Nice config. I've got the exact same coming my way (except no fog lights).
Well, if they ever actually ship it, that is.
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Delivery Delay - 2014 Model S
- Thread starter radrick
- Start date
Nice config. I've got the exact same coming my way (except no fog lights).
Well, if they ever actually ship it, that is.
chickensevil
Active Member
Based on the latest report from the street they should be back to 800 a week this week and ramping up quickly to 1000 a week within 4-6 weeks. So I wouldnt expect further delays after this week and wherever you are in line for that date to be fulfilled. It is very likely that people with deliveries toward the end of Sept will still retain their dates since they are going to try to keep as many people on this side of the 30th as possible. I wouldn't expect anyone to slip into Oct at this point. But if you do I would love to know since the implications would be worth discussing.
docrice
Member
I recently scheduled my delivery at the factory and originally was hoping for 10/1. However, I had to go with 9/30 because apparently there will be no deliveries taking place from 10/1 - 10/5. Not sure if that's news to anyone, but thought I'd throw that out there.
My DS hasn't changed the Sept. 24th date, so I think you are dead on. Now I can worry, instead, about getting an end-of-quarter special. :scared:
That's why engineers build these unexpected times into their estimates. If they've significantly overshot those estimates, they did a bad job.
Again, saying it's "not a suprise" is not reasonable. Obviously it was a big surprise, otherwise so many people wouldn't be getting their deliveries delayed. They thought they would be back up and running in time to make these deliveries, and they were wrong, they screwed up. I'm not personally upset at Tesla at this point, as I understand they aren't perfect.
To put it another way, if as you say "it is not a suprise" to Tesla, then they have been deliberately telling lies to their customers for the last month. I would prefer to think they hit some unexpected engineering issues, rather than that.
Edit: Please see my follow-up comments, as I have judged this post to be overly harsh.
Last edited:
chickensevil
Active Member
bonnie
I play a nice person on twitter.
'
"Deliberately telling lies" is a bit rough.
I agree regarding reasonable schedules. I've worked places with different schools of thought on that. I've always found it best to plan for most likely case, based on past experience (which usually plans in some worst case recovery time). But I've also worked for some large companies that absolutely insisted on best case scheduling, because they felt it kept people motivated. (Personally, I felt it had the opposite effect, with people always missing goals -- but you have to pick your battles.)
In any case, when I hear a line is shutting down to reconfigure & knowing what that means in terms of equipment validation, training, etc. ... I just automatically add extra time in. So not a surprise, no. To me. To take my words and infer then that Tesla must be deliberately have been telling lies to customers for the last month is a bit much.
chickensevil
Active Member
Bonnie, I'm sure he is just a bit upset overall with his situation and is venting it on the forums. It has to be frustrating to be someone who has to experience this kind of pushback, especially this stage in the game. I know, I know, some people had to wait forever for their cars and have received multiple pushbacks and delays... but not everyone is accustomed to "Tesla time" so I generally try to give people a break.
That being said, seanahan, it was a little far though to suggest that they are lying... Everything I have seen from Tesla would say the opposite of that for sure. I would suggest, you take a deep breath. I know it can be frustrating to have your car pushed back and have to wait a little longer. You will get it soon enough!
That being said, seanahan, it was a little far though to suggest that they are lying... Everything I have seen from Tesla would say the opposite of that for sure. I would suggest, you take a deep breath. I know it can be frustrating to have your car pushed back and have to wait a little longer. You will get it soon enough!
bonnie
I play a nice person on twitter.
Hah. If I didn't think that was the case, my reply would have been a bit more pointed.
Ah yes, the Spanish Theory of Value, where management figures maximum value can only be achieved by having workers completely crushed and miserable by an impossible deadline. Of course, this leads to engineers rolling their eyes, giving massively inflated estimates, and eventually moving on to a new company. Tesla is infamous for being way too optimistic in their schedules. Whether it's hopeless optimism or the Spanish Theory at work, I have no idea, but I'm certainly not surprised the factory rework took longer than Tesla was hoping.
Typically, dates are broadcast from somewhere up the chain and even if the folks in the trenches know it's impossible, their safest play is to keep their heads down and let it blow over since being the guy that stands up and says it's not going to happen gets you fired as being "negative", "not committed", or "not a team player". The folks talking to customers are generally relaying the expectations that have been given to them, so they're not intentionally lying though some may know in their gut that the dates they've been told to give aren't likely to be met. Unfortunately, that's how 95% of companies (mal)function, even some of the good ones.
"I love deadlines. I love the wooshing noise they make as they go by." -- Douglas Adams
bonnie
I play a nice person on twitter.
Hopeless optimism. There is a feeling of 'we can do anything, let's GO' at Tesla. I saw the guys who came in on the weekend and were over in the service area, finishing up the last details on cars coming off the factory floor, to keep the numbers up. They were in a great mood, excited about the line changes and how it would increase efficiency, excited to be part of the company. Absolutely no one was in the 'crushed and miserable' state (though I've seen that many times at other companies, absolutely).
chickensevil
Active Member
Ah, sometimes I have a hard time telling with you... perhaps it is just me.
Sadly, I work for a company that works like that... Well, I work for a company that works for a company that works like that... but still. I can say, I don't like it. I get asked all the time to drop everything for this or that priority 1 item, but yet they still expect me to somehow accomplish everything else on my plate without shifting any deadlines. Ahhhh Good times.
It might just be that they have an optimistic goal, but are just not mean when the goal is missed. Like hey, if we work really hard we might be able to hit this, but a miss doesn't result in being yelled at. Just guessing though. Have never worked in manufacturing so I can't even begin to think about what technique would work best for both productivity and morale.
I mean, imo, "best case scheduling" is very nearly morally equivalent to "deliberately telling lies". Especially given that as engineers (I am one myself), we all know that best case scheduling is not a sound method for time estimation. And telling customers the best case estimate is dishonest.
I was actually not saying that Tesla was lying. I was saying that Bonnie was implying that Tesla was lying. That distinction is important. (And I generally retract that statement, as obviously that's not what was implied. It's just that a cynical reading of the post could lead me to that.)
I would much rather think, Tesla engineers were slightly too optimistic and over-estimated the level of difficulty, even with a reasonable amount of slop built in to their calculations.
And yes, I'm venting a little bit (ok a lot). My delivery is scheduled for September 15, and from what I've read over the past few days, that seems <5% likely to actually happen. And Tesla is not saying anything as a whole, or to me specifically. I know why they aren't, for various business reasons, technical reasons, all sorts of good reasons, but all of those reasons are putting Tesla first over their customers, who've been patiently waiting (up until now) for 3 months for their cars, only to find out at the last minute that Tesla has known for weeks that they wouldn't deliver on time.
Now, there is still a lot of time left, and few details have come out regarding the factory slowdown, so I may be proven wrong in a few weeks. Apologies for the harshness of my statements, and we'll know soon if my concerns are serious or overblown.
I was actually not saying that Tesla was lying. I was saying that Bonnie was implying that Tesla was lying. That distinction is important. (And I generally retract that statement, as obviously that's not what was implied. It's just that a cynical reading of the post could lead me to that.)
I would much rather think, Tesla engineers were slightly too optimistic and over-estimated the level of difficulty, even with a reasonable amount of slop built in to their calculations.
And yes, I'm venting a little bit (ok a lot). My delivery is scheduled for September 15, and from what I've read over the past few days, that seems <5% likely to actually happen. And Tesla is not saying anything as a whole, or to me specifically. I know why they aren't, for various business reasons, technical reasons, all sorts of good reasons, but all of those reasons are putting Tesla first over their customers, who've been patiently waiting (up until now) for 3 months for their cars, only to find out at the last minute that Tesla has known for weeks that they wouldn't deliver on time.
Now, there is still a lot of time left, and few details have come out regarding the factory slowdown, so I may be proven wrong in a few weeks. Apologies for the harshness of my statements, and we'll know soon if my concerns are serious or overblown.
Well, it's usually done by crappy companies as a way to extract a ton of overtime. One book on estimating describes it as management extracting an insane date from engineers via the strategy of "what's the earliest date where you can't prove you won't be done".
Which is different than the hopelessly optimistic, which isn't "best case scheduling", but rather a true attempt at a realistic estimate and the folks involved just didn't realize how optimistic they were. You don't want to be hopeless optimistic since that obviously leads to problems, but it's certainly a less evil and more addressable problem than if the company is just plain evil as a cultural value.
bonnie
I play a nice person on twitter.
This I can agree with.
I think you may find things are back on track rather quickly. I have a tour tomorrow a.m. of the factory floor and will see the new dual lines for myself. Even though the majority of my career has been spent on the design and development side of the engineering line, I have a real love for manufacturing. It's where you can measure the real quality of the engineering work (or lack thereof!) and it can make or break a company in short order. I can't wait to see the changes. I've heard there are some major ones that have substantially increased efficiency. You may not be impacted at all.
I know people are a little on edge. You've all put a lot of money down for an incredible car, you've been waiting and reading everything possible you can read while you wait. Any delay seems like a lifetime. But it isn't. I won't pull the 'well guess how long Roadster | Model S Signature | Model X reservation holders waited|have waited' card, because you've all heard it. It doesn't mean your week or two goes by any faster. But if you put it in perspective, it really isn't that much time.
There are a couple of significant disadvantages to being delayed at the last minute, especially with regards to financing, putting the down payment together, organizing the trade-in, etc. that are not problematic when waiting or delaying for periods that are outside of 30 days. I'm more than happy to wait a few more weeks to get the quality product that I'm sure Tesla will deliver.
My problem is with the communication. If they are one week behind on manufacturing (seems reasonable given the notes here), then say they are 800 cars behind. If they ramp up, and work 25% harder to produce 1,000 cars a week, it will take them 4 weeks to catch up (4 * 1000 = 5 * 800). If they are two weeks behind (seems possible given what I've read on this forum), it would take them 8 weeks to catch up. However, in both of these scenarios, no individual is pushed back by more than two weeks, it will just take the 8 weeks for people to get their delivery on time. Plus, almost no one will actually know their delivery date 8 weeks out, so the only people who will "suffer" are those with delivery in late August and September. This is especially true if the "end of quarter goals" are a target, although I think people are reading too much into that.
If they were to come out and say something like the above, no one would be upset. However, I agree that from a business perspective, almost no company is ever going to give a detailed response as above, and they will simply assure us that "they are doing everything they can to make all of their deliveries as soon as possible, and please be patient with them". Hey, maybe they'll throw in a free parcel shelf for everyone who has to wait!
My problem is with the communication. If they are one week behind on manufacturing (seems reasonable given the notes here), then say they are 800 cars behind. If they ramp up, and work 25% harder to produce 1,000 cars a week, it will take them 4 weeks to catch up (4 * 1000 = 5 * 800). If they are two weeks behind (seems possible given what I've read on this forum), it would take them 8 weeks to catch up. However, in both of these scenarios, no individual is pushed back by more than two weeks, it will just take the 8 weeks for people to get their delivery on time. Plus, almost no one will actually know their delivery date 8 weeks out, so the only people who will "suffer" are those with delivery in late August and September. This is especially true if the "end of quarter goals" are a target, although I think people are reading too much into that.
If they were to come out and say something like the above, no one would be upset. However, I agree that from a business perspective, almost no company is ever going to give a detailed response as above, and they will simply assure us that "they are doing everything they can to make all of their deliveries as soon as possible, and please be patient with them". Hey, maybe they'll throw in a free parcel shelf for everyone who has to wait!
FYI my delivery is scheduled for September 5. They have admitted to me there "might" be a delay but don't (or won"t) know more. They have offered to provide a rental car if I am without wheels due to turning in my current lease car based on the original delivery date.
chickensevil
Active Member
I don't think that is an accurate description of how far "behind" they are. If they were truly 800 or 1600 cars behind that would be disastrous and would surely impact numbers. Their description of 1 or 2 weeks behind strikes me more that as they ramp up it will take them one or two weeks to clear the added backlog caused by the slow down. 800 assumes they weren't doing anything for the first week back online... which would just not be true... this has been confirmed through enough sources that they were building SOME cars during the first 2 weeks back online... we just don't know how much.
What we do know:
-It was less than 800 (as confirmed by the analyst report just recently put out) which would make it less output than pre shutdown.
-They are working to speed up to 800 and rapidly move to 1000 in order to clear out any delays since they must meet quarterly guidance (A miss here would be very bad)
-The latest reports from people from their DS states 1 week behind schedule.
-They will be back to 800 this week (sometime) and pushing 1000 in 3-5 weeks.
Some guesses
-If they were supposed to be at 800 out the gate and they are going to ramp up to 1000 in 3-5 weeks, lets go with 4 as a medium, a sequential ramp each week would be an extra 50 a week (800 this week, 850 the 1st, 900 the 2nd, 950 the 3rd, 1000 the 4th - which is the week starting Sept 22).
-One week behind, based on this assumed sequential ramp, means to me that everyone got shifted back 1 week and the ramp up will close that gap.
-Given that noone has had a shift in dates from ~15th on you can reasonably assume that they will be caught back up by then which would be the start of week 3 or at 900 a week run rate.
How we still meet guidance:
-9000 estimated produced for Q3.
-Pre-shutdown as far as I know they were running 5 days a week, at 160 cars a day giving 14 working days for 2,240.
-Startup on Aug 4th and lets just assume this week starts at 800 with my carry forward estimate of 1000 by week 5, that gives ~4,900 cars produced starting today through the end of the Quarter.
-Combined would equal 7,140 leaving our unknown 3 week gap in which they will need to have made 1860 cars, which is an average of 620 a week (note this would include Saturdays for right now, unclear how long they are going to be running 6 days)...
-while this would be "behind" in terms of starting back up at 800 from the get-go, they clearly still have wiggle room assuming they averaged 620 cars each week over the past week.
-To give a simple example, they could have been running at 560 week one, 600 week two, and 700 week three and STILL clear their guidance.
How this affects deliveries (you guys waiting for cars and getting delays):
So, it is very likely that they undershot what they had anticipated from the restart. However with some basic guesses you can see how they will catch back up to where they need to be. With such a rapid ramp the later Sept deliveries would likely remain unaffected. Also *some* people would reasonably still get their car on time, while others would be delayed. Tesla doesn't allocate their supply strictly based on time of order but takes many other things into account. If they were expecting 800 a week from the restart (this is unclear and just an assumption) then that would put them at present "behind" by 540 cars. Not nearly as dramatic and this is a delay back caused by three weeks of not quite fast enough production.
Given that they continue to tailor back the estimated deliveries for October/November timeframe they clearly are anticipating catching back up to present demand levels rather quickly from new orders. Hope this helps...
What we do know:
-It was less than 800 (as confirmed by the analyst report just recently put out) which would make it less output than pre shutdown.
-They are working to speed up to 800 and rapidly move to 1000 in order to clear out any delays since they must meet quarterly guidance (A miss here would be very bad)
-The latest reports from people from their DS states 1 week behind schedule.
-They will be back to 800 this week (sometime) and pushing 1000 in 3-5 weeks.
Some guesses
-If they were supposed to be at 800 out the gate and they are going to ramp up to 1000 in 3-5 weeks, lets go with 4 as a medium, a sequential ramp each week would be an extra 50 a week (800 this week, 850 the 1st, 900 the 2nd, 950 the 3rd, 1000 the 4th - which is the week starting Sept 22).
-One week behind, based on this assumed sequential ramp, means to me that everyone got shifted back 1 week and the ramp up will close that gap.
-Given that noone has had a shift in dates from ~15th on you can reasonably assume that they will be caught back up by then which would be the start of week 3 or at 900 a week run rate.
How we still meet guidance:
-9000 estimated produced for Q3.
-Pre-shutdown as far as I know they were running 5 days a week, at 160 cars a day giving 14 working days for 2,240.
-Startup on Aug 4th and lets just assume this week starts at 800 with my carry forward estimate of 1000 by week 5, that gives ~4,900 cars produced starting today through the end of the Quarter.
-Combined would equal 7,140 leaving our unknown 3 week gap in which they will need to have made 1860 cars, which is an average of 620 a week (note this would include Saturdays for right now, unclear how long they are going to be running 6 days)...
-while this would be "behind" in terms of starting back up at 800 from the get-go, they clearly still have wiggle room assuming they averaged 620 cars each week over the past week.
-To give a simple example, they could have been running at 560 week one, 600 week two, and 700 week three and STILL clear their guidance.
How this affects deliveries (you guys waiting for cars and getting delays):
So, it is very likely that they undershot what they had anticipated from the restart. However with some basic guesses you can see how they will catch back up to where they need to be. With such a rapid ramp the later Sept deliveries would likely remain unaffected. Also *some* people would reasonably still get their car on time, while others would be delayed. Tesla doesn't allocate their supply strictly based on time of order but takes many other things into account. If they were expecting 800 a week from the restart (this is unclear and just an assumption) then that would put them at present "behind" by 540 cars. Not nearly as dramatic and this is a delay back caused by three weeks of not quite fast enough production.
Given that they continue to tailor back the estimated deliveries for October/November timeframe they clearly are anticipating catching back up to present demand levels rather quickly from new orders. Hope this helps...
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