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Speculating about delivery dates

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widodh

Model S 100D and Y LR
Moderator
Jan 23, 2011
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Venlo, NL
Tesla states that they will start delivering the first Model S cars in the Summer of 2012, somewhere end of June, beginning of Juli.

On the official Tesla forum I found this thread: Projected Delivery Dates | Forums | Tesla Motors

A lot of speculation is going on there

michiganmodels | August 19, 2011

"I am Signature Reservation 249.

My Tesla rep said I can anticipate delivery by mid to late April 2012."

Ok, that is just the point of one person, but I have a theory:

Tesla is a new company, they did a great job with the Roadster, but the Model S is survive or die for them. They have shareholders which they have to satisfy, so if they don't make the promised delivery dates, those shareholders will be pissed off.

They want to produce 5000 cars in 2012, let's say they start at May 1st and produce 5 days a week. From May 1st until December 31st you are looking to somewhere around 150 working days. That would be 33 cars per day.

Production will slowly ramp up, starting with maybe 10 cars per day. 10 cars per day, that is 10 x $80,000 (Signature!) per day. Every day Tesla starts their production earlier they make $800,000. That would make shareholders happy and could give a boost to their value.

This is pure speculation, but my idea is that they will start earlier than they are announcing, but they want to have some margin in case something goes wrong. Delays are expensive here.


Again, I know, pure speculation, but hey, we have some time to kill, don't we?
 
I was wondering on the math myself. I do think that as of late, it has been Tesla's M.O. to under-promise and over-deliver, so we'll see. There have been a lot of conflicting reports, but I'll go with what Elon himself said: no later than the end of July to start DELIVERIES, so they'll need to start PRODUCING by the end of June to meet that I think.
 
Elon has stated he wants production cars in the hands of consumers by July 1st. Tesla opened their factory October 1st exactly one year after taking possession. My hunch is there will be an announcement of production start dates on March 26, this will be exactly 3 years from the announcement of the Model S.
Again, I know, pure speculation, but hey, we have some time to kill, don't we?
 
I heard 90 days (from Oct 1) to produce several beta 2s that'll then do the store tour. Beta 2s will be mostly for in-store display / test rides while the RCs that follow in the spring (read late March/early April) will be the ones for test drives.

So, my guess is that we are still looking at July+ for sigs to come off the line.
 
In the words of one Tesla Employee "all our necks are in the noose!" Elon has publicly stated more than once that deliveries will start no later than July. He knows this is NOT where you exaggerate. You underpromise and overdeliver. With that said, I don't think all but a handful of people will have their Model S' before July 31, 2012.

For further incentive, TSLA will announce their Q2 earnings the first week of August. If they don't announce at that time that deliveries have begun then the stock will sell off, perhaps substantially.

Elon has a lot more to lose financially than just the $1 million bet he made with that reporter. And of course all the key employees have lots of stock options so everybody has one goal at this point: hit the July 31, 2012 deadline.

In addition they have said they would sell 5,000 Model S sedans in 2012, so they've got to crank those out in Q3 & Q4. They're promising $600 million in revenue in 2012. That won't happen if they only sell 4,000. As General Production #3062 I am fully expecting that in December I can get my Model S. Merry Christmas to me!:biggrin:
 
That's one of the issues I have with a public company, every decision revolves around stock impact. If they're running short on time, there will be a huge incentive to have the initial cars rushed to production, which will look great on the PR announcement, but suck later for those customers that got lemons before production line bugs were worked out. Tesla, like any public company, may very well feel the negative impact of that is better than not hitting the artificial July deadline.

The car should be shipped when it's done, not based on other criteria. They should have increasingly accurate estimates, and be able to release those, as they get closer (2nd half 2012->mid 2012->early summer 2012->July->July 17th).
 
I've been very suspicious, looking at the schedule, that a lot of slack time has been left in to deal with "trouble". Or to put it another way, the schedule is designed to be accelerated if everything goes right.

I would expect, therefore, that:
(1) The date with an "expected" number of things going wrong is June 30, so "second quarter" as promised;
(2) The worst-case date is July 31, but that's only if something goes badly wrong;
(3) If everything goes absolutely perfectly they'll be delivering in April.

A three or four month difference between the best-case and worst-case scenarios is actually pretty short and I have no doubt they have both best-case and worst-case scenarios.
 
I've been very suspicious, looking at the schedule, that a lot of slack time has been left in to deal with "trouble". Or to put it another way, the schedule is designed to be accelerated if everything goes right.

I would expect, therefore, that:
(1) The date with an "expected" number of things going wrong is June 30, so "second quarter" as promised;
(2) The worst-case date is July 31, but that's only if something goes badly wrong;
(3) If everything goes absolutely perfectly they'll be delivering in April.

A three or four month difference between the best-case and worst-case scenarios is actually pretty short and I have no doubt they have both best-case and worst-case scenarios.
So we are basically saying the same.

We expect that they can deliver earlier, but they just want to have a buffer in case something goes wrong down the road.

Let's hope nothing goes wrong! The sooner the S gets on the public road, the better!