Hey Everyone, just for the record- here's the Model Y relevant parts of the recent Shareholder's Meeting.
Elon talking generally on Future Products:
And then Model Y, I am really excited about Model Y. It’s – there has been some criticism, like we should sort of derive from the Model 3 platform. But I think actually we made a mistake in trying to derive the Model X from the Model S platform. It would have been better to just design an SUV the way an SUV should be designed. Design a sedan, the way a sedan should be designed. Otherwise, you would just try to shoe horn something that doesn’t make sense. Also there are a number of I think really major manufacturing improvements that can be done that allow us to build the car in a way that a car has never been built before. The capital expenditures I think will be substantially less. I am confident that we could drop the CapEx by a factor of two between Model 3 and Model Y, which I think is a really big deal and accelerates its readiness despite the new technologies. So we are aiming for that to hit the roads in 2019 approximately. And probably the demand for Model Y will exceed the demand for Model 3.
Elon on Manufacturing efficiencies, and trying to mitigate against slowdowns caused by suppliers for any number of reasons:
So one of the things I want to do with Model Y is also just simplify the supply chain so that we are not inheriting force majeure risk from earth. Because earth is big and is something – if something bad happens on earth at any given point in time. So I stopped inheriting force majeure risk from all of earth. You can help – you can solve this by buffering parts. But if parts aren’t made to begin with, you can’t buffer them, so yes.
Elon on where the Model Y will be manufactured:
Are you expecting a new plant to be built for the Model Y, yes, we are. I think the existing Gigafactory will probably supply the bat – will in fact, will supply the battery pack and drivetrains and motor and power electronics for the Model Y. But the Model Y vehicle plant will be a new plant, essentially a new Gigafactory that we are going to figure out the exact location of. But there is just no room at Fremont. We are bursting at the seams. I will say like, if you ask me like what’s their number one complaint, it’s parking. It’s like okay, we like practically had a riot the other day for parking. And I am like, sorry guys. What happens, we had a bunch of contractors come on site to install equipment for the Model 3 and we haven’t counted on the fact that there will be 500 extra people that showed up to install massive amounts of equipment, okay. Well, probably the parking lot was full. So therefore, it’s like a conservation of mass, conservation of volume as there is 500 people who can’t park. Anyway, it’s crazy how much parking lot is bringing about. So we are bursting at the seams at Fremont. So there is no way we could do Model Y at Fremont, it’s going to have to be somewhere else. And I think Fremont is just going to be focused on obviously S and X and then ramping up Model 3. I think we even have to transfer some of the things we do at Fremont to the Gigafactory just to allow for Model 3 expansion.