[jdietrich]

>Short term, Tesla could really make VW hurt by ramping up production and dropping price and competing with both their ICE and non ICE offerings.

That's a very big could. Tesla have an advantage in terms of battery availability, but they simply don't have the expertise and the experience to build cars at real scale. Tesla are literally building cars as fast as they can, but they've still got a multi-year backlog of orders. Their defect rate is the worst in the industry by some margin and they have a huge amount of catching up to do.

https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-hit-model-3-target-by-...

VW have been planning this for years, they have decades of experience in auto manufacturing, they have a proven record of quality and efficiency, and they can scale up very quickly. If they can get a reliable supply of batteries, they aren't bottlenecked by production capacity in any meaningful way. The real challenge for VW is almost certainly marketing - they have a very large dealer base that needs to be retrained in how to sell EVs and they don't have the viral cachet of Tesla.

[bdamm]

VW also has years of fooling themselves by prioritorizing the diesel technology over electric development and running an enormous fraud in the process. This will have held them back. I don't think VW can ramp up as fast as they will want.

[threeseed]

Musk goes around calling people pedophiles and is high on Ambien half the time.

Does that mean we should discount Tesla'a manufacturing ability as well ? Or maybe this like the diesel issue has nothing to do with manufacturing.

[bdamm]

The point is that by running the fraud they reduced their own ability to actually develop the necessary technology for the future market. The fraud affected their own prioritization decisions, and teams were assigned to continue diesel development based on a lie they were telling themselves, which is that diesel is great and could be economically made to comply with tighter emissions requirements. Development of electric was underfunded and late, and now they are rushing to catch up.

Maybe they'll get it. But they stacked the deck against themselves, and I wager they haven't worked out the kinks in their suppliers.

[dillonmckay]

The company has some significant management issues.

It will be interesting to see.

[greglindahl]

Did you notice that that businessinsider article is from August, 2018? Do you think that's an accurate representation of Tesla's current Model 3 production issues?

[jillesvangurp]

They may have been planning for years but they also have been in denial for years. This is not more of the same for them: they have to change. Most of their existing production capacity is a liability rather than an asset. It's something they are going to have to get rid off/shut down (and that's not cheap) and it is starting to look like they'll be doing that years/decades ahead of what they hoped would be the timeline. Tesla is forcing their hands here by shipping in volume before everyone thought/hoped that was possible.

Their distribution network is a source of extra cost. Tesla eliminated that from the equation. There are no third party dealers. Dealers take a margin cut. With VW, that margin comes out of VWs pocket. Tesla doesn't have this.

The drive train VW has developed has to now prove itself in the real world. Early indications are that it is a combination of more expensive to make and not as performant as what Tesla has. Tesla has done well here and VW is catching up.

[bryanlarsen]

That's a really big if, and there is strong evidence against it. If they don't have enough batteries to build 50,000 e-trons in 2019, what are the chances they'll have enough batteries to build a lot more e-trons and ID.3's in 2020?

https://www.electrive.com/2019/04/23/audi-revises-production...