Website wait times for delivery change

[chickensevil]

wow... December! they just updated to November about a week ago.

Thanks for the acknowledgement chicken.

It was an awesome call, the only tough part for me is I've not had a chance to be on TMC the past couple of days to enjoy these threads.

Yeah, seems like the earnings call with all the associated free press which translates to free advertising is really driving those sales. I actually really love that they have basically opened up a halfway decent way to track current demand levels by the public wait times being so prominent. It isn't perfect, and I wouldn't want it to be, but it seems like a nice validation

And yeah, NP! I am always quick to retract when I am wrong. It isn't helpful to anyone when you stick to something no matter what, regardless of evidence I am just happy that the 1k wasn't end of year like was originally hinted at way back at the beginning of the year! If that is a sign of more to come, I hope they hit the 2k mark by fall of next year!

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Is it bad that I sorta want to see this move to January in the next week or so just to see it continue to push out? I mean I do feel bad for new customers having to wait longer, but I seems to recall way back in Feb someone posting that you should order your cars now because as soon as China opens up the wait is only going to get longer! That AOL supposedly came from a Tesla rep with that suggestion, and how right they were!

 

[SBenson]

wow... December! they just updated to November about a week ago.

On this occasion I suggest everyone to send some love to Paulo Santos using the Message feature on Seeking Alpha. I did my part. He deserves it.

 

[chickensevil]

On this occasion I suggest everyone to send some love to Paulo Santos using the Message feature on Seeking Alpha. I did my part. He deserves it.

Really hard to claim at this point that the wait time increase is caused by anything OTHER than demand. We are through the shutdown here this coming Monday, and the wait times have moved forward now to a solid 5 months... Where is he going to stand on the demand card now?

 

[Bgarret]

A thought holdover from the Q2 conference call and shareholder letter. Reservation $ went from $198 million in Q1 to $228 Million in Q2. The Model X estimates as follows:

1800 Signature reservations (Thanks Bonnie) at $40,000 each: $72 Million
15,589 Model X reservations at $5,000 each: $78 Million

That leaves about $78 Million for other Signature Model X reservations, Any Signatures for Japan & Australia, etc.......and Model S. I think Dave T has a better handle on the breakdown, but with Model S reservations at $2500 in N. America (how much in China & Europe?) if all were Model S, then the reservation backlog for Model S would be 30,000 cars. Even half of that would be 6 months of 2014 Production.

How many cars will Tesla produce and deliver from now until year-end? I'm not sure, but they may already have reservations for the # they need to get to 35,000. If the line is back open today and cranking out 1,000 /week and the website says late December delivery - or 22 weeks away, they could alreadyhave 20,000 + reservations for the Model S. Let's see if that line can crank out some bonus Model S's so Q3 and Q4 can be blowout.

 

[chickensevil]

Actually, I would buy that, I mean, we saw the wait times shoot way up in May/June. 78 Million seems a little high. 15,000 backlog seems a little more in scope.

Let's break this down another way. We have guidance for 9000 produced in Q3. At 800 a week pre-shutdown that would be 2,400 produced. with 8 weeks remaining (factory should be back up as of today), that leaves 6,600 cars to be made, or an average run of 825 a week. Starting Q4 it will be 1K a week, with a post date delivery of "late-december" let's be fair and assume if you order today, you will be told December 16th. Two weeks before that would put you at Dec 2nd. So a run rate up through Dec 2nd is a little more than 9 weeks, so lets say 9,000 cars. That means the backlog is sitting at LEAST at 15,600. This is being as about as conservative on the numbers as I can think to be, while sticking with what we know will happen.

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Something else I realized, that if you are considering a "drop dead" value to hit the end of year target, using the same numbers. Let's say you take delivery on Dec 31st. So Your car will roll off the line Dec 17th. This means their run rate up through that point will be 11.5 weeks at 1k production. So that would be 11,500 from Q4 and 6,600 from now through end of Q3. Total being 18,100 add on the 2,400 pre shutdown and you are looking at around 20,500 cars between now and their last possible date of Dec 17th to make a car hit before the end of the year. Throw in the "produced but not delivered" cars from Q2 as an additional 1,184 cars; bringing the value up to 21,684 total potential deliveries before the end of the year.

Total deliveries up to this point: 14,036
Potential Deliveries: 21,684
Total Potential Deliveries by year end: 35,720

That gives them easily a 700 car buffer to play around with, including using those cars for other purposes other than sales (loaners, test cars, show cars, etc)

 

[Vger]

Plausible and well-reasoned analysis. I just thought of another wrinkle though. They will have to lose some (total) production capacity to creating the Model X alpha and beta vehicles. Even though this will be quite a small number (perhaps several hundred), its switching overhead and overall time-cost is not zero. Just a thought...

 

[chickensevil]

Counter to your wrinkle: That was why they were leaving the old line in place as is. To allow them to make all their test cars, alpha cars, beta cars, whatever non-production cars they want without having to impact the other final assembly line.

Keep in mind that minus the final assembly line all the rest of the parts of the factory (at least as far as I can tell) already run at a higher rate than does the Final Assembly piece. With notable exception of maybe the paint shop... but it must be able to do AT LEAST 1k a week. I know that is something they said they really wanted to spend the money to upgrade, and the main body assembly will get upgraded to 2,500 a week when they do that piece in Q1 (I don't know what it runs at right now).

In any case, seems to me like final assembly has always been their slowest part in the factory, so having that second test line will help keep them from slowing anything down to build those types of cars.

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For reference, the other part that I know what rate it runs at is the aluminum stamping, which is able to churn at a rate of 500k units a year or around 10,000 a week.

This is also one of the key indicators that has held my belief that they fully intend to hit 500k units out of Fremont.

 

[chickensevil]

Well, so much for that. Website has moved to November for all models. Maybe they finally backed out their "conservative" estimations based on the shutdown, and they are still working through that to figure out the real wait? Or could be that they were able to go straight to 1k out the gate? Hrmmmm... Tesla, why do you toy with our emotions like this!

 

[uselesslogin]

Well, so much for that. Website has moved to November for all models. Maybe they finally backed out their "conservative" estimations based on the shutdown, and they are still working through that to figure out the real wait? Or could be that they were able to go straight to 1k out the gate? Hrmmmm... Tesla, why do you toy with our emotions like this!

It is hard to say if that is good or bad. 2 scenarios off the top of my head. It could be a mistake or a bug that it was even in December. Or, they put it in December because they were unsure of battery supply and/or how quickly they could ramp up the line. It seems things have gone well and now they can destroy Q3 guidance which of course had to be uber-conservative just in case something did go wrong. Any other thoughts?

 

[chickensevil]

Ok, so for whatever this is worth here is the tracking sheet for people's orders (this is taken from the delivery tracking thread, which should really be renamed... but alas... that link is here: http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/25492-Model-S-Order-Delivery-Tracker-Q1-2014)

That document is located here: Google Sheets - create and edit spreadsheets online, for free.

Inside you have the following latest entries (sorry for the formatting I couldn't get the table to show up correctly...):
User Country Delivery City Battery P P+ Order Date Con- firmed Pref Deliv Earliest delivery date? Est Deliv VIN VIN Date
Justinmd US Milford, Ct 85 No No 3-Jul 3-Jul September Yes 26-Sep 52019 28-Jul
tekstrand24 US Fremont, CA 85 Yes Yes 5-Jul 5-Jul September Yes 13-Sep 51624 21-Jul
kdd3300 US Fremont, CA 85 Yes Yes 29-Jun 10-Jul Late Sept Yes September
CaryS US Bryn Mawr, PA 85 No No 19-Jul 19-Jul September Yes 30-Sep
galangg US Marietta, GA 85 No No 26-Jul 29-Jul September Yes Late Sept


So best I can tell, a US order in late July was still getting "September" dates. I inquired in the general "delivery tracking thread" if anyone has seen a significant move forward in their wait times, but until we get some orders posted from the August timeframe it is going to be hard to really get a good beat on where we sit today.

I mean I don't even see any October orders listed on the Q4 sheet except one which is a non-US order (and one that intentionally delayed their order, which doesn't count). So either people are just not posting yet for October, or the estimation is WAAAAY off... Sigh... need. more. data!

PS: I still feel good about the other estimation I made on the number of overall deliveries they can reasonably achieve by the end of the year... Since that is based on more concrete data.

 

[chickensevil]

People have responded on the delivery thread. Looks like people with June order dates who were originally slated for "late September" have seen it moved up to "September" indicating at least a two week bump for the June guys. My guess all the July orders will be Sept/Oct and it could be that August orders will get Oct/Nov. Still would like more data but for now it looks like the website is off even with them listing Nov.

Maybe it is just a two prong effort to discourage some sales due to the wait and to better manage expectations by over shooting the value?

Even with what data we have from that it would indicate at least a solid 3 month wait which would just put us over the old pre may times of 2 months, so I will take it.

 

[Maknyuzz]

Checked this morning. And the wait time improved a tiny bit:
65 - November (improved from Late December)
85, P85 - November (improved from December)

This is after factory re-opened (due to retooling). This could mean the production boost better than expected, and delivery estimates moving up

 

[chickensevil]

Lot's of movement in delivery dates associated with big deferral in production that arose last weekend. I panicked on Saturday morning when I saw the jump from late October to December for P85. Immediately drove to Tesla to see the new steel grey in order to finalize. Ordered & confirmed same day. Luckily, my delivery date has continued to get shorter since Saturday. On Monday, it went from December to late November. Yesterday, it went to late October. Great news for sure as I am anxious for it.

So here is a bit better information. This guy ordered and confirmed on 08/02 and has already seen it back off to late October for a P85. Which would drop it back down to right around 3 months for a Performance. Maybe they are really looking to prioritize some NA deliveries finally?

 

[Robert.Boston]

There are three possible explanations (that I can think of):

1. Tesla is changing shipment patterns to send more to North America, earlier. This is ambiguous news for investors, as it might reflect either an uptick in NA demand or a decline in demand elsewhere (EU?)
2. Cancellations of reservations are unexpectedly high. If so, probably bad for investors unless the root cause is buyers waiting for the Model X or AWD Model S.
3. Production at the factory is ramping up smoothly to excellent levels. Clearly a good outcome for investors, if true.

 

[TSLAopt]

There are three possible explanations (that I can think of):

1. Tesla is changing shipment patterns to send more to North America, earlier. This is ambiguous news for investors, as it might reflect either an uptick in NA demand or a decline in demand elsewhere (EU?)
2. Cancellations of reservations are unexpectedly high. If so, probably bad for investors unless the root cause is buyers waiting for the Model X or AWD Model S.
3. Production at the factory is ramping up smoothly to excellent levels. Clearly a good outcome for investors, if true.

3a)supply from Panasonic is exceeding schedule which allows us to ramp up faster going into Q4

 

[chickensevil]

There are three possible explanations (that I can think of):

1. Tesla is changing shipment patterns to send more to North America, earlier. This is ambiguous news for investors, as it might reflect either an uptick in NA demand or a decline in demand elsewhere (EU?)
2. Cancellations of reservations are unexpectedly high. If so, probably bad for investors unless the root cause is buyers waiting for the Model X or AWD Model S.
3. Production at the factory is ramping up smoothly to excellent levels. Clearly a good outcome for investors, if true.

2: Depends on WHY they are cancelling. If you cancel after confirming (or the two week waiting period) you lose your deposit. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to just throw away 2.5k. So there would have to be a pretty strong motivator to make this be the reason for the speed up in deliveries.

I am willing to go with a combination of 1 and 3. The only caveat I would have is that it could also still just be that they were being overly conservative.

 

[Maknyuzz]

From Delivery Update Thread. At least 1 person got the delivery date moved up, quoting DS saying slightly ahead of plan production.

 

[Robert.Boston]

Sometime in 2015, Tesla will deliver VIN 99999. Then someone will get 5YJSA1CN4FFP00001?

 

[chickensevil]

So thought I would flip through some of the countries to see what they had posted there, and I think they have really tried to *normalize* delivery wait times to be about even around the world.

US: Nov
GB: Late Nov
Norway: December
Germany: December

The Asia region is the only ones that don't have date options to choose from as far as I can tell. Just thought this was an interesting point.

 

[TSLA_Hopeful]

Just wanted to get everyone's opinion. It seems like the website delivery time hasn't changed at all since a month ago. US is still November. Either production is ramping up significantly, as reported (good news), or demand is not increasing as fast as production, or mix of both. Nobody credible would believe Tesla has a demand problem, but does anybody else wonder why S60 doesn't say Late Nov at the least?