| Tesla asked for volunteers to staff the assembly lines last week. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-29/tesla-urg... I personally am bearish on this. If they worked so hard, but only made it to 2000 / week (their goal was 5000/week by December2017. They lowered it to 2500 this past week), then its all just marketing spin to make 2000/week look better, which is still missing their original targets. Volunteer staff while cutting Model S / Model X production (and moving that staff over to the Model 3 lines) is not sustainable. They could do it for one week to pad out the numbers, but they need real growth to remain solvent over the next year. Ignoring the 2000/week spurt last week, the other 7000 Model 3 cars were made over the course of 11 weeks. That's roughly 650ish Model3 cars made per week, on the average (when looking at it across the quarter). This is actually less than the 793/week Model 3 they did at the end of Q4. Bloomberg estimates that Tesla's overall production has grown to 1000/week or maybe a little bit above that, which might be closer to the "sustainable" size (ie: not counting the volunteer staff + spurt last week). I'd be surprised if Tesla makes 30,000 Model 3s next quarter (which is still grossly below their target of 5000/week by Dec2017). Tesla NEEDS 5000/week. 2000/week is still very low and unsustainable for this company. https://money.usnews.com/investing/news/articles/2018-04-03/... > "Tesla continues to target a production rate of approximately 5,000 units per week in about three months, laying the groundwork for Q3 to have the long-sought ideal combination of high volume, good gross margin and strong positive operating cash flow," it said. > "As a result, Tesla does not require an equity or debt raise this year, apart from standard credit lines." |
Exactly. The 2000 number is complete B.S. They just held back nearly finished units and the "completed" them all in the last week so they could release a semi-decent number without technically lying, but they are nowhere close to target.
"Q1 deliveries totaled 29,980 vehicles, of which 11,730 were Model S, 10,070 were Model X, and 8,180 were Model 3"
"In Q4, Tesla delivered 29,870 vehicles, of which 15,200 were Model S, 13,120 were Model X, and 1,550 were Model 3." - http://ir.tesla.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=1053245
Model S/X: -23% deliveries. That is a BIG problem. Falling demand for S/X and inability to sell at sticker price (where they still lose money) and replacing that with another model that they lose even more money on is not a great "growth" story.