources? "model3VIN" methodology is not completely foolproof, if Tesla had some earlier 5YJ3F VINs registered.

You can't get a list of VINs from the NTSB. You have to guess a VIN, and then a tool exists to query whether it exists. IIRC, that tracker actually only started to look for 5YJ3F VINs recently, because no one knew that there would be an "F" flavour until recently.

So unless the dataset has absolutely NO holes in serial numbers on the right in the VIN unless they'd redo a search for 5YJ3F VINs in the current sequence number "holes", no, you don't know how many RHD VINs there are. And from the Blomberg tracker it's quite clear there are huge gaps in sequence numbers.

But yes, there's zero chance that they're using LHD VINs for the UK.

All that being said: I think that 300 RHDs on one ship (Grand Dahlia, probably demo units, but possibly some that will be sold instead?) and 1000 on the next (which would be the Grand Mark) doesn't seem unreasonable (given that they also deliver stuff from that ship outside of the UK, despite the fact that we on the continent aren't deserving of that while there is even one customer in the UK waiting for his Model 3).

What we don't know is what the next ship to Europe will hold; I doubt they're just not going to ship anything to Europe until September. I doubt that anyone at Tesla knows; they're currently producing US RWD LRs in Fremont in an attempt to fill some West Coast orders, and I think they'll plan what to do in july when the dust is settled.

The fact they currently focus production on cars that would be deliverable in Q2 does mean that I expect few ships to Europe at the start of July. But September is still some time away...

 

[WannabeOwner]

One other thought that cropped up this morning was this though - as the Tesla cars themselves are so software-centric, I hope they are far more rigorous and disciplined on quality control for their vehicle software than they are for their website

My TD;DR; would be:

Infotainment QA is lousy. Bugs are, generally, fixed within a few releases (couple of months) of a major release. But old bugs, fixed, reappear in future releases ... generally the direction is forward though ... and looking back on 3 years of ownership I have all sorts of new features that weren't even alluded to at purchase (including a complete restyling which I hated - change of buttons to "flat" style, which my aged eyes struggle with ("Not the car I bought"), and the latest which changed the way "windows" work which I think is clever because it makes it much easier to rearrange screen real estate for new features) .

I mean, "fart mode". What's not to like? I'll make a prediction that won't appear on iPace

For example: Browser became all but unusable with launch of V9. Turned out that (I presume because a bit of the map now pokes out of the top of a "full screen" APP) this was related to Live Traffic, and if you turned that off Browser was OK. They've fixed that now ... but Automated Regression Testing would have picked that up and should be standard in a software organisation as big as Tesla - heck, my company is tiny and even we do that.

But it was quite some time until someone spotted the correlation ... and if you didn't read this forum (and trawl all those threads) you would have no clue as to why.

Safety-critical side QA seems to have been good. There have been fatal accidents on AP but (in all the ones I have read) it seems the Driver had ample time to do something, so was either medically incapacitated or not paying attention. They are YouTubes of people driving the same fatal road stretch, using same version of AP, car drove the same, incorrect, line ... but driver took over, and had ample time to do so.

My plea to newbies: never, ever, be tempted to "just read a text", or similar, on AP. The problem with AP is that it is very reliable. The occurrence of a life threatening event may average well less than "during one ownership", but I don't want to be that statistic ... you neither ...

In terms of Safety-critical "bugs" the only one I can think of is phantom braking (car thinks a gap is too narrow / some hazard on the road etc.) That varies from version to version and sometimes gets worse in the short term. New AP features are often released long before they are safe to use - but that's fine, try them, and then turn them off until improved. The current Navigate-on-Autopilot, automatic lane change, is in that bracket.

The problem is Humans are not expecting any of the weird things that AP / AI does. If you took a 17 year old out for their first drive you would have a pretty good idea of all the daft things they might do, and be prepared for them.

Not so with AI ... my car will think a juggernaut is a thread one time out of hundreds, and to my eye the gap looks at least as big as the previous hundred it drove past.

I drive with foot hovering over accelerator to counter phantom braking - so the guy behind doesn't run into me, because if I'm not seeing anything ahead that is a real threat he sure as heck won't be! But that leads to a further risk that AP has spotted a real danger, the most likely being car two-in-front is making emergency stop and car in front isn't showing brake lights (yet). Hitting the accelerator at that point, to override AP braking, would not be great! Good news is the moment you come off the accelerator AP will be on the brakes, before you get to them ...

Sources?

The one I have seen is a Twitter feed

Model 3 VINs on Twitter

 

[davidmc]

All i would like is to get mine before Sept 1st (Finger crossed!), I personally just don't want a 69 plate

 

[sixela]

Let's look at it another way, though: given the 50/50 US vs. international split and the UK's size with respect to Europe's and the China/Europe mix, I would not expect the UK RHD production to be more than 3-5% of what they produce in a quarter. There are 13 weeks in a quarter, so at 6000 cars per week (let's remember that RHD production is different!) that would be 0.03*6000*13 cars or 2300-3900 cars per quarter, steady state.

RHD production is probably more important, but that's because there's also Japan, Australia and New-Zealand and they too might want some cars.

Given that they started production of RHD cars late in the quarter this time, I think it would be unreasonable to think they would fill all the orders this quarter. I think they've got a shot at fulfilling the current pipeline in the next quarter, though (which does happen to end in September).

 

[WannabeOwner]

I personally just don't want a 69 plate

There's a video doing the rounds about alternative use for AutoPilot ... or so I have been told

 

[WannabeOwner]

I would not expect the UK RHD production to be more than 3-5% of what they produce in a quarter.

I think, short term, EU original reservation back order customers already delivered? so EU is "new orders" - is that reasonable?

If so then:

I think they've got a shot at fulfilling the current pipeline in the next quarter,

UK has a big backlog of reservation holders to satisfy

Against that is the limit that existing UK Service Centres can actually PDI, prep and handover to customers. That's a rate limiting step (or do the PDI in EU somewhere?)

 

[sixela]

No, not all original reservation holders already have a car in Europe (stormtrooper white/white AWD LR with 19" wheels are just about ready now, and some who had day 1 reservations and wanted RWD LR with some funky options are also nailbiting or having to accept a colour they didn't want or accept a black interior).

But even then: I don't expect that they'd put the UK at the top of the queue just because they've been waiting for longer for the RHD cars to materialise.

When they started to ship to Europe they didn't stop producing for the US. So yes, US customers could order a car in 2019 and get the car in three weeks, while us poor day one reservation holders in Europe were still waiting for our cars.

Not that it was a bad thing. I would have hated to see what the delivery and service would have looked like had they decided to produce only for Europe for a couple of months and delivered twice the volume. The delivery and service infrastructure tends to lag at Tesla.

 

[Peteski]

After my request yesterday to change my order spec (basically to drop the £3700 performance upgrade package) today when I logged in to my account the "edit design" button had magically reappeared and I was able to change and save my revised spec (FWIW now estimating a July delivery - was previously June at some point).

So it would appear that they have regressed my order status from "locked config" to "fully open config" and reassigned my original spec VIN to another customer. That is IF it was ever allocated in the first place. I still have my original reservation number. I also have an email from a Tesla sales guy in Amsterdam that my spec change will NOT affect delivery time, which I am taking with a pinch of salt. I suppose that depends on whether or not they had previously allocated a VIN to my order. My spec was previously locked down some time ago and they were chasing me last week for completion of finance and registration details, so probably they had.

Anyway I don't really mind either way. I'm just happy to be able to get the revised spec options I wanted and reduced pricing. Finally all the paperwork in my account now reflects the changes. If this delays my car delivery then so be it.

I still have no idea why they suddenly changed specs and prices before delivery of a single UK car. That action has definitely caused mass chaos and confusion among UK reservation holders with both LR AWD and P+ orders. Obviously some big decisions were taken in the US after the original UK order book was opened up in May.

 

[J1mbo]

I hate to break it to you, but not only is the RHD market smal compared to the LHD onel, but the UK is not even the only country with RHD cars. It's all built in Fremont and I doubt they dedicated 6 weeks of the quarter just to build cars for you guys ;-).

Tesla are currently making over 5,000 Model 3's a week (source). So they could blow through all the UK orders in no time, assuming no component constraints. However, I very much doubt that the UK operation could cope with that many cars arriving at once, so Tesla seem to be doing the right thing by trying to match production to delivery capability.

I still have no idea why they suddenly changed specs and prices before delivery of a single UK car. That action has definitely caused mass chaos and confusion among UK reservation holders with both LR AWD and P+ orders. Obviously some big decisions were taken in the US after the original UK order book was opened up in May.

My guess is that they were caught off-guard by Elon's May 1 UK launch date - probably planned RHD launch for June 1 - and were only able to get certain RHD configurations out quickly, so they had to change the configurator to support what they could actually deliver.

FWIW, I have been given a delivery date of "early July" for my order (LR AWD with white interior), but no VIN assigned yet.

 

[Peteski]

My guess is that they were caught off-guard by Elon's May 1 UK launch date - probably planned RHD launch for June 1 - and were only able to get certain RHD configurations out quickly, so they had to change the configurator to support what they could actually deliver.

My take is that they made a strategic decision to convert all LR AWD models to P- for a little more profit, while not having enough P+ orders on the books. It's the only reason I can think of for the sudden price reduction on the P. Had there been loads of P+ orders it would have made sense to simply pump them out at the original price. So now we have SR+/P-/P+ options vs the original SR+/LR AWD/P+ options. To be honest I'm much happier with the revised spec choices as I always wanted the performance without track focused suspension and wheels.

 

[J1mbo]

My take is that they made a strategic decision to convert all LR AWD models to P- for a little more profit, while not having enough P+ orders on the books. It's the only reason I can think of for the sudden price reduction on the P. Had there been loads of P+ orders it would have made sense to simply pump them out at the original price. So now we have SR+/P-/P+ options vs the original SR+/LR AWD/P+ options. To be honest I'm much happier with the revised spec choices as I always wanted the performance without track focused suspension and wheels.

I would have moved to P- if they offered the 19s (or P+ if they offered the Chinese P wheels). SWMBO hates the aeros.

 

[Jellus]

I ordered a LR AWD and sent them an email last week asking to convert to the P- which is now almost the same price.

I just got an email saying my order has been modified. But on logging in and checking my order, it hasn't been modified at all. Still showing the LR AWD. Sigh...

 

[Peteski]

I ordered a LR AWD and sent them an email last week asking to convert to the P- which is now almost the same price.

I just got an email saying my order has been modified. But on logging in and checking my order, it hasn't been modified at all. Still showing the LR AWD. Sigh...

Check if the "edit design" button has been reinstated, so you can make the change yourself. That's how I had to change my config. in the end. It took them a day to unlock the design spec so I could edit again.

 

[Yev000]

Had a call from Tesla yesterday to "confirm details", he said to expect another call in July and they will try to "fit me into a July delivery". I asked if its early/mid/late or if it could be August and he couldn't tell me.

Since it takes about 3 weeks for a ship to sail from SF to EU I expect they can make cars in early July and have it delivered towards the end of the month.

I bet they want to avoid having lots of ships in transit for Q2 numbers like they had in Q1. And they will probably operate this way going forward. Build to ship early in the quarter and satisfy local markets late in the quarter.

 

[Peteski]

I would have moved to P- if they offered the 19s (or P+ if they offered the Chinese P wheels). SWMBO hates the aeros.

Do you really want to give up the full performance potential for the sake of wheel vanity? You could always fit some 19" wheels later or simply remove the aero caps for a more conventional look. Luckily I don't mind the aero wheels at all.

 

[Jellus]

Check if the "edit design" button has been reinstated, so you can make the change yourself.

Nope, no sign of an Edit button so far.

 

[Avendit]

How many cars fit on a ship? Anyone any idea?