What I don't understand is, how do these journalists make a living writing stories like that? There must be an appetite out there for misinformation.

 

Sounds like you understand just fine.

Thank you kindly.

 

Why Tesla Model 3 Will Be Elon Musk's Undoing

Honestly, it very well could be. Make no mistake - this is a very risky proposition. He's trying to not only start a new car company, but scale it up to mass-market levels much quicker than has ever happened in the past. So the premise of the article is sound. There is a lot that could go wrong.

Are Musk's skills suitable to scaling and running a mainstream car company?

First mistake - scaling. No current automobile company CEO is proven good at scaling. Their companies already had scale before they took over the positions. So Musk might very well be the right person to scale up such a company. He appears to have the vision, and seems to be making the right moves. We'll have to see if he can execute.

The likes of Toyota, GM and Mercedes are not going to sit idly by while a new car company marches right in the front door and steals half a million cars a year in market share.

Agreed, but they seem to be late to the party. Nissan had an early lead, but didn't follow up the Leaf with something more compelling, and lost that first-mover advantage. GM will be the next major competitor with the Bolt, but it's missing long-distance charging, larger battery options, and style. And I don't see any other companies even coming close to being competitive with the Model 3 for several years after it starts selling.

Tesla has consistently taken three and a half years from prototype to initial delivery...

Completely ignores Tesla's concentration on manufacturability for this model.

In addition to needing extraordinary amounts of capital to fund this massive build-up, it's hard to see how Tesla makes money or achieves positive cash flow anytime soon.

Agreed. This is by design, because Tesla is going for scale at all costs. But this is a huge risk, and would be the most likely thing to cause the downfall of Tesla. If they have a major misstep and investors no longer believe that they will eventually recover, that would be the end.

In all, this article is saying "Tesla isn't being run like a traditional car company, therefore it won't succeed". But that would be the one sure way to make sure that Tesla fails. With Musk at the helm and their current plan, they stand a chance to not only succeed, but to disrupt the entire industry.

 

Don't take this as a political comment, (because it sounds like one) but with the Koch bros lobbying their other conservative billionaire friends to not support the GOP candidate, and having already admitted to trying to attack Tesla, and having the backing of Fox, any chance this 'news' story was arranged by/for them?

 

any chance this 'news' story was arranged by/for them?

Any chance this 'news' story wasn't arranged by/ for them? No.

Thank you kindly.

 

The likes of Toyota, GM and Mercedes are not going to sit idly by while a new car company marches right in the front door and steals half a million cars a year in market share.


They are not going to be able to get a 215mile base model out the gates in 18mths. Look at what they've done with their existing ev lines in response. The Leaf's new range is only 155 miles. And it still looks like a Toaster on wheels.

The established makers seem hell-bent on hybrid technology before they'll even consider full EV's. When the Model 3 starts eating all their lunches, expect them to start rolling out full EV's in about 5 years time. It's the iPhone and Blackberry nexus upon which we sit next year - and we all know how that ended.

Fingers crossed Tesla can prove the ICE naysayers wrong and deliver Model 3 on-time.

 

I really feel that Elon Musk is WAY too smart to let what happened with the Model X happen again with the Model 3. I have said from the start that I believe Tesla has always been much farther ahead with the Model 3 than they were letting on. I think priority number one with Elon and JB has been to under promise and over deliver on everything Model 3. I still believe that the Model 3 will deliver on time or ahead of schedule with more tech and performance than they have let on to anyone. I have no evidence of this other than the moving up of the timeline but I still feel strongly that everyone will be amazed at how this progresses moving forward.

Dan

 

Yeah, Dan. I think you're right. They have constantly said they designed the Model 3 to be easy to manufacture. I think the production problems with the Model X will have primed Tesla well for the production of Model 3. There seems to be a complacent smirk from the auto-establishment every time Tesla assert their production goals - much like Steve Blamer when the iPhone was ramping up for production back in 2007. They've sold a billion of those since! It can be done.

 

Yeah I'm pretty sure things will go smoothly. They packed too much into the Model X and the timeframe got pushed back a fair amount. They're focusing a lot on the manufacturing and tooling side so things get off to a good start, seems like a smart move. There will be some wicked showstopper tech in the next reveal (HUD?) but its not going to be something crazy like falconwing doors.

 

Tesla knows very well what's riding on Model 3. Namely the whole company.

Model X is still very fresh in their minds and they won't repeat that "mistake" willingly. Everything I hear going on inside of Tesla is that it's all hands on deck and they mean business with suppliers. If they can't get with the game they'll be cut out. The sheer amount of excitement over Model 3 is galvanizing the supplier chain to step up to the plate.

Model 3 will be on time and the finished product will blow people away.

 

On production and efficiency, I've not heard much mention of this from the quarterly call, but a caller pointed out the bottleneck part of production is the hand assembly done by people. Elon responded by saying that all people have been taken out of the Model 3 production plans. There will not be a single human hand on the assembly line. There will be a ton of people in the factory, but they will be managing the machinery.
I think this point alone could be a huge advantage (presuming all the tooling is 100%) over the other auto manufacturers reliant on laborers for the final assembly. The fitment should be 100% the same for every car and will not be dependent on if the assembly worker is tired or crabby or new and not yet up to speed.

 

They certainly have plans to minimize the human factor in building the Model 3 with their new manufacturing "breakthrough" but I doubt that version .5 at Fremont will be fully non-human. Version 1.0 when they build another factory should give them the ability to reach that after they work out the bugs in the current factory.

This new method could very well be the solution to the accelerated ramp they expect to achieve later next year. I don't think this new is anything new to Tesla, it's only that they've started to talk about it publicly. I think this was part of the plan all along during the Model 3 development in that the not only was the car designed to be easy to build but the factory tooling was designed expressly to be pretty much 100% automated.

 

I have had the pleasure of working with some very bright research types. but as focused as they were on the specifics of their topics, they were often not good business people or even good people persons (leaders). I listened to the Q2 finance call and Elons boyish charms were taking the day, and then he said " If any supplier falls short, they will be cut, if any internal group falls short, that group will be reorganized." Now, that simple statement was a take-command, I know whats happening and I'm responsible for finding weak links and deploying repairs. His boyish charms and engineer brilliance just jumped into a well seasoned business/finance fellow - and a powerful leader.

There will be naysayers and folks who will try to hogtie them. I hope they learned from the Tucker sabotage .

This guy - (and JB and a thousand more employees) are flying a multi-billion dollar company with no net - and have reinforced MY confidence in them and their vision.

 

The auto industry decades ago took the advice of those who think "sticking to the knitting" is the sole secret of business survival. They collectively cut back on hiring electrical engineers and decided to keep marketing, styling, and internal combustion drive train expertise as their core competencies. Stake out the high ground. Everything else, some other clowns could fight over. This is how the big guys decided to make cars.

Unfortunately, the review of evolution reveals that if you over-specialize, you become more vulnerable whenever the environment itself changes.

And it don't take a Weatherman to know... that the times, they are a changin', as Robert Allen Zimmerman of Duluth once noted.

The information age means you can upgrade software overnight with a download, not with a terrestrial voyage to your dealership to wait in a line for the next service representative to write you up.

Folks, when the "alien dreadnaughts" appear, the party is over. Those capable of reaching your planet at a point when you cannot reach theirs will inevitably on notice as to which side is SOL.

There were many brave and talented native American warriors in the 19th century. They eagerly learned to shoot rifles and ride horses, things that their grandparents had never seen, but they lacked in factories and machine tools to make the rifles and ammo. Unlike horses, throwing a couple of the right Winchesters into a room with a mixed tape won't make more of them for you.

Custer paid for hubris at Little Big Horn, but the Lakota lost the arms race. To paraphrase the wit of Mason Williams: functional advanced technology is a cheap trick.

Beware of Borg bearing musical gifts. Somebody loses their seat when the music stops, and it's not the Collective.

It's eleven fifty-nine. Do you know where their home planet is?

 

The auto industry decades ago took the advice of those who think "sticking to the knitting" is the sole secret of business survival. They collectively cut back on hiring electrical engineers and decided to keep marketing, styling, and internal combustion drive train expertise as their core competencies. Stake out the high ground. Everything else, some other clowns could fight over. This is how the big guys decided to make cars.

Unfortunately, the review of evolution reveals that if you over-specialize, you become more vulnerable whenever the environment itself changes.

And it don't take a Weatherman to know... that the times, they are a changin', as Robert Allen Zimmerman of Duluth once noted.

The information age means you can upgrade software overnight with a download, not with a terrestrial voyage to your dealership to wait in a line for the next service representative to write you up.

Folks, when the "alien dreadnaughts" appear, the party is over. Those capable of reaching your planet at a point when you cannot reach theirs will inevitably on notice as to which side is SOL.

There were many brave and talented native American warriors in the 19th century. They eagerly learned to shoot rifles and ride horses, things that their grandparents had never seen, but they lacked in factories and machine tools to make the rifles and ammo. Unlike horses, throwing a couple of the right Winchesters into a room with a mixed tape won't make more of them for you.

Custer paid for hubris at Little Big Horn, but the Lakota lost the arms race. To paraphrase the wit of Mason Williams: functional advanced technology is a cheap trick.

Beware of Borg bearing musical gifts. Somebody loses their seat when the music stops, and it's not the Collective.

It's eleven fifty-nine. Do you know where their home planet is?

I'm a bit thick today - What Did You Say?

 

P.S.: The thread of truth is simple in most dimensions; however, in one dimension it runs on for so long that both fools and liars readily get it all tangled up.

I am not the novelist Gary Moore, even though that is my name, but because I had not an intent to cause confusion, I wrote under my middle name.

When many people ask for the simple truth from you, they obviously do not know whereof they speak.

 

The 'simple' truth is what the simple person will believe.

 

When technology changes, new potential worlds become possible. With the arrival of the industrial revolution and interchangeable parts, the idea of bending humanity to be interchangeable, mechanical, and unemotional in order to coordinate with the preferred coal and steam powered machines became something suddenly viewed as the way to go. Industrial settings of that era required hierarchies of people to provide span of control for large scale operations..

The technology of today does not require high stacks of middle-persons to make the engines of production run. Machines armed with algorithms can do that.

The Model 3 is clearly not going to be Tesla's downfall. People don't queue up with a grand in hand to hold a place in the order bank for about $14 billion dollars worth of product in short order only to have potential auto suppliers say, "Oh, it's just a dinky fad. We don't want to make a ton of money money joining in on any such an endeavor." Scale of production makes auto companies run, because the high cost of designing and testing the high unit cost product is spread out over large sales volumes.

I don't envy the trolls. The Luddites did not succeed in stopping the Jacquard loom. When smart machines do things more efficiently and effectively than humans, humans must find something they do in which they have greater advantage, like trying new angles in new situations. Problems are aka "opportunities waiting to happen." The answer is not making education and training more expensive. Successful farmers don't expect the last crop to plant the next crop by itself.

It was not some nerdy, ivory tower college professor who launched the quote that the Stone Age did not end for lack of stones; it was a Saudi oil minister. The curtain is rising on a new order of things.

When paradigms shift, earthquakes will result.

The Japanese ate up the steel industry in the Seventies because they had new factories based in new technologies with which to compete. (Make note: There is no "old" Tesla plant.) I know that model start ups in making automobiles is hard. I've seen "final process" lots full of new product being built where the inspection tickets are scattered about screaming of failure and the jobs 'built' are stuffed with both abandoned repair tools and unprocessed defects. It can be a nightmare. But that was in the Seventies. Nobody knew what an internet was, and robots were the new kids on the block.

I have assassinated my personal Twitter ID twice for good measure, but I did notice during my participation that Elon and I unknowingly had similar ideas about avatars, except that as a kid, they apparently gave him a phone. Twitter is more often used by professional trolls writing B.S. than by prophets writing haiku. The people who hire trolls have much bigger budgets, because they have a lot to lose in doing business as usual. While you cannot explain the cosmos in detail in 140 characters, you can certainly do a lot of damage. It's usually easier to break things successfully than it is to make things successfully.

But making cars with a machine-that-builds-the-machines approach is not science fiction. The people who already know how to do this stuff gladly seek lucrative business opportunities.

General Motors did not need a bail-out because they were totally foolish (not that I am ignorant of numerous stupid things they did). They needed a bailout because the auto industry is an expensive endeavor and the banks had stopped lending. If a century-old, experienced corporation can burn through cash, that tells you something about the high-stakes game.

The TSLA stock value is on a climbing trend now. The short-sale rats are abandoning a sinking ship, namely theirs.

 

Successful farmers don't expect the last crop to plant the next crop by itself.

That is precisely what really successful farmers do.

Thank you kindly.

 

I would really like it if, in order to combat the notion that Tesla only builds "Toys... for the RICH!" that there was a program to provide zero down, zero per month, 24-to-36 month 'leases' to the underprivileged. That is, for every 100 units sold at a Tesla Store, the store manager could effectively 'give away' a two or three year test drive to someone who really needed a car. Idea being that instead of getting a 15-to-20 year old gas guzzling beater with sub-standard safety equipment and failing exhaust controls... Someone in a low income job, with a valid driver's license, who was insurable, could qualify to 'own' and operate a Tesla for three years, just bringing it back for regular service appointments. Without the expense of gasoline, and oil changes, and multiple repairs, and whatever else they would have endured while driving a 'beater', that person might actually be able to save enough to buy their next Tesla when the time came to turn it in. Tesla could turn the car over to another person after they got it back, or extend the lease to the original person if their financial situation hadn't improved. Methinks that would do a lot more good as a promotional device than supporting little league baseball teams. Because people would learn that anyone could get a Tesla. Not just the rich. Though it might end up being one for every 1,000 units instead.

 

Like the Tom's of the auto world.

 

"Everyone please to be getting from street." The Russians are not coming, the world-lord is inbound.

Living in a community wherein many of my neighbors are Hindu, my intentions are not about to be run over by any runaway juggernauts, those large temple carts which have become religiously inspired by such momentum as can be readily accumulated by mere gravity upon massive things on wheels, heading downhill. The humongous wheels of progress are already set in motion. Get out of the way!

Having played sports, I realize your opponents often talk trash, often focused in an infantile fashion with an obsession upon their perceived opponent's mother and with vile intent. Chill out and run your game.

The "toys for the rich" meme is destined to collapse as history unwinds. Resistance is futile.

During the age of feudalism, it was rather hard to see how anyone of ordinary means would ever escape subjugation under the local lordship, who seemingly owned everything and anybody; however, we now see that feudalism is not all that popular anymore. Ask yourself: How many serfs have you met lately? You don't need walls by the river, land, and armies to benefit from the new wind power.

The best things in life are free. Times change.

Economy, as we knew it, whether capitalism or socialism, is headed south for early retirement, and we shall discover that the weather is better down there. Once the cat gets out of the bag as to how things might be done more efficiently and efficaciously, copycats cleverly conspire to create the new world order. (There is even an upside for humanity to being lazy.)

Tesla is at this moment in history where it needs to "stick to the knitting," which may confuse many people, because something much bigger than a scarf is under construction. As Elon says about announcements, keep your powder dry.

Don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes. This is the revolutionary mindset period. Knit one, purl two. Left, right, left. The job that you had back home is gone; you left; you left.

Tesla does not have to build the ocean, or to teach each fish to jump out of the water in a synchronized, aerial ballet, it only needs to learn to ride the wild surf. Hang ten. Tesla critics, please take note.

Why would I fix the CD-DVD drive in my all-in-one when I can get a USB-connectable equivalent delivered to my door for less money than a tank of gasoline? Every amateur economist near you will have to realize that the world has changed, or die. Evolution is like that. Heads up. Oncoming traffic. The life you save may be your own.

Economics is about to change in ways of which most people have no idea, but people in nearby Silicon Valley are crazy as a fox for numerous historical reasons.

Everyone up on your feet for the future! Jugganatha! Get out to the way before Krishna-consciousness crushes your cranium!

Don't sweat the small stuff. It's mostly small stuff.

 

I think Elon Musk has already described his vision for people who can't afford to just buy a Model 3 outright. There are two options.

1. Buy a Model 3 (using a loan and payments), then loan it out as often as possible to the Tesla Network to help cover your payments.
2. Don't buy a car at all. Just request a car on the Tesla Network whenever you need a car. You don't get to drive it yourself with this option though.