Enlarge / Aarhus, Denmark – September 14, 2016: Tesla car dealer entrance (credit: Getty Images)
Since Tesla’s Model 3 production began in July 2017, the company’s quarterly financial results have been very alike. Has Tesla produced the number of cars it said it would last quarter? (No.) Is Tesla burning through a whole lotta cash? (Yes.) Is Tesla still making progress on pushing out cars? (Yes.) Will Tesla be in the black again ever? (CEO Elon Musk offers a date one or two quarters into the future.)
Such is the case today. From a previous press release we knew that in the first quarter of 2018, Tesla did not reach its stated goal of 2,500 Model 3s off the line per week. But it got close enough that investors weren’t scared off, delivering 9,766 Model 3s and hitting just north of 2,000 such vehicles in the last week of the quarter. In today’s financial statement (PDF), the company said it held that weekly number for two more weeks before stopping production in mid-April to “further increase production.”
On the accompanying call, Musk detailed some of the changes that had been made at the factory to speed along Model 3 turnover. “We did go too far on the automation front and automated some very silly things,” he said. One example the CEO offered: Originally the Model 3 included “fiber glass mats” of fluff on the top of the battery pack and the company had a “FluffBot” that would pick up fluff and place it on the battery pack. “Machines are not good at picking up fluff, human hands are very well suited for that,” Musk said, “FluffBot would frequently just fail to pick up the fluff.” Tesla ended up testing whether the fluff made any difference in cabin noise, found that it did not, and dispensed with the FluffBot.
Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments
