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

[Cosmacelf]

It's interesting going back in time to remember when the Model X prototype was built and shown. It was all before the Model S even shipped. At the time, I can kind of forgive Elon for going a bit crazy with the Model X (falcon wing doors) since he had no idea how much of a hit he had on his hands with the Model S. I think he reasoned he needed the extra pizzaz of the doors to get traction in the SUV space.

However, by the end of 2013, it was abundantly obvious that the Model S was a hit just by being a rather ordinary sedan that had great range, acceleration, and a Supercharger network.

So almost two years ago, you could have dialed back the Model X feature set to be a falcon wing SUV with great range, acceleration, 7 seats, storage, and the Supercharger network.

But no, somehow we ended up with the world's biggest and hardest to fabricate windshield. And sculptural beauty second row seats that don't fold down. And no traditional SUV convenience features like 120V receptacles. And a cooling system that that may or may not be underpowered for towing (Tesla doesn't even know).

Bottom line - the Model X hasn't been a failure by any stretch whatsoever, but I would say they made a few mistakes.

 

[AudubonB]

Thit is not a statement because thit is not a word in the English language.

 

[Blastphemy]

The sales tax (and certain other fees) paid on a car is based on where it's registered, not where the owner picks it up.

Not true in California.

That is true if you buy the car in California and register it in California.

Having bought two cars in California for our parents in Nevada, I can assure you that it's exactly how the sales tax works.

One dealership charged me CA sales tax, so I had to go through a whole bureaucratic spiderweb of paying the NV sales tax and getting the CA sales tax reimbursed.

The second dealership agreed to not charge me sales tax at all, so all I had to do was pay the NV sales tax when the car was registered there. I had to fill out a form at the dealership and then in NV, but I don't remember what they were.

 

[FredTMC]

Bonnie tweeted today that her VIN has been assigned. Nice! Bonnie, please let us know when car has entered production. Hopefully this week!

 

[MsElectric]

It's interesting going back in time to remember when the Model X prototype was built and shown. It was all before the Model S even shipped. At the time, I can kind of forgive Elon for going a bit crazy with the Model X (falcon wing doors) since he had no idea how much of a hit he had on his hands with the Model S. I think he reasoned he needed the extra pizzaz of the doors to get traction in the SUV space.

However, by the end of 2013, it was abundantly obvious that the Model S was a hit just by being a rather ordinary sedan that had great range, acceleration, and a Supercharger network.

So almost two years ago, you could have dialed back the Model X feature set to be a falcon wing SUV with great range, acceleration, 7 seats, storage, and the Supercharger network.

But no, somehow we ended up with the world's biggest and hardest to fabricate windshield. And sculptural beauty second row seats that don't fold down. And no traditional SUV convenience features like 120V receptacles. And a cooling system that that may or may not be underpowered for towing (Tesla doesn't even know).

Bottom line - the Model X hasn't been a failure by any stretch whatsoever, but I would say they made a few mistakes.

Yikes. You do realize the fact that if Tesla did not push the boundaries the company would not exist now right? Tesla has brand recognition on par with Porsche and Mercedes Benz and the reason for that is Musk's vision to push the limits of design and technology.

Yes, it is hard to build the Model X but they have the world's finest engineers working on the problem. Yes, it might take Tesla a while to ramp up production but when they do, you do realize that none of their competitors will have anything remotely as inspiring or sophisticated to sell right?

Bottom line is Musk is not trying to build the next Toyota. He's trying to build a car better than what the rest of the world can build and that requires bold leaps and taking chances. My bet is that Tesla's bold bets will pay off quite handsomely in the long term as they increasingly leave their competitors scratching their heads.

As for the 120V outlets, that will be about the easiest update for Tesla to implement once they get the rest of the production ramped up.

I disagree the Model X has been a failure by any stretch of the imagination. Just about the entire auto industry would love to have a 1 year back log of deposits from customers who want to buy a $100K+ car.

 

[wdolson]

Yikes. You do realize the fact that if Tesla did not push the boundaries the company would not exist now right? Tesla has brand recognition on par with Porsche and Mercedes Benz and the reason for that is Musk's vision to push the limits of design and technology.

Yes, it is hard to build the Model X but they have the world's finest engineers working on the problem. Yes, it might take Tesla a while to ramp up production but when they do, you do realize that none of their competitors will have anything remotely as inspiring or sophisticated to sell right?

Bottom line is Musk is not trying to build the next Toyota. He's trying to build a car better than what the rest of the world can build and that requires bold leaps and taking chances. My bet is that Tesla's bold bets will pay off quite handsomely in the long term as they increasingly leave their competitors scratching their heads.

As for the 120V outlets, that will be about the easiest update for Tesla to implement once they get the rest of the production ramped up.

I disagree the Model X has been a failure by any stretch of the imagination. Just about the entire auto industry would love to have a 1 year back log of deposits from customers who want to buy a $100K+ car.

The problem if the Model X is so difficult to build, it will likely have a lot of maintenance problems. There are already some people saying the Model S is unreliable, they don't need a car with an even worse reputation.

 

[jasonsc]

The problem if the Model X is so difficult to build, it will likely have a lot of maintenance problems. There are already some people saying the Model S is unreliable, they don't need a car with an even worse reputation.

I wouldn't confuse hard to build versus hard to source parts. Everything is hard to build the first time - until they figure it out and create a good workflow, which I believe they can do. Getting parts to put into that workflow process is much harder - especially if they are pushing the edge of what is commercially available, such as the 'large' windshield.

-jason

 

[wdolson]

I wouldn't confuse hard to build versus hard to source parts. Everything is hard to build the first time - until they figure it out and create a good workflow, which I believe they can do. Getting parts to put into that workflow process is much harder - especially if they are pushing the edge of what is commercially available, such as the 'large' windshield.

-jason

If he's talking about hard to source parts, that's a supply problem that can be solved. However, I think he was saying the car is technically difficult to build. History shows that any complex machine that is difficult to build also has maintenance issues.

In World War II, the US Navy had two fighters, the F6F Hellcat and the F4U Corsair. The Corsair has the reputation today and it was a little bit better than the Hellcat, but the Navy went with the Hellcat for carrier use and gave the Corsairs to the Marines. Why? The Hellcat was much simpler to build and turned out to be much more reliable in the real world. The Corsair had some novel engineering that made it difficult to build and it had a lot of failures as a result. For carriers where having as many planes as possible ready every day, the Hellcat was the better choice. The Corsair had the reputation with the public and it was much more reliable than the jets coming into service after the war, so it was what stayed on in service through the Korean War, even though the Hellcat was the most successful aircraft at it's job during the war (best aerial victory to loss ratio of any mass produced fighter).

The Model X has a fair bit of new tech in it, the falcon doors being the most dramatic. However the middle row seats do something seats don't normally do, the front doors open on their own and close on their own, it has an advanced air filtration system, and the sensors in the falcon doors are new basic technology. There are a lot of areas where new tech can fail. If they are having difficulty with the physical manufacturing, those are all areas where they can get failures in the field. Especially when real world people start abusing them.

In my years in the engineering world I have concluded there is no such thing as fool proof, only better and better fool resistance. When you think you have thought of all the things a user can do, somebody will think of something you forgot and it will likely break something.

 

[gjunky]

In my years in the engineering world I have concluded there is no such thing as fool proof, only better and better fool resistance. When you think you have thought of all the things a user can do, somebody will think of something you forgot and it will likely break something.

Very true in the Software business as well...

 

[wdolson]

Very true in the Software business as well...

I'm an Electronic Engineer who has spent most of his career writing software and firmware. In short, "Yup!!!"

 

[simplejack]

Yikes. You do realize the fact that if Tesla did not push the boundaries the company would not exist now right? Tesla has brand recognition on par with Porsche and Mercedes Benz and the reason for that is Musk's vision to push the limits of design and technology.

Yes, it is hard to build the Model X but they have the world's finest engineers working on the problem. Yes, it might take Tesla a while to ramp up production but when they do, you do realize that none of their competitors will have anything remotely as inspiring or sophisticated to sell right?

Bottom line is Musk is not trying to build the next Toyota. He's trying to build a car better than what the rest of the world can build and that requires bold leaps and taking chances. My bet is that Tesla's bold bets will pay off quite handsomely in the long term as they increasingly leave their competitors scratching their heads.

As for the 120V outlets, that will be about the easiest update for Tesla to implement once they get the rest of the production ramped up.

I disagree the Model X has been a failure by any stretch of the imagination. Just about the entire auto industry would love to have a 1 year back log of deposits from customers who want to buy a $100K+ car.

Deposits <> Sales

Also, if you only make 50 a year it's pretty easy to sell out....

 

[JohnSnowNW]

Deposits <> Sales

Also, if you only make 50 a year it's pretty easy to sell out....

This is the argument I've used for the Mirai. Doesn't really fit the X though...since clearly they plan on ramping up the Model X...and there are tens of thousands of reservations.

 

[supersnoop]

That is true if you buy the car in California and register it in California.

The state of California requires sales tax to be collected on any car delivered in California. There are dealers who will pick you up at the airport and drive you to the Nevada state line to deliver the car to you if you won't be registering in California.

 

[markb1]

The state of California requires sales tax to be collected on any car delivered in California. There are dealers who will pick you up at the airport and drive you to the Nevada state line to deliver the car to you if you won't be registering in California.

Did you intend to reply to me? I'm only saying that if you buy a car in California, and you register it in California, you pay your local sales tax, not the dealer's. (Sales taxes varies across the state, because counties and cities tack their own sales tax on top of the state's.

I think I may have glossed over the context of the message I was replying to, though.

 

[Matias]

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.

Is it OK now to say there is a hiatus?

 

[Cosmacelf]

Tomorrow will mark 3 weeks ... counts as a hiatus in my books.

 

[MrBoylan]

Tomorrow will mark 3 weeks ... counts as a hiatus in my books.

You say "hiatus," I say "slow ramp." Like 1% incline. It's all a matter of perspective.

 

[gjunky]

You say "hiatus," I say "slow ramp." Like 1% incline. It's all a matter of perspective.

I think we need a second data point to call it a ramp :smile:

 

[Quant]

I think we need a second data point to call it a ramp :smile:

hahaha...yes! You da 'math man' correcting the moth man prophecy ?

We really have close to zero info re current X production rate..... I think even Elon will say on the Nov CC that there are too many variables, and I suspect they will only give guidance for the S for this 4 Th quarter.....because even they don't know and will try to do their best. I expect guidance to be lowered to maybe 48 k on the low end, based on just the S.

 

[Fiver]

hahaha...yes! You da 'math man' correcting the moth man prophecy ?

We really have close to zero info re current X production rate..... I think even Elon will say on the Nov CC that there are too many variables, and I suspect they will only give guidance for the S for this 4 Th quarter.....because even they don't know and will try to do their best. I expect guidance to be lowered to maybe 48 k on the low end, based on just the S.

The stock will take a bit of a beating short term I bet on that. If no X's are off the line by earnings (and it looks like that might be the case) that won't be good for TSLA. Perhaps they are preparing inventories though to release the first Sig batch right before the earnings call to say "Whelp, it took longer then expected but we are delivering customer X's."

Then again, they still haven't delivered all the founders X's yet either so who knows when Sig's will start.