Hacker News Reader

Comment by misja111 | Hacker News Reader

That's amazing, but when reading through the numbers in the article this makes me wonder:

".. Q2 production totaled 53,339 vehicles, a 55% increase from Q1, making it the most productive quarter in Tesla history by far. For the first time, Model 3 production (28,578) exceeded .."

So the total Model 3 production was 28,756 in Q2, which is on average only 2212 vehicles per week. It seems that they have been able to pull up the production rate to above 5000 only in the very last week. Nevertheless that's an astonishing achievement.

View on HN

Production isn’t really linear. For example in Q2 they had multiple total stoppages of production to re-tool, each one lasting at least a few days. The important things to look at are: What is the production exiting the quarter, and is it sustainable.

Yes, but as far as I know that was the stated goal.

From the May 2nd financial results letter:

"We continue to target Model 3 production of approximately 5,000 per week in about two months, although our prior experience has demonstrated the difficulty of accurately forecasting specific production rates at specific points in time because of the exponential nature of the ramp."

http://ir.tesla.com/static-files/1b240f1e-b519-4b40-b14b-fea...

5000 per week also was Musks prediction for december 2017: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/881757617416056832

The goal wasn't 5000 per week, it was 20000 per month. They have achieved the former but not the latter. This requires actually sustaining the production rate which has so far been highly violate with lots of temporary total shutdowns for retooling.

Yep, and they've taken plenty of knocks for failing to meet that stated goal and having to re-adjust and set new forward goals.

Sure, the stated goal was 5000 per week in Q2 and that has been achieved, I already gave my credits for that.

But Tesla's production was 2270 vehicles at the end of Q1 and nevertheless the average production over the entire Q2 remained below that number. Didn't you find that surprising?

good catch. I wonder how much of that is due to the immense pressure they had in Q1 leading to crazy overtime etc to get that 2270 number. The current average being maybe a more sustainable number that can be ramped up ?

The '7000 cars' milestone over the last week is probably a similar high intensity push. I would expect them to similarly spend some time this quarter reconfiguring and improving efficiency at the cost of not maintaining that high production rate every week.

>I wonder how much of that is due to the immense pressure they had in Q1 leading to crazy overtime etc to get that 2270 number.

All of it. Anyone following this story knew they would announce 5000 cars produced at the end of the quarter, hell-or-high-water. Do you think they will produce 5000 cars this week?

"In order to achieve this production rate, we plan to take additional days of downtime during Q2, just like we did in Q1."

They definitely aren't at a smooth sustainable build rate yet. They could probably maintain 4-5k/week on the Model 3 but in the pursuit of reaching higher output and increasing efficiency there will probably be more shutdowns this quarter.

I would expect that they might lean on the tent/GA4 line to let them do some more shutdowns and reconfigurations of the main line.

I think they've still got a ways to go before they have smooth and steady production output at the efficiency that they want.

Yet they're saying 6000/week by the end of next month. It's a never-ending sprint for the production line workers.

Why not aim for sustained 5000/week, increase QA/reduce re-work and go from there? The fact that Musk is unable or unwilling to take that stance is a red flag for me and underscores my unease.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com