What’s the point of the comparison? Model T manufacture started in 1908 and by the end of 1910 they had produced 12,000. By that comparison, model 3 is crushing it

Ford literally invented the assembly line. Tesla has a century of expertise to learn from. Tesla has also been producing ~2000/wk S&X's for almost two years now; however they just recently (last week of March) exceeded 2,000 3's in a week, 9 months into production.

> Ford literally invented the assembly line.

No, he didn’t. The assembly line existed before Ford applied it to cars.

The Model S came out in what, 2012? So by your own numbers it took 4 years to get to 2000/wk. 9 months is killin it!

Poor examples - Ford produced only the Model T for two decades. Toyota has been around for 80 years.

Why is it a poor example? I'm comparing a car company that, over 100 years ago in 1914, was producing 714 vehicles a day by hand with 13,000 workers [1] to a company in 2018 with 37,000 employees utilizing robots yet manages to only produce half that amount?

[1] https://www.wiley.com/legacy/products/subject/business/forbe...

It's poor example because the Model 3 has 1000's of parts some of which have supply chains that spread around the world. The model T had 1481 parts almost all built in their factory. The model 3 is orders of magnitude more complex to the point that it's more similar to a business jet than it is to a model T. But then, you knew that.

How many total employees did Ford have, total? How many of Tesla's total employees are in line work/production? How difficult is the relative assembly of a Model T vs a Model 3 (ie, how many parts, welds, fasteners, etc)? I honestly have no idea how to compare them fairly, but I am not impressed by your analysis so far.

I can't speak to the relative complexity of the two machines either (obviously a Tesla is vastly more technologically complex but that doesn't mean it's necessarily more difficult to assemble: assembling computers today is extremely easy compared to 30 years ago) but I can however point to:

* Tesla produced ~250k vehicles (cumulative as of Q2 2017) prior to the first production Model 3, so it's not appropriate to compare them to a brand new company: They know how to build cars by the time Model 3 rolled around. This is their 4th vehicle model.

* Tesla has stated many times how the Model 3 is a far simpler and trimmed down vehicle compared to the S or X: production should be easier.

* Tesla had a goal of 2,500/wk by December 31st (they managed 793 the last week by shutting down S&X production) and a total of 2,425 for that entire quarter.

* Tesla had a goal of 5,000/wk and a revised goal of 2,500/wk by March 31st but only managed to hit 2,020 by that point, again which required shutting down the S&X lines.

* The new goalpost is 5,000/wk by June 30th.

* Elon said that "excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake" and that "Humans are underrated". [1]

If Musk himself is suggesting that the Model 3 delays would have not occurred due to human assembly instead, I think it's quite fair to compare against Ford's Model T assembly line a century ago. Not to mention a few advancements in technology since then which should give Tesla the upper hand.

[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/984882630947753984

You didn't answer any of my questions, though.