Wiki Model S Delivery Update

[timdorr]

So I checked in with my delivery specialist again today and he confirmed my revised additional 4-6 week delay, moving my window to 11/30-12/14. My take on this is that it has nothing to do with parts shortages or quality issues on my car and everything to do with the fact that I'm the last known Sig holder with a number of S1299.

I think your delivery specialist is either mistaken, or they are being *very* liberal with the dates. Given that they've produced 359 cars as of 10/3 (Elon's blog post) and are in the 100-200/week range right now, they would have to really slow down production to have it take that long. Basically, 80-90 cars/week. And since we've heard reports of VIN's in the 400-650 range currently on the line, it would actually have to be even worse.

Is it possibly something to do with your location or another factor with your delivery? I'm wondering if they heard the news about the 4-6 week delay and applied it to your dates without even thinking about it.

 

[v12 to 12v]

I think your delivery specialist is either mistaken, or they are being *very* liberal with the dates. Given that they've produced 359 cars as of 10/3 (Elon's blog post) and are in the 100-200/week range right now, they would have to really slow down production to have it take that long. Basically, 80-90 cars/week. And since we've heard reports of VIN's in the 400-650 range currently on the line, it would actually have to be even worse.

Is it possibly something to do with your location or another factor with your delivery? I'm wondering if they heard the news about the 4-6 week delay and applied it to your dates without even thinking about it.

I'm beginning to wonder if this is a case of one of the 28 cars that George B. said would be late.

 

[bmek]

What is the 'Delivery Process' for Production Model S?

I understand that the Model S Signatures would be delivered by a Delivery Specialist at any location that a Signature Reservation holder requested.

How is the delivery process for a Production Model S supposed to work? Do they ship it to a retail store? Is it shipped to your house? Are there centralized delivery locations?

I read the reservation agreement but have not read a purchase agreement - what does the purchase agreement state regarding the delivery process, logistics and specifics?

Please post your thoughts on what has been described to you by Tesla.

(I'm trying to determine how the actual delivery logistics for Production Model S may speed up/slow down deliveries through to 12/31.)

Thanks all.

 

[weccman]

haha..good luck. I had a crazy dream where i got my S last night. It was all messed up though, I couldn't find my key fob. when I did, it was linked to my little RC model S. There were a bunch of other strange parts to the dream including my S being something of a segway with an aluminum cage that did 0-60 in way too fast for the form of the vehicle!

...and i don't expect mine until Christmas

Well I had six pretty good hours of dreamless sleep. took the Amtrak train from Sacramento to Emeryville, and got a ride from a friend from there to the factory. After a great tour of the Model S-making machine in progress, we finally arrived at the delivery bay and in exchange for some serious coin, we received our beautiful silver bullet. I have pictures and have tried repeatedly to upload them here, to no avail. Perhaps someone can give us some advice.

The drive back home was wonderful, but one thing that was odd was that the car did not want to recognize either of our i-pods when we plugged them into the USB ports. We were able to play music through blue tooth from my wife's i-phone and also received a call from our daughter while driving home, which was fun, but my plan to hear Brahms' Variations on the Theme by Hadyn as our first music was thwarted. Oh well. Our delivery specialist was great to us, spending much more time, I am sure, with us that with most customers. I have to admit to being slightly technology challenged, and I felt a bit overwhelmed with how much there is to learn, but fortunately, for the most part, the menus are pretty intuitive. I liked the navigation system very much because it was both clear and unobtrusive, especially because I could just mute the voice directions while driving and just watch the screen on the dashboard. At one point, I failed to make a turn because a phone call came in just as we were about to do that. I decided it was clear that I could still get where I needed to be without following the original directions so I continued, and within a half a minute, the system had reprogrammed our route to the track we were on instead of second guessing my decision. I liked that.

- - - Updated - - -

I think your delivery specialist is either mistaken, or they are being *very* liberal with the dates. Given that they've produced 359 cars as of 10/3 (Elon's blog post) and are in the 100-200/week range right now, they would have to really slow down production to have it take that long. Basically, 80-90 cars/week. And since we've heard reports of VIN's in the 400-650 range currently on the line, it would actually have to be even worse.

Is it possibly something to do with your location or another factor with your delivery? I'm wondering if they heard the news about the 4-6 week delay and applied it to your dates without even thinking about it.

All I can say is that my contract said October, my delivery window was October 5-19, and delivery took place today on the 18th. (You can update the spreadsheet which says the 19th for Sig 667, Timdorr.)
However, before I got the call last night, I too was pretty freaked by George's 4 to 6 week delay bombshell. Fortunately, that clearly does not apply to everyone.

 

[stevezzzz]

Congratulations, weccman! Did you try playing Brahms (damn you, now I've got the Variations running through my head on auto-repeat:wink through the Bluetooth? Works like a charm, and it'll display your album art up on the 17" touch screen and/or the instrument cluster. As far as I know the USB ports don't provide connectivity, just DC, plenty for recharging an iphone but not enough amperage for an iPad.

 

[ChrisC]

I think all this delay talk is just Tesla deciding to under-promise and over-deliver. They're giving you on last big delay that they are "sure" they won't go past, and then setting you up for a nice surprise when they deliver it before then. And if they're smart, they'll continue to give you that underwhelming answer no matter how hard you ask.

 

[Larry Chanin]

So I checked in with my delivery specialist again today and he confirmed my revised additional 4-6 week delay, moving my window to 11/30-12/14. My take on this is that it has nothing to do with parts shortages or quality issues on my car and everything to do with the fact that I'm the last known Sig holder with a number of S1299.

Given all the heat that Tesla has taken in this and the TM forums from Sig placeholders that haven't even got a delivery window yet, I believe they are making an attempt to revise the delivery sequence to more closely track our "S" numbers. I see deliveries of low Sig numbers not impacted at all, but those with numbers of S1000+ seeing more substantial delays.

Since George's email was specifically issued to address delivery sequence issues its possible that Tesla is now taking greater pains to deal with individual situations where there might be a potential for greatly out of sequence deliveries. I'm sure George started receiving a large number of complaints from Signature reservation holders when they saw on the spreadsheet that General Production reservation holders were being given delivery windows before they were contacted. This situation probably occurred because the General Production reservation holders initiated inquiries before the Signature reservation holders were contacted by Tesla.

However, I doubt that Tesla is systematically delaying high numbers more than low numbers. My reservation sequence number is S1232 and yesterday my delivery window was delayed by only 2 weeks, not 4-6 weeks. In addition, I know of two of our club members with very low reservation numbers that would disagree with your statement that low Sig numbers are not being impacted.

I'm sorry about your delay, but I can think of two possible explanations for your situation:

1. Somehow your car was processed prematurely and now Tesla is making an adjustment.
2. Your delivery specialist is still confused.

Larry

 

[Arnold Panz]

I think all this delay talk is just Tesla deciding to under-promise and over-deliver. They're giving you on last big delay that they are "sure" they won't go past, and then setting you up for a nice surprise when they deliver it before then. And if they're smart, they'll continue to give you that underwhelming answer no matter how hard you ask.

Tesla's way beyond that at this point. I used to think this was the case, but at this point I'd say they'd be thrilled if they could just properly deliver on their promises at this point.

- - - Updated - - -

However, I doubt that Tesla is systematically delaying high numbers more than low numbers. My reservation sequence number is S1232 and yesterday my delivery window was delayed by only 2 weeks, not 4-6 weeks. In addition, I know of two of our club members with very low reservation numbers that would disagree with your statement that low Sig numbers are not being impacted.

I'm sorry about your delay, but I can think of two possible explanations for your situation:

1. Somehow your car was processed prematurely and now Tesla is making an adjustment.
2. Your delivery specialist is still confused.

Larry

Larry,

The interesting piece of this is that Baltimore Telsa's VIN is in the 600s, which is probably close to 400 "sooner" than one would expect, and if they were roughly working on them in order by VIN, then it's possible they've fundamentally changed their approach and are working more in sequence than they were before, when it seemed like there was little rhyme or reason to whose Sig got built when irrespective of when anyone actually reserved their car (i.e., their sequence #). It would be unfortunate for Baltimore Tesla if they literally put his almost-finished car to the side to work on other cars not as far along the line, but I could see Tesla deciding to do that to avoid a virtual uprising from Sig (and SSL) owners with much lower sequence #s not getting their cars when others who were late to the party getting their cars well in advance. If this is happening (and we have no evidence of this, only speculation), it's certainly not ideal from the viewpoint of maximizing the number of cars built in the shortest amount of time, but probably is the more "fair" way to go about things under the circumstances.

 

[Trnsl8r]

Well I had six pretty good hours of dreamless sleep. took the Amtrak train from Sacramento to Emeryville, and got a ride from a friend from there to the factory. After a great tour of the Model S-making machine in progress, we finally arrived at the delivery bay and in exchange for some serious coin, we received our beautiful silver bullet. I have pictures and have tried repeatedly to upload them here, to no avail. Perhaps someone can give us some advice.

...

Congratulations! Great to read about a forum member getting his/her car. We should have a thread devoted to only that. Oh wait...

 

[Larry Chanin]

Larry,

The interesting piece of this is that Baltimore Telsa's VIN is in the 600s, which is probably close to 400 "sooner" than one would expect, and if they were roughly working on them in order by VIN, then it's possible they've fundamentally changed their approach and are working more in sequence than they were before, when it seemed like there was little rhyme or reason to whose Sig got built when irrespective of when anyone actually reserved their car (i.e., their sequence #). It would be unfortunate for Baltimore Tesla if they literally put his almost-finished car to the side to work on other cars not as far along the line, but I could see Tesla deciding to do that to avoid a virtual uprising from Sig (and SSL) owners with much lower sequence #s not getting their cars when others who were late to the party getting their cars well in advance. If this is happening (and we have no evidence of this, only speculation), it's certainly not ideal from the viewpoint of maximizing the number of cars built in the shortest amount of time, but probably is the more "fair" way to go about things under the circumstances.

I agree. However, I don't think they fundamentally changed their approach. I just believe that someone in scheduling screwed up and we are dealing with one or two cars that somehow have gotten greatly out of sequence. Having said that I still find it very difficult to believe that Baltimore Tesla's delivery could be moved all the way back into mid-December. If the 1000th car is delivered on the worst case date of the delivery window he's been provided, then Tesla has a really big problem in missing their revised production target for 2012.

Larry

 

[Arnold Panz]

I agree. However, I don't think they fundamentally changed their approach. I just believe that someone in scheduling screwed up and we are dealing with one or two cars that somehow have gotten greatly out of sequence. Having said that I still find it very difficult to believe that Baltimore Tesla's delivery could be moved all the way back into mid-December. If the 1000th car is delivered on the worst case date of the delivery window he's been provided, then Tesla has a really big problem in missing their revised production target for 2012.

Larry

Did they say "produce" or "deliver" 3000 cars by the end of the year? That could be the difference here. I could still see them possibly making 3000 cars, but I agree they have a very hard task to deliver 3000 cars by year-end.

 

[Doug_G]

I understand that the Model S Signatures would be delivered by a Delivery Specialist at any location that a Signature Reservation holder requested.

How is the delivery process for a Production Model S supposed to work? Do they ship it to a retail store? Is it shipped to your house? Are there centralized delivery locations?

I read the reservation agreement but have not read a purchase agreement - what does the purchase agreement state regarding the delivery process, logistics and specifics?

Please post your thoughts on what has been described to you by Tesla.

(I'm trying to determine how the actual delivery logistics for Production Model S may speed up/slow down deliveries through to 12/31.)

Thanks all.

That is the procedure for all Model S deliveries, not just Signature.

 

[bmek]

That is the procedure for all Model S deliveries, not just Signature.

Can someone that has executed a purchase agreement for a Signature Model S and Production Model S copy and paste the delivery language into this thread?

It would be very helpful to compare the two and determine what the differences, if any, are.

 

[Robert.Boston]

My non-Sig MVPA is posted over here.

 

[Larry Chanin]

Did they say "produce" or "deliver" 3000 cars by the end of the year? That could be the difference here. I could still see them possibly making 3000 cars, but I agree they have a very hard task to deliver 3000 cars by year-end.

From the 8-K report:

We now anticipate that we will deliver between 200 and 225 Model S vehicles to customers in the third quarter and between 2,500 and 3,000 Model S vehicles in the fourth quarter.

So adding the third and fourth quarter results that would be a year-end target of deliveries of between 2,700 and 3,225.

My point is that Baltimore Tesla's delivery window supposedly now extends to December 14th. If his car is the 1000th and if it is delivered on that extremely unlikely worst case date, then Tesla would only have a little over two weeks to meet their target of between 2,700 and 3,225 deliveries. Delivering between 1,700 and 2,225 cars in two weeks would mean at the minimum producing cars at more than twice the target 2013 production rate of around 400 per week.

I have a hard time believing that if we were to ask Elon Musk is it likely that the 1000th car could be delivered on December 14th that he would say, "Yes, its possible." I have to believe that the delivery specialist has gotten this wrong.

Larry

P.S. Although I think the delivery specialist has gotten this wrong, its important to say that he's probably off by just 2-3 weeks. If the 1000th car is delivered in late November it would still be mathematically possible for Tesla to hit its lower target range IF it was able to achieve its 400 cars per week rate at the end of November.

 

[bmek]

​

My non-Sig MVPA is posted over here.

Thank you.

I was trying to understand what the obligations are for both TSLA and the buyer regarding delivery. However, based on my quick read of the purchase agreement, 'delivery' is not defined nor described.

Looks like, contractually, there is lots of flexibility on both sides. Depending on what the buyer wants to do, this flexibility could make delivery logistics close to 12/31/12 somewhat interesting.

Both parties will want to get all completed vehicles into the other's hands prior to 12/31/12, for revenue recognition purposes and for U.S. tax purposes (and, I suppose, simply because the buyers want their cars!).

When developing creative solutions, it is always good to have a common goal ...

 

[Arnold Panz]

I don't think that early/mid December is an unreasonable estimate for the last Sig delivery. Everything has to go basically perfectly from now until the end of the year for them to now hit the revised target. As we've seen, a million things can go right, but one thing going wrong (e.g., a flood in the Phillippines) can gum up the entire works and screw up their best-laid plans for production and delivery. Why would we be so optimistic that everything will roll smoothly from now on?

It also seems like they'll be producing Sigs into mid-November even in a best case scenario, so it's only a matter of a couple of weeks difference to push Baltimore's delivery to the end of November/December because of transport time from the factory. I would not bet against his revised delivery window being right. It seems fairly reasonable to me.

If I'm Tesla, I'd rather get the cars right than get them done quickly but with issues (a la Fisker). This is why I always thought it was crazy to promise 5000 vehicles in 2012, because everything had to go right for that to happen, and that never happens!

 

[wycolo]

> delivery logistics close to 12/31/12 [bmek]

As with many a legal transaction simply choose the year you wish it to have occurred in, and date all the paperwork the delivery driver has for your signature with *your year of choice*. And be sure the driver signs every line you sign and you get a copy of each page, or run inside & scan them all. Doesn't matter if TM's home office has it down as occurring "Jan 4th"; if all the delivery paperwork says "12/31" then it happened on 12/31.
--

 

[DrComputer]

T-minus 7 hours and counting until the Eagle will land at the factory. Prior to that time I'm going to have lunch with a fellow Roadster owner (EricVFX wife) and a Tesla employee (Scott, the creator of the Tesla Tattler) in Palo Alto.

 

[donauker]

> delivery logistics close to 12/31/12 [bmek]

As with many a legal transaction simply choose the year you wish it to have occurred in, and date all the paperwork the delivery driver has for your signature with *your year of choice*. And be sure the driver signs every line you sign and you get a copy of each page, or run inside & scan them all. Doesn't matter if TM's home office has it down as occurring "Jan 4th"; if all the delivery paperwork says "12/31" then it happened on 12/31.
--

If this is stated in relation to the $7,500 tax credit it will make no difference even if TM were willing to back date the paperwork. As you can see from the following excerpt from the IRS website the tax credit situation is far worse than many people realize.

http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Plug-In-Electric-Vehicle-Credit-(IRC-30-and-IRC-30D)

For purposes of the 30D credit, a vehicle is not considered acquired prior to the time when title to the vehicle passes to the taxpayer under state law.

I have my Model S for almost 2 weeks at this point but I have not yet received any paperwork with which to begin the state titling and registration process.