Hacker News Reader

Comment by sveme | Hacker News Reader

That would require a doubling of production capacity each year. Currently they have two factories (?), next they'll need to have four, then eight...

The whole company would have to scale accordingly. That's just not feasible. And I don't believe there has even been a hardware company in the world with exponential growth over an extended period of time.

View on HN

The factories haven't been operating at 100% capacity. The US factory in Fremont for example is in the process of putting in a new line to produce the Model Y, demand for which should be similar to the Model 3. That alone will enable them to close to double output. Then there is the China factory that is opening in a month or two they built that in ~9 months and they are planning to break ground on a factory in Europe next year.

Toyota needs 50 factories + joint ventures + contract facilities to deliver 10m cars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Toyota_manufacturing_f...

You just said Tesla will deliver 13m in 5 years..

Less parts should also mean a more productive manufacturing process.

I like Tesla more than most, I have one myself… however you can't be suggesting that three factories will outproduce 50? That would be some massive gains in efficiency! It seems unlikely that the factories are currently operating at about 10% efficiency.

Not to mention the fact that Toyota are already noteworthy in the manufacturing world for their efficiency.

The Fremont factory is not manufacturing the batteries for its cars AFAIK. You're not doubling the output of entire vehicles there without GF1 increasing its battery production accordingly. Musk and Panasonic were already butting heads over battery production capacity @ GF1, but I haven't been paying attention lately.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com