Trip Chowdhry of Global Equities Research recently put out a note on the Tesla Model 3. With the car’s unveiling scheduled for the end of this month. Chowdhry’s timing is perfect. As Benzinga writes, Chowdhry has some knowledge of Tesla’s inner workings that the vast majority of us are not aware of:
“The official unveiling will be March 31, 2016, in Hawthorn, California, and according to recent research Chowdhry gathered after attending numerous Deep Learning Hackathons, the Autonomous Driving Symposium, the Material Science Symposium and the Battery Technology Summit, production and deliveries for the Model 3 are likely to be on schedule.”
Well, on schedule is still a bit of a stretch here as the Model 3 was initially promised awhile back, but the “
delivery by 2017” that’s been promised by Musk and Tesla of late is still apparently doable. Benzinga adds:
“Chowdhry explained two elements of the Model 3 that are unique and support the timeline for vehicle delivery by 2017: The vehicle architecture and composition.”
“Vehicle Architecture: Chowdhry stated that the Model 3 will have “completely different vehicle architecture – both the chassis and the battery chemistry – hence will have different power density and energy density trade off.”
“Vehicle Composition: Unlike the Model X and Model S, the Model 3 body and chassis will be completely built of steel as opposed to aluminum. Chowdhry highlighted the key advantages of steel over aluminum as being the lower production equipment costs, the lower worker training/skill needed to work/operate steel, the lower compensation and cost savings of steel workers versus aluminum workers, and the lower repair costs.”
We’re still not sold on the “built of steel” claim but we shall find out soon enough.
Chowdhry concluded:
“Since Tesla Model 3 will be built using steel instead of aluminum, the production and deliveries for late 2017 will very likely be on schedule: steel is a lot easy [sic].”
