Tesla has extended the unlimited supercharging incentive on new Model S/X vehicles if ordered by Jan 15. Use my referral code for a $1000 discount, http://www.ts.la/david7556.
Tesla Energy
Battery Cell Production Begins at the Gigafactory
Production of 2170 cells for qualification started in December and today, production begins on cells that will be used in Tesla’s Powerwall 2 and Powerpack 2 energy products. Model 3 cell production will follow in Q2 and by 2018, the Gigafactory will produce 35 GWh/year of lithium-ion battery cells, nearly as much as the rest of the entire world’s battery production combined.
Great to hear production cells are rolling off the line at the Gigafactory. This is good news for the Model 3. As each month passes this year, all eyes will be on the Model 3 and if Tesla can deliver on their promises.
Analysts praise Tesla’s Gigafactory, but worry electric-car maker was thin on details
For analysts at Morgan Stanley, known bulls on Tesla, the battery factory tour made “the dream tangible for providers of capital.” Even the most brief glimpse into the factory is meant to increase investor’s understanding of the company and ultimately lower Tesla’s cost of capital, they said.
This past week's investor event at the Gigafactory appears to have been a success by giving a firsthand showing of Tesla's massive dreams coming to fruition. If you get the chance to visit the Gigafactory, I strongly suggest jumping on it. It's truly mind-blowing how large the space is and one walks away with a greater appreciation with just how massively large Elon/Tesla's vision is to change the world.
Autopilot
Inside Tesla's Autopilot 2.0 roll out: release notes and screenshots
Forward Collision Warning, Traffic-Aware Cruise Control (Beta) and Low-Speed Autosteer (Beta) have been rolled out in the latest update. Details for the Enhanced Autopilot features can be seen in the following release notes from Imgur via TMC.
Tesla introduces first phase of ‘Enhanced Autopilot’: ‘measured and cautious for next several hundred million miles’ – release notes
Tesla didn’t want to start the new year on a bad note by missing a deadline with its Autopilot update for new cars to work is its ‘Tesla Vision’ image processing system and while it didn’t bring the system to parity with the last generation Autopilot, the company sort of kept its ‘December 2016’ goal for the release of ‘Enhanced Autopilot’, but it’s only what the automaker is calling the “first phase” of the new features... Tesla started pushing the update to the first 1,000 cars in its fleet. It includes the Autopilot’s Traffic Aware Cruise Control feature, Forward Collision Warning, and Autosteer, but it will only be enabled at “low-speed” as a beta feature.
TSLA
Tesla Q4 2016 Production and Deliveries
Tesla produced 24,882 vehicles in Q4, resulting in total 2016 production of 83,922 vehicles. This was an increase of 64% from 2015. Tesla delivered approximately 22,200 vehicles in Q4, of which 12,700 were Model S and 9,500 were Model X. When added to the rest of the year, total 2016 deliveries were approximately 76,230. Our Q4 delivery count should be viewed as slightly conservative, as we only count a car as delivered if it is transferred to the customer and all paperwork is correct. Because of short-term production challenges starting at the end of October and lasting through early December from the transition to new Autopilot hardware, Q4 vehicle production was weighted more heavily towards the end of the quarter than we had originally planned. We were ultimately able to recover and hit our production goal, but the delay in production resulted in challenges that impacted quarterly deliveries, including, among other things, cars missing shipping cutoffs for Europe and Asia. Although we tried to recover these deliveries and expedite others by the end of the quarter, time ran out before we could deliver all customer cars. In total, about 2,750 vehicles missed being counted as deliveries in Q4 either due to last-minute delays in transport or because the customer was unable to physically take delivery. Even where these customers had already fully paid for their vehicle, we still did not count these as deliveries in Q4. In addition to Q4 deliveries, about 6,450 vehicles were in transit to customers at the end of the quarter. These will be counted as deliveries in Q1 2017. Vehicle demand in Q4 was particularly strong. Q4 net orders for Model S and X, which were an all-time record for us, were 52% higher than Q4 2015 and 24% higher than our previous record quarter in Q3 2016.
Tesla experience production delays during the quarter and were unable to deliver the 25k+ cars they had guided for. This is disappointing since many were hoping for Tesla to to "beat" quarterly expectations for a second quarter in a row. However, some of Q4 deliveries will be pushed back to Q1 which means that Q1 is likely going to be a healthy quarter. Further, starting Q1 of this year we are likely going to see the ramp of Tesla Energy products, namely the Powerpack and Powerwall.
Other News
Faraday Future FF 91, Lucid Air First Rides
Visiting both companies is like entering Tesla refugee camps (300 employees at Lucid and a total of 1,400 at Faraday, worldwide). At one point I was sitting in the back seat of the Air and commented that it’s good to see cupholders back here. How dumb that the original Model S didn’t have any? An engineer crouching at the open door confessed that it was his bad. “You’re the guy?” I asked and turned to him with in an accusatory grin. He shook his head. “Elon overruled me,” he said. During our FF tour, I walked past Faraday Future’s battery-tech display and noted that the cylindrical 21700-type cells inside are stacked sideways in the modules. (They call them strings.) The engineer nodded. “Yes, different from what we did at Tesla.” This happens at every turn. Elon made us do this; at Tesla we did that. On and on.
The cars from Faraday Future and Lucid both seem great on paper. However the challenge is that Tesla is already moving into the stage of true mass production (producing 100s of thousands of cars a year) and will be able to take advantage of economies of scale that companies like Faraday Future and Lucid will have a difficult time competing with. In other words, Tesla isn't standing still and it's tough to catch Tesla when they're innovating and improving quickly.