10,000 Model 3s have now been made - Bloomberg
Although you don't need me to tell you that, anyone can check for themselves
www bloomberg com/graphics/2018-tesla-tracker/
I think 10,000 is a significant milestone. 100,000 will be an even better one
According to Bloomberg, the weekly production rate has increased for the first time in 3 weeks, now estimated at 723 per week, but still below the peak of about 940.
Tesla plan hit 2500 per week, the week after next. We'd all like to see that happen.
www bloomberg com/graphics/2018-tesla-tracker/
I think 10,000 is a significant milestone. 100,000 will be an even better one
According to Bloomberg, the weekly production rate has increased for the first time in 3 weeks, now estimated at 723 per week, but still below the peak of about 940.
Tesla plan hit 2500 per week, the week after next. We'd all like to see that happen.
0
Comments
Even at 2500 per week it will take a long time to get to me.
You might be happy only having the quarterly updates from Tesla, but Model 3 is the car that is upending the auto industry and is attracting rare levels of interest on a global scale. It is a car that truly fascinates and excites people. That means there is a lot of interest in trying to work out what's happening between the Tesla quarterly updates. And I don't blame people for their curiosity one bit.
I for one thank Bloomberg for having a crack by applying some decent logic with the relatively few independently verifiable quantitative sources of data we have. They've done a lot better than people who just make stuff up using no logic and no independently verifiable information.
I respect this company, am a shareholder, and I would be concerned had I not configured recently. I can't imagine what 400,000th in line must feel like.
Hackett
H.A.L.
Halladay
Hamlin-Holmes
Hammer-Sommer
Handley-Knight
Hanger
Hanover
Hanson
Harrie
Harroun
Hartman
Harvard
Haynes
H.C.S.
Heine-Velox
Henney
Henry J
Hertz
Highlander
Hoffman
Hollier
Holmes
Holtom
Hoskins
Howard
Hudson
Huffman
Hummer
Hupp-Yeats
There's a lot more where those came from, including Tucker and DeLorean, which were both unfairly targeted by the U.S. government over trumped up charges for imaginary wrongdoing...
https://en.m.wikipedia
.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_automobile_manufacturers_of_the_United_States
Micromanagement and short term reporting leads to short term thinking and inability to take risks because failure is punished much harsher than success is rewarded. Less frequent reporting enables mitigated risks to be taken because it allows time to allow the mitigations to take place following the inevitable failures that will occur.
Can you imagine what the haters would have said if Tesla had reported that they shut down the line for a week in January when it was happening? ". . . Tesla shutting down . . . ", ". . . the end has come for Tesla . . . ", ". . . another deLorien . . . ", . . .
So stealthy approach is necessary.
I’d say that most Tesla investors seem to be very much in for the long haul because that is the expectation Tesla’s leadership has set.
Volatility in the share price is certainly affected by the news cycle, but that is noise caused by the short term minority holders. Occasionally a large investor will make a significant sale to lock in some profits, like Fidelity did recently, but the bulk of the shares never trade and in many cases the large investor will continue to acquire shares at a steady rate to use dollar cost averaging to smoothe the volatility.
But that doesn't change the fact that I'm interested in what's happening between quarters (like a zillion other people) and that curiosity is perfectly valid. The ongoing fascination here with VINs is evidence that it's not just me. So it's not surprising someone like Bloomberg want to scratch that itch. I think they've done a decent job of it, more robust than lots of other commentary.
The scientist in me is also interested to see how close Bloomberg's analysis ends up being to Tesla's actuals. If they are within 10% for a few quarters that will be tremendous vindication for their method. If they miss by a wide margin, it will be interesting to see if they attempt to modify their method and work out why they got it so wrong.
So if you are happy with quarterly Tesla updates then great, sit back and don't read Bloomberg. But let other people be curious, even if you aren't.
The counter-argument to this is that transparency is the best disinfectant, and that listed companies have an obligation to disclose market-material developments as they occur (and not just on a quarterly clock) so that all stockholders have the same information at the same time.
The risk is that if companies don't share such information with all stockholders simultaneously, you'll have a growing pool of people "in the know", since very little can ever be kept completely secret for any substantive period of time. More and more people within a company might know something price-sensitive, then some of that would leak, etc.
So you'd have a growing pool of "informed" investors who might legally trade on that information since they are not employees of the company or otherwise privileged information holders, and another pool of "not-informed" investors who have no idea. That's not good for stock market transparency or fairness. Everyone should be able to trade on the same information at the same time.
Listed companies in Australia have an ongoing continuous disclosure obligation to report market-material developments as they becomes known in order to avoid that problem. It is part of the listing rules. US-based companies which move to or list in Australia get a bit freaked out by this, because no such obligation exists under US listing rules, and they aren't used to it.
They could, but figures for what? Most companies publish monthly sales figures. Dealers play games to support this. In order to keep the numbers up, that means even selling some cars at a loss at the end of the month to make room for new ones. Tesla on the other hand doesn't publish monthly sales figures so if they send out a large batch of cars in the middle of the first month of a quarter and they arrive in another country, they may not count as sales for that month but will for the quarter. That gives Tesla more room to plan strategy instead of playing games, although it still leaves them with an incentive to produce cars for Fremont pickup at the end of a quarter.
If companies published production figures instead of sales, people would cry foul since it wouldn't indicate what was actually sold. In Tesla's case, production numbers per month could actually be meaningful. But it's not standard information to report. The problem there is that if Tesla plans to finish installing something near the end of a month that will double throughput, then telling what production was as of the day before will give the wrong impression.
Tesla's ramp up plan includes milestones, and as each is accomplished, there will be a change in throughput, but it's not necessarily the case that as they are working on any part, production will improve until they complete it. So if there are two bottlenecks, the worst one lets through only 80% of the cars that can make it through the second one, and the process for the first one is changed to let cars through five times as fast, that might show a 20% increase, while doing the same down the line to the second one would produce a 500% increase. As long as there's any bottleneck, the total number of cars won't exceed the number that can make it through that step, so it might be that many other parts are improved with no visible increase in output, but getting that final one done could be dramatic.
As long as people look at data and try to extrapolate, or see linear growth when it's really exponential or logarithmic, then the numbers are meaningless. Tesla isn't trying to hide anything. They are trying not to mislead people. While releasing monthly production figures would remove speculation as to those specific monthly figures, it would create even more speculation with respect to Tesla's progress.
johnse Also agree with you that Tesla investors are the type who are looking for the long term. There are a lot naysayers and FUDsters out there making noises but what they think is irrelevant. Tesla knows what is good for the company.
Nice 130 mile drive right off the bat.
:-)