Something is terribly wrong in Fremont.
If Tesla is stuck on a battery bottleneck it's just as silly as if Mercedes were stuck on a sheet metal bottleneck. Yes, you need reliable component suppliers that can scale with you as you grow and provide the quality you need. If you don't have that, you have a big problem that vertical integration isn't going to solve.
The Mercedes E-class is monocoque, like almost all cars. They build the body/frame and then add the powertrain and wheels. Here's the body/frame and the powertrain/suspension coming together.[1] The powertrain and suspension aren't self-supporting; they're a collection of parts held in a fixture. That's very clear in the video of the parts coming together.
The Tesla Model S, though, is body on frame. If it can sit on its wheels without a body, as the Tesla Model S can, it's body-on-frame. Here's the Tesla Model S platform sitting on its wheels, with the powertrain installed.[2]
So is the Tesla Model 3.[3]
[1] https://youtu.be/lPKnM9vC6V0?t=395 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8WUIkD7xxI [3] https://jalopnik.com/why-tesla-needs-to-sell-the-model-3-wit...
If you want to compete in a market, you got to play at the speed/quality/prices of the market -- there is no slack given for being new.
In the end, unless they get profitable, if they burn their stash, they're toast.
Their real risk is if the Model 3's reliability is bad or they need a recall thus reducing their profits significantly.
"The truth is the Model 3 costs $40,000 if you want a standard version with autopilot (an extra $5,000) in black with no other options. If you want a different color, add $1,000. And if you want a longer range ($9,000) to get over 300 miles per charge instead of 220, well now we’re at $50,000. $50,000 for a midrange car."[1]
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/31/16069960/tesla-model-3-no...
"Enhanced Autopilot adds these new capabilities to the Tesla Autopilot driving experience. Your Tesla will match speed to traffic conditions, keep within a lane, automatically change lanes without requiring driver input, transition from one freeway to another, exit the freeway when your destination is near, self-park when near a parking spot and be summoned to and from your garage."
You can get adaptive cruse control for more reasonable costs, but lane changing takes a lot more awareness around the car.
It seems like you're assuming that the cash burn will stay at 1.4billion. Expenditure should go down once the production line tooling is complete.
This leads me to expect it's reasonable their burn will continue at the same rate.
Furthermore, it's estimated they won't reach 3k a week till the end of 2018.
https://dailykanban.com/2017/10/source-tesla-responsible-mod...
lol. "it might go up, might go down, or might stay the same!"
Once you're in 3 hour marathon territory, what you can do for 1 mile is a lot more relevant to what you can do for 26.2 miles than you might think. One of the tent poles of effective marathon/half marathon training is to make your race pace into a drumbeat. You want to feel your race pace in your bones. Very effective workouts look like: take your marathon race pace, and run 5 minutes easy/5 minutes hard (~race pace) for 60, or 10 easy/10 hard for 80.
Tesla is talking about burst builds that last for a week. That sounds like very effective training that will prepare them for race day.
Was that in the call? Their statement says "Several manufacturing lines [...] have demonstrated a manufacturing ability in excess of 1,000 units per week during burst builds of short duration. Other lines, [...] have demonstrated burst builds of about 500 units per week...". AFAIK, "short duration" != "a week".
Assuming they didn’t produce a lot more than they delivered, if they had even one week in which they produced 500 Model 3s, they also must have had weeks in which they destroyed them.
That sounds better than what Tesla claims. http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ABEA-4CW8X0/549293785... (emphasis added):
”Other lines, such as battery pack assembly, body shop welding and final vehicle assembly, have demonstrated burst builds of about 500 units per week and are ramping up quickly.”
If you can do burst runs of 15 km/hour, that doesn’t mean you can run a three hour marathon.
”The company burned $1.4 billion and has $3.5 billion in cash. Raising money shouldn't be necessary.”
To get that $1.4 billion in revenue, they will need to sell 40k Tesla 3s at $35k each, or 3,000 a week. To get it in margin, even assuming the average model 3 will sell for $50k, they will have to sell 12,000 a week or so (at 20% margin)
=> If things go as planned, I guess they will need about half their money in half a year or so before turning a profit. That doesn’t leave very much in case things go worse than planned (for example, they plan for 25% margin on model 3, but currently don’t have that on their more expensive models, and they plan to sell more of their expensive models, but can decrease production, so, presumably, they have quite a few of them in inventory)
Tesla may have a fantastic future ahead of it, but it also may fail spectacularly fairly soon, or just have a decent future ahead of it that doesn’t warrant its current share price.