No dog in the race, don't know or care if TSLA is headed to $100 or $1,000. But it's important to keep in mind TSLA is all about social engineering, not electrical engineering. Its future success depends on milking Fed/state governments via "green" shtick. Politics are very hard to predict, so the fate of TSLA is also.
It will change what we expect from a car. I was responding to your comment about tesla changing the world. It's not the electric part of tesla that is different. It's the whole user experience.
I knew this was gonna be a problem. Wait till they hit the road in the 1000's Build fast, fix later: speed hurts quality at Tesla, some workers say Alexandria Sage 9 Min Read SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - After Tesla’s Model S sedans and Model X SUVs roll off the company’s Fremont, California assembly line, the electric vehicles usually make another stop - for repairs, nine current and former employees have told Reuters. The luxury cars regularly require fixes before they can leave the factory, according to the workers. Quality checks have routinely revealed defects in more than 90 percent of Model S and Model X vehicles inspected after assembly, these individuals said, citing figures from Tesla’s internal tracking system as recently as October. Some of these people told Reuters of seeing problems as far back as 2012. Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) said its quality control process is unusually rigorous, designed to flag and correct the tiniest imperfections. It declined to provide post-assembly defect rates to Reuters or comment on those cited by employees. The world’s most efficient automakers, such as Toyota (7203.T), average post-manufacturing fixes on fewer than 10 percent of their cars, according to industry experts. Getting quality right during initial assembly is crucial, they said, because repairs waste time and money. At Tesla “so much goes into rework after the car is done ... that’s where their money is being spent,” a former Tesla supervisor said. The Silicon Valley automaker said the majority of its post-assembly defects are minor and resolved in a matter of minutes. Tesla has enthralled consumers with sleek designs, clean technology and legendary acceleration on its pricey cars. A Consumer Reports survey found 91 percent of Tesla owners would buy again. Still, the magazine and market researcher J.D. Power have dinged the company on quality, citing troubles such as faulty door handles and body panel gaps. Bernstein analyst A.M. (Toni) Sacconaghi, Jr. test-drove one of the company’s new Model 3 sedans earlier this month, writing that the fit and finish were “relatively poor.” Tesla owners have complained on web forums of annoying rattles, buggy software and poor seals that allow rainwater to seep into the interior or trunk. Auto industry experts say the company’s survival now depends on its ability to crank out high-quality cars in volume as it begins to build its first mass-market car, the Model 3, which starts at $35,000. Tesla has never turned an annual profit and is burning through $1 billion a quarter. That is unsustainable without fresh cash or a big increase in sales to mainstream customers who may prove less forgiving of potential defects. “We’ve never doubted Tesla’s ability to make exciting products with top specifications, but there’s a difference between unveiling something and then actually making it perfectly in large volume. Tesla has not perfected the latter yet,” Morningstar analyst David Whiston wrote earlier this month. Musk has vowed Tesla would become “the best manufacturer on Earth,” helped by a new, highly automated assembly line and a simpler design for the Model 3. However, production woes have slowed deliveries of the much-anticipated sedan. Snags are normal with any new launch. But chronic defects with Tesla’s established Models S and X show a company still struggling to master basic manufacturing, workers said. Known as “kickbacks” within Tesla, these vehicles have glitches as minor as dents and scratches to more complex troubles such as malfunctioning seats. Easy fixes are made swiftly on the factory floor, workers said. Trickier cases head to one of Tesla’s outdoor parking lots to await repair. The backlog in one of those two lots, dubbed the “yard,” has exceeded 2,000 vehicles at times, workers told Reuters. Tesla denied to Reuters that such “repair lots” exist. FILE PHOTO: Model S side panels await installation at Tesla's factory in Fremont, California, June 22, 2012. REUTERS/Noah Berger/File Photo Reuters interviewed nine current and former Tesla employees, including a former senior manager, with experience in assembly, quality control and repairs on Model S and Model X. All requested anonymity because the company required them to sign non-disclosure agreements. Four of the people were fired for cause, including two last month as part of a mass dismissal of hundreds of workers for what Tesla said was poor performance. Sacked workers who spoke with Reuters denied they were poor performers. People with knowledge of Tesla’s internal quality data shared those figures with Reuters. The news agency was unable to confirm the information independently. Defects included "doors not closing, material trim, missing parts, all kinds of stuff. Loose objects, water leaks, you name it," another former supervisor said. "We've been building a Model S since 2012. How do we still have water leaks?" BUILD FAST, FIX LATER Slideshow (4 Images) Tesla disputed workers’ portrayal of the automaker as struggling to produce defect-free vehicles. A spokesperson described a rigorous process that requires all cars to pass more than 500 inspections and tests. Any reworking of cars after assembly reflects the company’s commitment to quality, the spokesperson said. “Our goal is to produce perfect cars for every customer,” Tesla said in a statement. “Therefore, we review every vehicle for even the smallest refinement. Most customers would never notice the work that is done post production, but we care about even a fraction of a millimeter body gap difference or a slight paint gloss texture. We then feed these improvements back to production in a pursuit of perfection.” Employees who worked on Model S and Model X described pressure to keep the assembly line moving, even when problems emerged. Some told of batches of cars being sent through with parts missing - windshields in one case, bumpers in another - because there were none on hand. The understanding, they said, was that these and other flaws would be fixed later. Quality inspectors would sometimes find more defects than those reported by workers in the internal tracking system when a car came off the line. “We’d see two issues, that’s pretty good. But then we’d dig in and there would be like 15 or 20,” one person said. One persistently tricky area was alignment, where body parts had to be “muscled,” in the words of the senior manager, to a certain degree of flushness. Not every team follows the same rule book, workers said, resulting in gaps of different size. Tesla denied that its quality control is inconsistent and said its “extensive” process for locating and fixing errors was “very successful.” Some workers traced the challenges to Musk’s determination to launch vehicles faster than the industry norm by shortening the design process, skipping some pre-production testing, then making improvements on the fly. Such improvisation leads to high repair rates, employees said. For a March report called “Beyond the Hype,” J.D. Power found creaks, scratches and poor door alignment on new Model S and Model X vehicles, issues it blamed on the company’s lack of manufacturing experience. The overall quality of Tesla vehicles, it concluded, was “not competitive” within the luxury segment, lacking “precision and attention to detail.” Such sloppiness is a rarity in luxury brands such as Mercedes-Benz (DAIGn.DE) and BMW (BMWG.DE), said Kathleen Rizk, director of global automotive consulting at J.D. Power. “Those companies have been manufacturing forever,” she said. “They have stopgaps.” Tesla said its high customer satisfaction proves it is building the “safest and best-performing cars available today.” Reporting By Alexandria Sage; Editing by Peter Henderson and Marla Dickerson Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Would you mind occasional updates on your user experience? Because: " Tesla owners have complained on web forums of annoying rattles, buggy software and poor seals that allow rainwater to seep into the interior or trunk." Also, how far do you live from a Tesla service center? Did you buy brand new or used?
brand new and the service center is 2 hours away. I had read that the build quality is poor. I spoke to other owners, none of whom had any complaints. I thought, maybe they are fanboys. I have not had any complaints so far except I have trouble with the locking mechanism on the charge port. I will probably need to read the manual to understand the different colors. The car isn't perfect but my tesla is to my other cars what an iphone was to my blackberry circa 2010. When I get on the highway to come to work, I just put on auto-pilot. It navigates the construction and traffic. This evening I will turn on the heat before I leave my office. The car will be nice and toasty. It takes about 3 minutes to heat the car from 40 degrees to a roasty 75. And the controls are extremely intuitive. I figured almost everything out while having the car autodrive me home, the night I picked it up. Eventually someone will put everything that's in a tesla into an ICE car. They have to do it because at some point Tesla will figure out their manufacturing problems and will become a a major car company if they don't.
Cars might have a few issues, but there Tech is cutting Edge, Auto Drive been around for a few years, no 1 else is even close to this despite loads of work. Time will tell!!
There are 3 obviously but unfortunately completely separate things when discussing Tesla: 1. The cars. 2. The stock price. 3. The underlying financials and profitability of the company. Generally with a normal company these things more or less go together. With Tesla, not so much. One can like the car but still think that the stock is over valued. As Cramer says, buy the car not the stock, at this valuation. And there is the nifty gritty number crunching part of the accounting, that no Tesla is not even close to being profitable, and I am quoting our favorite magician, Elon. So I am not sure what value it adds to the price discussion when someone is raving about the car. The company is still mismanaged and it is still a cult stock with huge government subsidies and annual cash infusions. The real questions are, when would institutional stock ownership end and when will they not be able to raise cash anymore? Everything else is just noise...
Tesla the car is great. It will change the way we drive forever. Tivo changed the way we watch TV. Blackberry (and then the iphone) changed the way we use cell phones. These were incremental devices that spawned revolutions. Tesla the stock is a extremely long term out of the money call option on something that is only a vision. I would wager against this. (fwiw - I leased my tesla because if the company goes under and all the superchargers go dark, I can just hand my keys to the bondholders)
I am glad you mentioned BB and TIVO, excellent examples. At one point they were industry leaders and their stock prices reflected that topping at $150 and $70 respectively. BB went down below $10 in 4 short years and got stuck there, TIVO did the same in 19 months, although bounced back since, stuck between 15 and 20. They both had plenty of competitions later on and there was no reason why the high valuation should continue. I expect the exact same price action from Tesla...