"Tesla’s record growth has it struggling with a serious production bottleneck"

[TopWargamer]

http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/05/teslas-record-growth-has-it-struggling-with-a-serious-production-bottleneck/

 

Tesla achieved record levels of Model S production, deliveries, and vehicle gross margins this quarter. Chairman and CEO Elon Musk said there is a huge untapped demand in the U.S., demand is growing in Europe, and Tesla will begin taking reservations in China’s massive market this quarter.

 

But demand isn’t Tesla’s challenge — it is scaling production to meet demand.

 

“We are production constrained, not demand constrained,” Musk said during an earnings call. “We are working hard to address the production constraints and improve, but the thing people still don’t quite get is we are different in a fundamental way from other car companies. It doesn’t make sense to do things to amplify demand if can’t meet that demand with production. We are spending our time to figure out how to ramp up production faster and maintain good quality.”

 

There are over 19,000 Model S cars on the roads who have collectively driven their cars more than 100 million miles.

 

Tesla is currently producing 550 cars per week and aims to produce 20,000 cars a year.

 

Well it's awesome to see that the demand is there, but it really sucks that Tesla can't keep up with the demand. Hopefully Tesla/Musk will be able to find a way around this while still maintaining the quality of their vehicles. 

[Yoinkerman]

Since quality is always the first thing to suffer when upscaling production, I hope for tesla's sake they do it right.

 

http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/05/teslas-record-growth-has-it-struggling-with-a-serious-production-bottleneck/

 

 

 

 

Well it's awesome to see that the demand is there, but it really sucks that Tesla can't keep up with the demand. Hopefully Tesla/Musk will be able to find a way around this while still maintaining the quality of their vehicles. 

[chaozbandit]

I'm surprised they've reached a bottleneck, especially since news earlier this month revealed that Tesla had received an additional 2 billion battery cells from Panasonic (good enough to quadruple production to ~320,000 cars). Then again with news of the Model X, I'm pretty sure all of Tesla Motors has it's hands full so this isn't completely unexpected.

[xRAGExSounDxRIOTX]

Hopefully they'll be able to produce more cars, especially with the Model X and the cheaper "model s" coming around the corner. The waiting list is 8 months for the normal ones and 6 months for the P-4 or 6- 5 (is this correct?). Still better than Pagani who have a 3 year waiting list for the Huayra, if I remember correctly. 

[chaozbandit]

Hopefully they'll be able to produce more cars, especially with the Model X and the cheaper "model s" coming around the corner. The waiting list is 8 months for the normal ones and 6 months for the P-4 or 6- 5 (is this correct?). Still better than Pagani who have a 3 year waiting list for the Huayra, if I remember correctly. 

 

3 years makes a lot of sense when you take into account things such as the entire car being hand assembled (the chassis or even a single carbon part will be instantly scrapped if the carbotanium weave is even the smallest bit misalligned), the fabrication and baking time of each component, parts sourcing from each of the exclusive manufacturers and continual testing... and then there's the high demand and ridiculously low supply (they work on less than half a dozen cars at any one time, iirc). If you have the money to buy a Huayra (or similar), chances are wait times aren't going to bother you too much. ^^

[brownninja97]

Hopefully Tesla doesnt mess up, they make awesome cars and i really dont want that to come to an end due to cutting corners.

[miyabwah]

We're too fast for them. The demands is so high they might actually increase their prices....