Since the company Ilona Mask Tesla Inc began to produce Tesla Model 3, in the quarterly reports recorded large losses. There are many reasons for this, but one of them is the inability to reach the required volume of production of electric vehicles. The company has so far failed to do this, although it is trying very hard.
The required production volume for Tesla Model 3 is 2500 electric vehicles per week (for spring 2018). This goal has not yet been achieved, but now the company has gotten closer to it than ever: now, 2,000 electric cars are coming off the assembly line a week. Earlier it was reported that Tesla even had to
suspend production for several days in order to radically reorganize it. The goal is a radical increase in production volumes.
Musk says that so far everything is going well thanks to automation and robotization. Automatically literally everything. The machines even taught how to lay fiberglass mats (they are used for sound insulation), although previously people were engaged in this. But the fact that Tesla has to introduce new methods of work at an accelerated pace sometimes causes problems. In particular, the company had difficulties with a machine gun, which Musk calls FluffBot, and he puts in fiberglass. The machine does not do this well, people do much better. “FluffBot often just can't grab the mat,” Musk complains. It all ended with the company measuring the noise level in the cabin with and without fiberglass. It turned out that there was no difference, and FluffBot went to the dump, because the mats decided not to install. This is one example, the problem is small, but because of it, the speed of production of electric cars was not too high.
In some cases, the company managed to get rid of the intermediate stages of production, which delayed the production of a single electric vehicle. Due to this, in particular, the company managed to accelerate the process of producing batteries - it is no longer a bottleneck because of which almost assembled electric cars were idle. The battery assembly rate has increased dramatically, and the production time has decreased from 7 hours to 70 minutes. Thus, Tesla produces about 3000 batteries for a Tesla Model 3 per week.
Ilon Mask says his company is going to automate everything that is possible (here, some experts
see the problem ). This will allow, firstly, to raise the speed of production of electric vehicles even higher, and secondly, to reduce the number of injuries among company employees down to zero.
It is worth remembering that the weekly production volume stated above is relevant for the spring of 2018. Soon, Tesla will have to achieve double growth - up to 5,000 electric vehicles per week.
Unfortunately, until the company can achieve this, it will lose money. Now, according to some analysts, the company simply “burns” resources. Losses are great. In the first quarter of this year, Tesla
went to minus $ 785 million. Of these, $ 710 is funds that are related to shareholders. In the past quarter, this figure was slightly lower - about $ 675 million. Nevertheless,
revenue is growing - in the first quarter it was $ 2.6 billion, in the last quarter - $ 2.4 billion, in the first quarter of 2017 - $ 2 billion. If we take the flow of funds not only from the production of electric vehicles, but also from the sale of solar batteries and batteries, the quarterly revenue in the first quarter of 2018 was $ 3.4 billion. That's a lot, but still less than it loses.
Experts believe that, despite the losses, it’s not worth worrying about Tesla’s fate - production is lagging behind the plan, but the company is still moving in the right direction. In order to achieve this goal, the company is doing everything possible. In 2016, Tesla bought out a German company that developed robots for automotive production. This was done just to automate their own factories, which it was decided to maximally robotize. In particular, thanks to robots, the volume of supply of batteries for electric vehicles is also growing. Soon, Tesla plans to start producing 5000 batteries a week. And this is before the new production line is launched.
By the way, soon the company promises to release a full version of its Autopilot. Full - in the sense that the system will fully comply with its name and drive the car independently, and not under the supervision of the driver. “Soon” is by the end of next year, for systems of this kind, this development speed is really high. According to Mask, the autopilot will not be able to reduce the risk of an accident to zero, but this is simply impossible for many reasons, including a huge number of people driving cars on the roads. However, the autopilot can greatly reduce the level of accidents of any type.