I pulled the part of this that actually interests me so we can have a shot at a debate worth having. How well can a niche product in a shaky, saturated industry do? How deep will the competition cut? These questions give me serious concerns for Tesla, especially at this valuation.

haha

Model 3 revealed:

Once again you are utterly clueless of everything (like Spurious) yet convinced you have an idea what you're talking about. It's ****ing bizarre, dude. Here you go:

Prototype vs Production vs Mass Production

They are different things and involves different processes. Toyota are beyond the prototype stage and are putting it into production. Once production is going smoothly (1 - 1.5 years) and they've tested the outputs the costs of various batch production processes and tweaked to get the lowest cost/highest reliability production processes, they go into the mass production phase where they design the final production lines and replicate them in many factories. Once those factories are online, that's the point at which it goes into commercial cars.

This is like business 101. ****ing morons taking up a whole page of this thread because they don't know basic business terms. Jesus.

I don't get the non-flush mount screen on the model 3. Such a terrible design.

I read they "delivered" 30 model 3s. I assume that is a publicity stunt and those are working prototypes - not even first factory, final factory, or mass production. Or are those actually first factory units?

I have TSLA stock, considering buying a car from them.. but honestly I side closer to ToothSayer @ Musk.

Nevermind - found my answer. Lol @ "delivered"

Tesla delivered the Model 3 small car to its first 30 customers — all employees — at a company party Friday night. CEO Elon Musk said Tesla will build the cars as fast as it can, but acknowledged that supply issues and other complexities will make it tough to reach his goal of making 500,000 cars next year. Fourteen-year-old Tesla has never made more than 100,000 cars in a year.

"We're going to go through at least six months of manufacturing hell," Musk told reporters Friday at Tesla's Fremont factory. "It's going to be quite a challenge to build this car."

Yeah it's just another meaningless PR stunt to stay in the news and keep the stock pumped. These are test prototypes.

What are the odds this is going to slip badly? Is there a short trade here at these absurd highs with the Model 3 pretty likely to fall behind in production?

When you add in TSLA's beta (over 5, meaning a market correction is going to tank it very hard), surely the downside has to be larger than the upside at $335?

Early-access reviews (which means favorable given Musk's PR talent) are quite good.
I imagine they won't have trouble selling it if they keep it sufficiently subsidized and are prepared to lose a fortune per car at $35K. If it runs well and has nice handling, its other flaws can be overlooked. EVs are fun cars. I've enjoyed cheap and ****ty $13K French electric cars more than a $40K BMW.

It is kinda ironic you mention it is business 101. The term of art is "batch production". Consider reading wikipedia or taking intro business classes instead of reading a half decade old sales blog for information on business.

The best part is that you seem to think Toyota is going to engage in batch production with lithium ion batteries and seem to be of the belief that it is a linear movement from stage to stage which is absurd.

How many aircraft are made using batch methods? How many has Tesla made? Or how many cars has Toyota built during their batch production phases?

In case that was unclear since you are quite poor at business langauge:
1) Production doesn't mean batch production. Please learn and use the correct language to avoid embarrassing mistakes.
2) Toyota is not engaging in batch production of batteries ever. That is literally LOL.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_production
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batch_production
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_production
http://www.mpoweruk.com/battery_manufacturing.htm

LOL here we go again, you find one article on the internet and decide to not read it but go by the headline.

The blog post is lol-worthy, I quote:
Let's see what Wikipedia has to say about this:
So, which is it now? Is production now batch production or is the so-called production phase a form of batch production?

Let's see what Wikipedia has to say about the common use cases for batch production:
One would assume that the production stage would be mentioned there, don't you think?

I couldn't find a second link where someone mentioned production in such a weird fashion but here is an alternative from a Japanese company:
http://www.tsukiboshi.co.jp/english/system/

Simply put, there are many steps in battery production that lend to continuous flow. Iterating a batch method has no impact on an optimized assembly line, hence why this isn't utilized. Many of the steps can be optimized via prototyping specific steps, but the idea that they complete full batches of batteries when optimizing say a novel electrode production mention is just fantasy.

Plainly, this is exactly what TS refers to when he describes his lack of formal knowledge. Without a basis in actual business he has never bothered to learn the basics of how many businesses operate or how many words are used specifically in business/finance, hence we get "production" to mean batch production, which is just absurd in this context.

Hopefully he stops puffing his chest about his imaginary trading record, and learns some basic business terminology so he can contribute more fully to the community.

It seems people who have seen it likes it. I will leave my own judgement until I see it. I have been driving, S, X and some other new cars recently. For me a large center display and a Hud seems ideal. No Hud on the Model 3 announced yet, but I think the velocity on the center display could be sufficient for me. Will be interesting to test it!

They had announced this long time ago. Their first production goes to employees to fast fix issues while improving quality of production. The number is in line with their plan to increase to 5000/week in December.

It should be noted that 30 at least is larger than 0 which "most investors" were expecting for 2017:
https://electrek.co/2017/05/15/tesla...anley-model-3/

Spoiler alert. The first X,000 vehicles are earmarked for Tesla and SpaceX employees. That's always been the plan.

That is not "delivery".

This is delivery. They didn't get them for free or anything. They paid full (not 100% sure about this) price and receive the car. So a delivery is only to a non-employee? What happens if the employee sells the car to a non-employee, was is then delivered?

Its a little shady as there is probably some unspoken agreement to not talk massive **** about problems and provide free QA instead of doing it on your own.

But as long as they paid and they get a car, its a delivery.

I don't think it's shady but it's irrelevant. We are talking about a few thousand cars max, so getting all riled up about this is ridiculous. I think it's smart for them to do it. Of course, people won't talk **** about the car but in a few months we'll see the reviews by car magazines, etc.

It's also something they've communicated from the start. So it's not a PR stunt as TS tried to claim - or maybe I haven't read the correct definition of PR stunt yet.

Sure. Its like soft peddling movie reviews with credits. Channel stuffing, etc.

The issue is that this behavior is unheard of in the auto business while being quite common in other industries so it raises the question that people are bringing up. I don't think this is nearly as absurd as the NDA super charging stations, the likely defrauding of ZEV credits (which the government obviously had to be compliant in), etc.

But to totally reject the point that detractors are trying to make is silly IMO. He is engaging in an unusual and non-standard release schedule that will allow them to improve the manufacturing process while not receiving meaningful levels of bad publicity. Musk is excellent at this sort of thing, which many of his detractors fail to give him credit for. He has created the perception of the midas touch, which in many cases is self-fulfilling.

Did they actually claim that all the initial preorders/deliveries were reserved for Musk Corp employees? Do you have anything that supports that? I never spotted anything. (Probably wouldn't want to advertise that pretty blatantly.)

That seems like bad logic.

It was confirmed according to electrek:
https://electrek.co/2016/03/15/tesla...unt-employees/

Estimates says 13k reservations were made Tesla and SpaceX employees:
https://electrek.co/2016/06/09/tesla...-reservations/



I think it was a good idea. Should make workers motivated to improve quality, increase awareness of issues and have fast recalls and repairs.

As I understand it, employees are allowed to sell their Model 3, but not for profit. I assume some will do anyway...

As for the concept of PR stunt, I find it to be another loosely defined concept not great for predicting value. But sure, it was probably good for PR reason also.

I did a little math on this, but supposedly the gigafactory will bring battery production costs down to about $100/kwh. Without changing chemistry, purely by increasing throughput per employee with increased automation and scale.

Thoughts on this potentially being a moat? BYD is talking about $125/kwh batteries by 2020, while Musk thinks he can do $100/kwh in 2018-2019.

The current valuation basically prices in better margins than BMW at 1 million cars a year.

If you think Musk cannot do this, then it seems shorting this is going to be very profitable. Wait until early 2018 and buy some january 2020 puts?

Thats a very polite way to phrase it

It has been publicly announced several times.

CA residents are next on the list after Musk corp employees.

Tesla wants the first X,000 cars or so to be as close to the factory as possible so they can literally be taken to factory for repairs.

+1.

Going to be interesting from here.

Reviews so far are positively glowing. Eager to see how they do at ramping production and what the real economics of the Model 3 look like as it scales.

Whatever happens, love progress towards an EV / self-driving world.

Panasonic reporting estimates for Gigafactory being profitable Q1 2018. Unsure if they have anything special vs tesla or not.