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Night Shift?!?

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Looks like Tesla plans on running a night shift sooner rather then later. I was surprised to see this because we were told production numbers and capacity based off of one line, one shift a day. This looks to be good news in my eyes as it means Tesla is doing everything in its power to meet production goals. A second shift, assuming training staff goes smoothly, seems to be the easiest way to increase production.

Is this old news? Have others seen signs of night shift production? I know people have reported seeing the factory's parking lot full at 6pm over this past weekend...

http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=tesla+motors+night+shift&l=CA


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Here is the mention of the factory parking lot:

[email protected]
| SEPTEMBER 3, 2012
Drove by Fremont last tuesday, abour 6 pm. Lots of workers cars in the parking lot. Allways a good sign. Someday I hope to drive by and see the freeway jammed with semi after semi hauling shiny cars to their new owners.
http://www.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/current-production-run-rate?page=7

 
I can pitch in on the weekends! :) Seriously! Tesla, ping me if you need more hands on deck.

I'm sure that much as Tesla would like the price of volunteer labor, production requirements make it more likely that they'll pay people.

Hiring now suggests they are planning to increase production. However, training takes a while. It's also not necessarily a really good sign: it could be that they can't get the production rate up high enough without an additional shift.
 
If you look at the careers section of Tesla Motors website, there are several night positions available. 6am-6pm Monday -Thursday(Friday morning ending) Looks like a mixture of Full time, Part Time and Contract. Could be they are looking for full ramp up to 20,000 cars a year and get out the first 5000 by the end of the year. I see it as a positive step overall.
 
I'm sure that much as Tesla would like the price of volunteer labor, production requirements make it more likely that they'll pay people.

Hiring now suggests they are planning to increase production. However, training takes a while. It's also not necessarily a really good sign: it could be that they can't get the production rate up high enough without an additional shift.

It will be months before these folks get hired, trained and vetted to start operating the production line. I wrote on another thread somewhere that if I was building a team I'd want 5-6 months from the moment I started running ads before I'd count on them to operate at a decent level of productivity.

I've never run a factory, but I can't imagine Tesla could get a shift up and running much quicker than that. Even assuming they work wonders and get a shift up and running in 3-4 months you are still talking December or January before they start producing anything. So it doesn't have anything to do with the current ramp, and will have little or no impact on getting ~5,000 units out by the end of the year.

But it is VERY consistent with Elon's statement that the production rate by the end of the year would be closer to 30k units/year than to 20k units/year so that they can start to put a dent in the waiting list and whittle it down to a 3 month wait. If new orders continue to accelerate as Model S gets more publicity and possibly wins awards it might become necessary to install a third shift.
 
It will be months before these folks get hired, trained and vetted to start operating the production line. I wrote on another thread somewhere that if I was building a team I'd want 5-6 months from the moment I started running ads before I'd count on them to operate at a decent level of productivity.

I've never run a factory, but I can't imagine Tesla could get a shift up and running much quicker than that. Even assuming they work wonders and get a shift up and running in 3-4 months you are still talking December or January before they start producing anything. So it doesn't have anything to do with the current ramp, and will have little or no impact on getting ~5,000 units out by the end of the year.

But it is VERY consistent with Elon's statement that the production rate by the end of the year would be closer to 30k units/year than to 20k units/year so that they can start to put a dent in the waiting list and whittle it down to a 3 month wait. If new orders continue to accelerate as Model S gets more publicity and possibly wins awards it might become necessary to install a third shift.

Interesting. I doubt they'd want to do that; "swing shift" differential pay is pretty large.

Also, what will happen when the early backlog of reservations is "burned off". The electric car enthusiasts are frontloading the orders. I suspect the rate of orders will settle down -- and currently it is only running at a rate equivalent to 10,000/ year. Even with model X added, they will probably end up with a sustainable rate under or close to 20,000 a year. They might have to lay off the night shift, which would suck.

Or (after the early backlog of reservations is burned off) they could simply run both shifts at a lower production rate, I suppose; that would cost more, but would probably have a lower rate of factory defects. That is perhaps more likely.

Aircraft and rail vehicle companies actually try to maintain a backlog. I think this is a sensible policy for Tesla given its financial situation. Building up more than a very small inventory could be deadly.
 
Also, what will happen when the early backlog of reservations is "burned off". The electric car enthusiasts are frontloading the orders. I suspect the rate of orders will settle down -- and currently it is only running at a rate equivalent to 10,000/ year. Even with model X added, they will probably end up with a sustainable rate under or close to 20,000 a year. They might have to lay off the night shift, which would suck.

Oh no, Neroden. Rate of reservations will increase.

While I agree that EV enthusiasts are many of the early reservation holders, that by no means implies that the reservation rate will slow down after they're "burned off". We're on the front end of the Technology Adoption Lifecycle.

Think of all the things holding back reservations now: can't test drive the car...6-8 month wait...many can't touch the car or see it in person...uncertainty (not many cars out there)...no TV/radio/print advertising, etc. No Supercharger network.

As word spreads, people learn about the car, chargers are deployed, marketing increases, more stores get built, the car's "luxury" options evolve, etc....reservations will increase. The only thing that would stop that is if a major issue is discovered. I can't imagine a likely scenario where the night shift would need to be laid off anytime in the next few years. As Elon mentioned in the Q2 financial call, the Model S is production limited--not demand limited--and will be for quite awhile.

Look at the dozens and dozens of reviews that came out. Not one of them panned the car. Even Jalopnik seems to be implicitly accepting that they were wrong about the Model S.

Anyway, I think Tesla's safe in hiring a night shift. They know way more about product demand than we do.
 
Oh no, Neroden. Rate of reservations will increase.
You could be right. The discovery that the car actually costs $60,470 minimum might pull the rate of reservations down, but I certainly can't see any *other* major hurdles to increased reservations. The bad behavior I've seen from Tesla is the sort which causes lawsuits, not the sort which stops people from buying a car....

Anyway, I think Tesla's safe in hiring a night shift. They know way more about product demand than we do.

You're probably right. On the other hand, Tesla has shown consistent optimism bias....