Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

I'm starting to think the X still isn't ready...

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.

Fiver

Active Member
Apr 10, 2015
2,190
2,110
Utah
So the "unveiling" was kind of a let down information wise. The 6 founder cars that were delivered really only had to be out the door before Tesla's self imposed deadline of Q3.

So many questions, so little answers. I'm really starting to get the impression that this whole thing was thrown together at the last second just to meet the deadline. It seems like the X needs another few months in the oven before it's done. Otherwise why aren't the floodgates open now with information? People seem pretty let down about the less then stellar interior. While the new nose is a radical departure in design language, at the same time I see it and think "in 3.5 years that's all you could come up with?" (I'm not hating on the nose, it's just... bland)

I know another official delay would really have hindered TSLA, but I really think they need another year to refine this vehicle. It worries me that if they had this much time on the X, and it still came out half baked, what does that say about the 3?

I guess the real answer to my question will be how many ship before the end of the year. If it's only a few, then yea, it needed more time.
 
I tend to agree it shows signs of being unfinished. It seems like they got stuck in mud with the second row seats. But here it is and I'm confident Tesla will finish off the rough edges as they expand into full scale production once a few Sig drivers start to report the rattles and squeaks and pushback on the slow, beeping doors, etc.
I didn't see any dealbreakers, but like many, I need to see Autopilot at least in beta with no prospect of needing additional cameras or hardware retrofit sensors, etc.
In terms of design, there's some clunkiness and gaps, but overall, it's as good or better than the Model S, though i think the cable conduit in the windshield should have been embedded in the glass, but I guess that's just expensive for now. Seems to me a single power-over-ethernet cable could carry all the power and data you could possibly ever need at the cameras and sensors snugged into that mirror location. It could have been better.
As ever, amazing technological and engineering inventions probably go underappreciated, but at least to some of us, it's an impressive leap forward for Tesla.
Overall, from 20 feet, the car is marvelous. The exterior finish quality is the same as a Model S. The nose is a bit "unfinished" in white, but otherwise, impressive, distinctive and all but unique. A leap forward from the Model S schnoz. I think I'll stick to basic black at this point. Maybe in the
Inside, there's some gaps and missing pieces, a bit of seat frame covered in a piece of leather looks like something half way through development where a molding (this is a "kick" surface) probably iterated to catch up to a design change and wasn't ready, so wrap a bit of leather around it. That kind of thing. I'd say it's good to have the first 2000+ guinea p... I mean prestigious signature owners with all the cachet $20K can buy ... : ) ... help the factory roll out their field beta. Doors were a little less than sci-fi movie smooth, and slow to finish closing, the bongs and chimes had me reaching for the "off" settings (not found) and the autopilot, self-parking, remote drive features were conspicuously absent. I have to admit the optimist in me expected the first car to roll on stage behind Elon would be driverless.
I trust all these loose ends will be neatly tied off in the Sig cars and the production cars will be neatly finished with all expected features in production completion.
I guess Tesla just plain couldn't find the insurance company willing to underwrite the risk of the car taking the opportunity to drive off the front of the stage and plow through the audience in an unstoppable figure 8 and wipe out the first 2000 customer orders ... and the whole company for that matter, if ever a driverless Tesla is parking itself and suddenly decides to go on a rampage commute all by itself.
 
IF it IS ready, why are they not delivering Signature cars at the moment? Why is there this undefined hiatus? As far as I know, there are no confirmed delivery times for Sigs. If it was ready cars would be rolling out to owners.
 
People seem pretty let down about the less then stellar interior.

Having sat in one last night, I thought the interior looked great, good fit and finish, nice materials. I thought it was cohesive, looked great and the seats felt great, at least for the short ride. I am not one of those looking for a folding 2nd row, so I would have happily taken one home yesterday.
 
IF it IS ready, why are they not delivering Signature cars at the moment? Why is there this undefined hiatus? As far as I know, there are no confirmed delivery times for Sigs. If it was ready cars would be rolling out to owners.
What hiatus? As of yesterday all 1200 US signature holders have been asked to configure and order the car. This happened in 3 waves, the first week being 150ish people, the last was for about 500 I think. You can follow up and count them on the Model X thread. We will see if there are more sigs outside the US or US production owners being invited next week, but it would be completely rational if they skipped a week or two until the first big(ish) volumes of sigs start production to see if everything works out as planned on the production lines.
 
^ Why Bonnie has no confirmed delivery time? They delivered 5 cars on stage 29th (of which one went to Elon) as we all know. Why no deliveries 30th, why no cars today or tomorrow? There is undefined hiatus.
 
Last edited:
^ Why Bonnie has no confirmed delivery time?

They were very clear on the earnings call that they expect a very shallow ramp as they learned to build the car and the supply chain ramps up. Not sure where there is evidence of a hiatus--this seems more like FUD on your part unless you can provide some evidence otherwise. As its the end of the qtr, I would guess they are prioritizing getting Model Ses out the door.

Sitting in the Fremont delivery center while Supercharging the last couple of weeks, comments from the tour guides indicate that MXes are being built and they have been especially persnickety about having phones out.
 
I just ask simple question; why are they not delivering the cars.

1. They said it will be a shallow ramp. It was clear that they will not deliver 10.000 cars as of today
2. We were promised an exponential ramp-up. Elon said, that depending on the where the quarters intersect with the curve we will see quite "big jumps" week to week / month to month
3. If they really don't deliver cars (not sure if that's the case) - who knows? It was a missing USB cable that held-up the Model S at some point. Then there was a truck from Mexico who got delayed at the border, then there were tyres that had to be flown in from Europe. Then there was the supplier who couldn't deliver the next gen seats - it is a bloody big car with a lot of parts. Anything from a port strike to a power-outage, to a supplier in trouble could cause minor delays.

The fact is: we have seen some cars. We know that Tesla can ramp production (that was a doubt with the Model S, now we know they can do it). We know that Tesla time is slightly different from other times.

I suggest we relax and wait for a week or two and see what happens. I don't think all is perfectly smooth with the Model X but I also doubt there is a bigger issue that holds things up.
 
I just ask simple question; why are they not delivering the cars.

They are delivering cars, I saw them deliver 6 the other day.

They probably spent the last few weeks putting those 6 through a ton of testing and quality control. I'm sure they scrambled to get that all done for the event, because that's how the world works. Right now they are probably doing the same thing to the initial sig cars. They may be waiting for a last few parts, or fixing a couple of things that didn't turn out right. This shouldn't be a cause for concern, you're never going to start up a brand new product and just start making 1000 of them a day.
 
...though i think the cable conduit in the windshield should have been embedded in the glass, but I guess that's just expensive for now. Seems to me a single power-over-ethernet cable could carry all the power and data you could possibly ever need at the cameras and sensors snugged into that mirror location. It could have been better.
....

You know, I saw the same thing, and now I can't get over it. I mean, with all the wireless gizmos and gadgets in that car, I WIRED conduit running smack down the middle of the windshield is so "unprofessional". Carmakers have been embedding wires into autoglass since the 70s' (think AM Radio antenna) - That mirror pod just needs power -a few milliamps worth- which can be easily be provided by means of two small embedded conductors that are nearly invisible. All of the telemetry data from the mirror pod can be beamed back to receivers in the A pillars - heck it doesn't even need to be RF! There are a number of established short distance high speed protocols available, or invent their own.
Hey Tesla, if you're listening, I'd be more than happy to design a more elegant solution for you. You can contract hire me!
 
I get the enthusiasm of some here, but I think it's worth looking back to the Model S rollout. After founders (which also happened right before the end of a quarter) there was something like a 1.5-2 month lull before signature deliveries began. So yes, they delivered a few cars to founders the other night, but that doesn't mean they're ready to deliver cars to outsiders.

I'm a fairly low number (not as low as Bonnie) and no one has any clue when they'll actually begin rolling out. At this point, my gut says late November, early December sounds about right.
 
... So yes, they delivered a few cars to founders the other night, but that doesn't mean they're ready to deliver cars to outsiders...

I see what you did there. ;)

Yeah, shades of mid-to-late 2012 all over again. Back then, Tesla was still finding its feet getting a proper production line going; they were in survival mode at that time.

This time, in my very subjective opinion, they are trying to build a great but a much more complex piece of machinery in the X so, will have teething pains of a different kind.

As a Tesla cheerleader (owner, stockholder, fanboy, etc.), would I have preferred that they went to market with a simple, 'traditional' CUV frame wrapped around a Model S's entrails underneath? Yes. It would have been far easier maybe to execute on that. But, hey, this is Tesla, pushing the envelope on design, function and subjectively, aesthetic.
 
I hope people don't take this the wrong way, but knowing what I now know about Tesla I would definitely wait before jumping in to a Model X. The Reason? Tesla iterates very quickly and not on a "model year" basis like most other manufacturers. I expect there will be a slew of feature improvements over the first year to year and a half of production.

I pre-ordered my Model S over a year before production and only opted out of a Sig because when it was discovered the car wasn't NAFTA eligible, the extra import duties pushed the cost above my pain threshold. I asked Tesla about some (in my opinion) "missing" features and was led to believe they would be retrofitted later. I was told things like lighted vanity mirrors (that the Get Amp'd test drive car had) and parking sensors would come. It's not that I'm unhappy with my Model S, but rather I though upgrades and improvements would come to the car annually, not in a continuous stream. If I'd known that then, I might have waited until a couple of the then missing features had shown up.
 
You know, I saw the same thing, and now I can't get over it. I mean, with all the wireless gizmos and gadgets in that car, I WIRED conduit running smack down the middle of the windshield is so "unprofessional". Carmakers have been embedding wires into autoglass since the 70s' (think AM Radio antenna) - That mirror pod just needs power -a few milliamps worth- which can be easily be provided by means of two small embedded conductors that are nearly invisible. All of the telemetry data from the mirror pod can be beamed back to receivers in the A pillars - heck it doesn't even need to be RF! There are a number of established short distance high speed protocols available, or invent their own.
Hey Tesla, if you're listening, I'd be more than happy to design a more elegant solution for you. You can contract hire me!

As a general rule, you do not wirelessly integrate safety critical systems for aesthetic reasons... especially when latency is a priority.
 
@mknox, I get where you are coming from but, if everyone were to wait (and not jumped in early as the likes of you and I did with the Model S), then, Tesla wouldn't have survived at all to do the refinements that they did over time.

Yep, someone has to be first, and it's usually me. I still have my 1st gen iPad that I bought the day it came out lying around here somewhere :smile: I think Tesla has enough X reservations built on the success of the Model S that this isn't a problem and, of course, they still have S reservations coming in too. I was really thinking of the guy/gal who is "on the fence" about this and might be happier seeing some concerns addressed first.