https://robertscribbler.com/2017/10/03/ ... tion-ramp/
Tesla’s Electric Sales Explode Despite Slow Model 3 Production Ramp
Around the world, electric vehicle makers are starting to make serious inroads into the global auto market. And aspirational industry leader Tesla continues to break new ground and open new markets despite an increasing array of challenges.
Record Tesla Sales
During the third quarter of 2017, Tesla sold 26,150 all-electric vehicles. A new quarterly sales record for the company which included 14,065 super-fast luxury Model S sedans, 11,865 of the also super-fast and highly luxurious Model X SUV, and 220 of the mid-class luxury-sport Model 3. In total, during 2017, Tesla has sold more than 73,000 vehicles. Placing the all-electric vehicle and renewable energy systems manufacturer in a position to challenge the 100,000 cars sold mark by end of December.
(Tesla production and sales by Quarter shows that Q3 2017 beat Tesla’s previous record by more than 1,300 vehicles. Tesla appears on track to hit near 100,000 vehicle sales in 2017. Note that Model X production took 6 Quarters, or approximately 18 months to fully ramp to present sales rates above 10,000 per Quarter. Telsa ultimately expects to produce more than 60,000 Model 3s per Quarter by 2018. Investment analysts are more conservative — with Morgan Stanley targeting 30,000 Model 3s per Quarter. Image source: Commons.)
Surprises in Tesla’s Q3 report include greater than expected overall Model S and X sales. Pessimistic speculation about Tesla struggling to sell its higher-quality line as customers await the anticipated but less expensive and tweaked-out (but still bad-@#$) Model 3 abounded throughout August and September. Those contributing to this brouhaha, however, did not appear to anticipate the excitement generated by Tesla’s Model 3 launch which appears to have spilled over to the more expensive line-up even as Tesla both offered incentives on some of its showroom vehicles and cut shorter range, lower cost versions of its Model S line-up.
Tesla Model 3 Production Ramp — A Miss, But Still in the Window
Tesla did, however, fail to meet Model 3 production ramp goals of 1,500 by the end of September. And this was one point where the Tesla pessimists ended up proving at least partly right. Citing production bottlenecks, the luxury EV manufacturer noted that it had produced only 260 Model 3s by end month — a 1,240 vehicle short-fall for the Quarter.
Overall vehicle production had still grown from July through September — hitting 30 in July, about 80 in August, and about 150 in September. This is still an exponential rate of expansion. But the more rapid anticipated ramp was not achieved. Tesla noted that most of their fast production chain was functioning as planned. But that a few bits of the complex and highly automated Model 3 manufacturing subsystems were taking “longer than expected to activate.”
(Tesla’s ground-breaking Model 3 missed company production targets by a fairly wide margin this month — triggering a big controversy among investors. Long term prospects for the Model 3 remain strong as Tesla works through what is, effectively, an employee beta testing period. Image source: Tesla.)
At first blush, this appears to be a fairly wide miss in Tesla’s planned production ramp. But if rapid production scaling is still achieved this fall, it will look like nothing more than a bit of a bump in the road. After the Q3 report, Elon Musk noted:
“I would simply urge people to not get too caught up in what exactly falls within the exact calendar boundaries of a quarter, one quarter or the next, because when you have an exponentially growing production ramp, slight changes of a few weeks here or there can appear to have dramatic changes.”
In other words, we are still in the window for rapid production scaling, even if the earlier, more rapid, ramp was missed by a few weeks.
The company previously struggled with its very complex production of the ultimately popular Model X. To address production challenges, Tesla aimed to simplify production for the Model 3. But integration of new automated equipment into large manufacturing chains as the vehicle is built and product-tested by employee-customers is proving to again pose a few challenges. Challenges that, at this time, do not appear to be anywhere near as serious as those encountered during the Model X production ramp, but are still enough to produce delays.
Tesla Model 3 Production Still About to Explode as EV Maker Enjoys Serious Structural Advantages
Keeping these facts in mind, we can take some of the overly negative reports following Tesla’s failure to hit early Model 3 production targets with a lump of salt. The company still produces amazing cars, is still going to flood the world with high-quality and much more affordable all-electric Model 3s. The company owns a massive manufacturing apparatus in the form if its Freemont plant and Nevada Gigafactory. An apparatus that is rapidly growing. Outside this expanding manufacturing chain, the company is the only major automaker to seriously invest in and rapidly expand crucial EV charging infrastructure. All of these are systemic underlying strengths that the electric automaker will continue to leverage and expand on.
(Tesla battery sales help to reduce EV battery pack costs by producing economies of scale in production. The reverse is also true. With demand for Tesla’s powerwall and powerpacks on the rise, the company possesses a number of systemic advantages that most automobile manufacturers lack. Image source: Tesla.)
Tesla is in the process of transitioning from an automaker that produces a moderate number of vehicles each year to a major automaker that produces more than half a million vehicles each year. And it’s bound to encounter a bump or two in the road from time-to-time. Ultimately, the Model 3 production ramp will hit its stride as Tesla works out the kinks. Around 500,000 reservation-holders will still get their cars.
Analysts at Morgan Stanley recently:
warned investors against “micro-analyzing the monthly ramp of the Model 3.” Most vehicle launches have hiccups, and quality and attractiveness count for far more importance than quantity “at least for now,” they said in a note.
Tesla was quick to stress that it foresaw no serious issues with the Model 3 production. That the company understood what needed to be fixed in the manufacturing chain and was working to address those issues. If this is the case, we should see Model 3 production start to ramp more swiftly over the coming weeks. But even without rapidly ramping Model 3 production — which is on the way sooner or later — Tesla is still smashing previously held all-electric sales records.
And for those of us concerned about climate change, that’s good news.
Links:
Tesla Shares Shake off Bad News of Model 3 Deliveries
Tesla
Tesla Q3 Report
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33 COMMENTS by ROBERTSCRIBBLER on OCTOBER 3, 2017 • PERMALINK
Posted in CLIMATE CHANGE, RENEWABLES, SUSTAINABILITY
Tagged CLIMATE CHANGE, ELECTRIC VEHICLES, MODEL 3, RECORD SALES Q3, RENEWABLES, SUSTAINABILITY, TESLA, TESLA GROWTH
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Allan Barr / October 3, 2017
We are in the early stages of a massive transformation into renewables and battery storage. A paradigm shift equal to the transformation from Horse and Buggy into ICE. That Change took a couple of decades. For those who care about the biosphere and can afford to invest in companies like Tesla its going to be good for their soul and pocketbook. Thanks for throwing out some positive news every now and then Robert, am personally struggling to remain optimistic when the deluge of ongoing catastrophic climate events appears overwhelming.
robertscribbler / October 3, 2017
It’s important not to get too focused on the dark side of what’s happening. We should remain alert to real and viable threats. But we should also remain open to the options that are now becoming available to us. In other words — there is both light and darkness here.
Worth noting that Rick Perry is now pushing to subsidize the ailing nuclear and coal industries. Small surprise, that. The largest threats to renewables remain on the policy level. We should do all we can to support renewables by voting for politicians (democrats primarily) that support alternative options and voting out those (republicans primarily) who oppose them.
Allan Barr / October 4, 2017
10 new members in just the past month. I believe this group may be the single most important development in the political arena.
https://citizensclimatelobby.org/climat ... ns-caucus/
robertscribbler / October 3, 2017
Test version of Tesla’s all-electric semi also found recently:
Greg / October 3, 2017
Nicely timed. I found this 30 minute summary of Jack Richard’s analysis well worth listening to (originally 2 hours or so). He’s not a traditional analyst, but has done his homework including actual taking apart of the cars, and doesn’t come off polished but he nails Tesla spot on and covers why it can dominate the future as a company and why we will all benefit.
Abel Adamski / October 4, 2017
Excellent Video, share it around
Jim / October 4, 2017
+1 Allan, you are spot on when saying we’re in the midst of a massive energy transformation.
With the Tesla Model 3, Chevy Bolt, and Nissan Leaf among others, the tipping point of EVs having a lower lifetime operating cost compared to ICE has already been soundly crossed, and the tipping point to build, and purchase, an EV is probably only 2 – 3 years away.
Plus this doesn’t consider the regulatory activities that are now happening globally. The combination of PV solar panels and EV’s and soon, storage batteries, can dramatically influence the demand for oil and coal. Equally as important, people need to know it’s also economical.
Do your own calculation using the NREL PV Watts website for you specific street address to calculate PV generation, and calculate your cost to drive with electric vs gasoline. Most folks are being ripped off to the tune of thousands of dollars each and every year. There is no such thing as “Clean, Affordable Coal”. It’s expensive. And gasoline even at $2.50/gallon is still about 4 times the cost of driving on electricity.
wili / October 4, 2017
Ford’s announcement today:
Ford CEO outlines plan to aggressively cut costs, funneling savings to electric, self-driving cars
The Blue Oval is getting a makeover.
Ford CEO Jim Hackett and his leadership team are steering the automaker to drive greater profits on its most valuable products, trucks and SUVs, while turning away from less valuable areas like cars. At the same time, Ford plans to aggressively cut costs while investing more resources on electric and autonomous-drive vehicles.
“When you’re a long-lived company that has had success over multiple decades, the decision to change is not easy — culturally or operationally,” Hackett said. “Ultimately, though, we must accept the virtues that brought us success over the past century are really no guarantee of future success.”
Hackett devised his plan for transforming Ford after using most of his first 100 days at the helm to evaluate what works and what doesn’t. The result is a substantial push to shift gears at a company that has a history of being slow to change.
More trucks and SUVs, fewer Cars
Ford plans to reallocate about $7 billion to increased development and production of trucks and SUVs, while demphasizing less profitable cars and sedans.
Ford is not getting out of the car business all-together, but it will no longer be an automaker that pushes cars as heavily as it has in the past.
Instead, Ford will emphasize trucks and SUVs, an area of strength and big profits, especially when compared its competitors. This year, 76 percent of Ford’s sales in the U.S. are trucks and SUVs.
Charging up EVs
Like other automakers, Ford is going electric.
Over the next five years, it will redeploy money into its program for developing and building electric vehicles while cutting capital expenditures for internal combustion engines by one third.
Ford sees the writing on the wall, especially in many foreign markets where governments are de-emphasizing or moving to ban gasoline-powered vehicles. This move is critical since Ford has lagged competitors when it comes to developing EVs. …
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/03/ford-to ... -cars.html
Generally, we need to move mostly away from car culture as rapidly as we can. But while cars still rule, it is important to have alternatives it ICE, imho.
wili / October 4, 2017
Other developments:
“I’ve gotten messages from the governor asking, ‘Why haven’t we done something already?’” Nichols said, referring to China’s planned phase-out of fossil-fuel vehicle sales. “The governor has certainly indicated an interest in why China can do this and not California.”
California is now also considering a ban on gas and diesel-powered cars
https://electrek.co/2017/09/26/californ ... ered-cars/
wili / October 4, 2017
And:
Twenty new electric vehicles are on the way, GM says
There will be a mix of long-range battery EVs and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
DETROIT—General Motors is the latest car company to unveil plans for an emissions-free future. On Monday morning, the US’ largest automaker announced that the next 18 months will see two new electric vehicles join the Bolt EV in showrooms, and 18 more are due by 2023. “GM believes in an all-electric future and a world free of automotive emissions,” said Mark Reuss, GM’s executive VP for product development, purchasing, and supply chain. “When the Bolt EV was announced at CES it was described as a platform, and this is the next step.” …
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/10/ge ... g-by-2023/
wili / October 4, 2017
Sorry for the back-to-back, but I’ve been following these developments over at the cars thread at ASIF. Thanks to Sig there for these links and text. One more note, then I’m off to bed:
Most of the fastest selling used cars in the US are now electric
https://qz.com/1090343/most-of-the-fast ... re-now-ev/
6 of the 10 fastest-selling used cars in the US are electric plug-ins
https://electrek.co/2017/09/28/6-of-the ... -plug-ins/
Tipping points, of a happier sort than we usually use that term around here, seem to be coming on all sorts of fronts wrt EVs!
Abel Adamski / October 5, 2017
https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/04/por ... d-testing/
Porsche Mission E caught testing against Teslas
It looks as though Porsche is pretty far in development.
Porsche has previously said that the Mission E would reach production by 2020, and according to our friends at Engadget, it should go on sale in 2019. Based on how complete the cars in these photos appear to be, we think the company has a good chance of hitting that target. When the concept was shown, Porsche promised 590 horsepower and, on the European test cycle, a range of over 310 miles. Also interesting was the concept’s claimed 800-volt electrical system that could be charged to 80 percent capacity in 15 minutes. Time will tell whether that system comes to fruition, but Porsche has at least tested some portion of the system on its Le Mans-winning 919 Hybrid race cars. Porsche also expects to sell the car for $80,000 to $90,000. All these features taken together would definitely make for a compelling Tesla alternative.
California and charging stations
Abel Adamski / October 4, 2017
The issue for the big auto makers is simply charging stations as Jack Richards points out in the video Greg posted above, as Jack points out to much of the buying public, can they drive to California in it ( even if they never will ) , Tesla has built 380 or so supercharger stations in the US, so for Tesla cars it is a yes, for the other manufacturers, unless their vehicles can plug into a Tesla Supercharger, the answer is no, so off the list of prospective veh purchases.
As he also points out Tesla offered a share in that network to the Car Manufacturers on a share all costs basis, they knocked it back, as such dependant on private operators and those stations if they are working are of highly variable standard.
Another interesting point I picked up that is behind the panic of the worlds ICE veh manufacturers is that US car makers sell 60% of their new cars in China, China going EV as well as many other countries, destroys their business model if they don’t have suitable products regardless of what happens in the US
Vic / October 4, 2017
I personally find it pretty bizarre that I’m actually looking forward to the unveiling of a new semi truck, but these are pretty strange times so I guess that explains my enthusiasm.
I feel a certain measure of trepidation however about Elon’s plans for his massive new rocket ship the BFR, which could allow us not only to become a multi-planet species but also to travel anywhere on Earth in under an hour for around the same cost as traditional air travel. Sounds great, except that it would likely increase the popularity of long distance travel and considering the rocket’s CO2 emissions high into our atmosphere this is somewhat concerning.
But there might just be a silver lining. In order for Elon to achieve his Martian goals he’ll need to be able to produce methane and oxygen on Mars in order for the rockets and people to get back to Earth. For this he proposes using electrolysis to extract O2 and H2 from water sources on Mars and combining the H2 using the Sabatier process with CO2 extracted from Mars’ atmosphere to produce the methane. All solar powered of course.
He mentions it briefly around the 33:50 mark in the video below, and goes on to mention that the same process could be employed on Earth, but is also careful to describe that possibility as “in the long term”. It’s hard to know what someone like Elon Musk thinks of as long term. He plans to begin sending his rockets to Mars by 2022. Let’s hope he has a fleet of Earth bound climate-friendly methane factories putting the frackers out of business by then. A price on carbon would certainly help.
Vic / October 4, 2017
Vic / October 4, 2017
German startup Lilium Aviation have secured $90 million in funding to help bring their new electric VTOL aircraft to market. The funding was led by Tencent – adding to their now many electric vehicle-related investments, including a 5% stake in Tesla.
https://electrek.co/2017/10/02/electric ... ilium-jet/
Mblanc / October 4, 2017
Ten years ago we could see the future was looking pretty dark, and we had relatively little positive evidence that the massive energy transition we need was truly imminent.
Now we know that transition will happen, as all the key tech is now very affordable, so it’s now a question of how fast .That is a huge positive thing.
I appreciate RS letting us know about some of the genuinely good news stories, because it is hard to handle the knowledge of all the bad stuff unwinding in front of our eyes, and what the future will bring.
We might be up the creek, but at least we starting to paddle.
Mblanc / October 4, 2017
… at least we are starting to paddle.
Suzanne / October 4, 2017
At NYTimes this morning..”In a warming world, keeping the planes running”
Climate change is making airport planners think again.
Low-lying airports may become increasingly vulnerable to storm surges. Hotter temperatures may cause tarmac to melt, restrict takeoff weights or require heavier aircraft to take off later in the day.
Now governments, companies and experts around the world are grappling with what could be a very expensive problem. Keeping the industry aloft requires colossal investment — $1.1 trillion in airport infrastructure projects are planned or underway, the CAPA Center for Aviation, a consulting firm based in Australia, said in July.
“Airports understand well that climate change could have some far-reaching effects and that they are not immune to them,” said Angela Gittens, the director general at Airports Council International’s headquarters in Montreal.
Suzanne / October 4, 2017
Correction…This was first published on September 30th…I just saw it this morning.
wili / October 5, 2017
Most of the ‘industry’ should just be shut down. Relatively few flights are absolutely necessary. What’s left of the carbon budget and the airlines budget should be saved for those, rather than the enormous numbers of frivolous flights now being taken.
I just celebrated my 13 year of not flying, by the way. Never regretted it for a day (especially as I hear the increasingly horrific stories of what airlines put you through and how passengers are sometimes molested and dragged of the plane by force…)
bostonblorp / October 4, 2017
“Solar Grew Faster Than All Other Forms of Power for the First Time”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... s-of-power
Jean Mcmahon / October 4, 2017
Moroccan city introduces Chinese electrical buses
The Moroccan city of Marrakech launched on Thursday electrical busses from China in a bid to improve transportation service and reduce pollution…
http://www.china.org.cn/business/2017-0 ... FU.twitter
Apneaman / October 5, 2017
Dave McGinnis / October 5, 2017
Industry got us into this mess, only they can get us out of it. This is one way they’re doing it — satisfying consumer demand for green transportation. And look at solar sales.
P.S. Mr Scribbler, I really appreciated your OPAL story.
Andy_in_SD / October 5, 2017
As permafrost melts, cliff faces fall. In this instance in Greenland a Tsunami was the result.
A Landslide Was the Culprit Behind a Massive Tsunami in Greenland
This could be just the beginning.
Western Greenland doesn’t experience all that much seismic activity, so scientists were surprised when a 4.0 magnitude earthquake was recorded in the Karrat Fjord area on June 17, followed by one of the largest tsunamis in recorded history, which swept away 11 houses in the small village of Nuugaatsiaq. A closer examination of seismic data and the mountains surrounding the fjord reveals that it wasn’t an earthquake that caused the tsunami after all. Instead, it was a massive landslide that tripped seismic sensors and generated the unprecedented wave.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/gr ... rrat-fjord
Exposing the Big Game / October 5, 2017
Reblogged this on The Extinction Chronicles.
wili / October 5, 2017
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... rgy-agency
“Renewables accounted for two-thirds of new power added to world’s grids last year, says International Energy Agency (IEA)”
“The authority, which is funded by 28 member governments, admitted it had previously underestimated the speed at which green energy was growing.”
Allan Barr / October 5, 2017
The IEA is notorious for being wrong, they use straight line thinking appear to be unaware of the exponential function.
Abel Adamski / October 5, 2017
Slightly OT, but the gems you pick up along the way in the droppings
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/0 ... ger-243449
Marc Short, Trump’s director of legislative affairs who previously served as an operative for the Koch financial network,
Vic / October 5, 2017
A nice project going ahead in Norway – the world’s first battery powered container ship. Due to launch in 2018.
Vic / October 5, 2017
In other news from Norway, parts of the country’s south have witnessed their highest ever rainfall totals and flood levels in records dating back to 1890.
https://watchers.news/2017/10/04/norway-flood/
Abel Adamski / October 5, 2017
https://www.voanews.com/a/arabian-sea-i ... 57392.html
In news about Asia and the Indian Sub Continent
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