Update from Elon: Cybertruck production starting late 2022 and volume production in 2023

[Gordon E Peterson II]

Your guess is as good as any.

Although, I am getting concerned with the lack of progress on both the development of the Cybertruck (the Alpha version recently seen testing on the airport runway in Cali should have happened a year ago....) and the fact GigaTexas is not done yet. GigaTexas was "supposed" to be finished June 30th according to Tesla's original timeline.

They might still spit out some test runs for the Model Y in December, but they are clearly behind. That will push back the build out of the CyberTruck production line at Austin. It also appears there is a lag in the 4680 battery manufacturing. Combine those 3 things and it looks like 2023 is when the CT should actually begin to ramp. Not sure if that means 50K the first year, or 150,000. Either way a lot of people are left waiting for their CT until 2024 and 2025. It was announced in 2019.

I don't know if you've been following Joe Tegtmeyer's drone videos of progress at Gigafactory Texas... usually they update M/W/F afternoons. Here's the one from last Wednesday (today's should post in about 3 hours).

Sponsored

 

[intimidator]

I don't know if you've been following Joe Tegtmeyer's drone videos of progress at Gigafactory Texas... usually they update M/W/F afternoons. Here's the one from last Wednesday (today's should post in about 3 hours).

I have seen those. The original time line was for GigaTexas to finish June 2021.
So, yes they may spit out some Model Ys by New Year's eve, but I am most concerned about WHEN will they be able to build out the CyberTruck line. I think that is going to be delayed well into 2022. From there it will take time to ramp up. So I think January 2023 is when the CyberTruck line (including the 4680 batteries) will be cranking out vehicles. But unless you are #1-150,000 in line, you won't get your Cybertruck in 2023. 2024 seems more likely.

 

[madquadbiker]

I have seen those. The original time line was for GigaTexas to finish June 2021.
So, yes they may spit out some Model Ys by New Year's eve, but I am most concerned about WHEN will they be able to build out the CyberTruck line. I think that is going to be delayed well into 2022. From there it will take time to ramp up. So I think January 2023 is when the CyberTruck line (including the 4680 batteries) will be cranking out vehicles. But unless you are #1-150,000 in line, you won't get your Cybertruck in 2023. 2024 seems more likely.

With the delay in CT production do you think Tesla will accept a death certificate so a reservation number can be bequeathed to a family member, don’t wish to be morbid but waiting years and then the family losing out on having the CT in the family because you couldn’t hang in there for whatever reason, that’s assuming a family member still wanted to take delivery. Maybe take the ashes for a spin.

 

[Ogre]

With the delay in CT production do you think Tesla will accept a death certificate so a reservation number can be bequeathed to a family member, don’t wish to be morbid but waiting years and then the family losing out on having the CT in the family because you couldn’t hang in there for whatever reason, that’s assuming a family member still wanted to take delivery. Maybe take the ashes for a spin.

Keep in mind the Rivian R1T was schedule to launch EOY 2020 and so far they have a total of ~5-10 delivered to end customers and there is little sign it’s improving. GM and Ford are struggling to deliver trucks and have stopped production for weeks at a time.

It’s been a tough couple years to get new vehicles on the market.

 

[Crissa]

Keep in mind the Rivian R1T was schedule to launch EOY 2020 and so far they have a total of ~5-10 delivered to end customers and there is little sign it’s improving. GM and Ford are struggling to deliver trucks and have stopped production for weeks at a time.

It’s been a tough couple years to get new vehicles on the market.

You're off by a factor of ten, but they're off by a factor of a thousand so I guess it's all bad all around.

-Crissa

 

[Ogre]

You're off by a factor of ten, but they're off by a factor of a thousand so I guess it's all bad all around.

-Crissa

Rivian has delivered 100 trucks to consumers? Or 100 trucks total? Seems to me there has been a lot of shakey stuff where Rivian employees have been posting about receiving their new truck and not mentioning they are employees.

 

[Crissa]

Rivian has delivered 100 trucks to consumers? Or 100 trucks total? Seems to me there has been a lot of shakey stuff where Rivian employees have been posting about receiving their new truck and not mentioning they are employees.

Employees and investors are still customers.

-Crissa

 

[Ogre]

Employees and investors are still customers.

-Crissa

I wouldn’t count them as such, but it’s fair.

Regardless. 10 or 100… it’s not production, it’s beta testing.

 

[Red61224]

So in Tesla time, we are looking at maybe the afternoon of December 31st, O.K. I can dig it.

 

[intimidator]

Keep in mind the Rivian R1T was schedule to launch EOY 2020 and so far they have a total of ~5-10 delivered to end customers and there is little sign it’s improving. GM and Ford are struggling to deliver trucks and have stopped production for weeks at a time.

It’s been a tough couple years to get new vehicles on the market.

It really doesn't matter in the BIG scheme of things who is first, but Rivian is technically delivering trucks to customers right now. And will ramp up a lot in 2022.

Ford will start delivering trucks in April 2022. And ramp from there.

The Cybertruck is not even close to getting into buyers hands. I think we are talking 2023.

So, it is fair to say both Rivian and Ford beat Tesla to market in the truck segment.

And, honestly, I think they are 3 very different vehicles, appealing to different types of buyers.

 

[John K]

So, it is fair to say both Rivian and Ford beat Tesla to market in the truck segment.

The true competition is profit and sustained profit

 

[Ogre]

It really doesn't matter in the BIG scheme of things who is first, but Rivian is technically delivering trucks to customers right now. And will ramp up a lot in 2022.

Ford will start delivering trucks in April 2022. And ramp from there.

The Cybertruck is not even close to getting into buyers hands. I think we are talking 2023.

So, it is fair to say both Rivian and Ford beat Tesla to market in the truck segment.

And, honestly, I think they are 3 very different vehicles, appealing to different types of buyers.

Rivian has not done anything which merits getting the benefit of the doubt here. They are a year late and basically lied about start of production in order to look good for their IPO. Yes they have a handful of cars in the hands of “customers”, but they are halfway through their first quarter of production hand have almost no trucks on the road.

They’ve basically told their founders edition buyers not to expect trucks until February so it’s unlikely we’ll see more than a handful more deliveries before 2nd quarter 2022.

I don’t know about Ford. It’s really hard to say, but they won’t have a huge head start on Tesla unless you assume they will start early and fast and Tesla will start late and slow.

 

[FutureBoy]

I don’t know about Ford. It’s really hard to say, but they won’t have a huge head start on Tesla unless you assume they will start early and fast and Tesla will start late and slow.

I don't follow Ford so don't really know their stats. How many F150s do they currently produce in a day? Looking for numbers I found this:

Over the past three years, Ford averaged about 900,000 F-150’s sold per year. If you divide that by 365, it sells 2,486 F-150 trucks per day, every day. That translates to 103 F-150 pickups per hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Ford has sold 1.7 trucks per minute, every minute of the day, for the past three years. That’s why the 14th-generation F-150 pickup is such a big deal. Additionally, its two main competitors were both new in 2019.

Because of the various configurations of F-150, my guess is that there are separate lines for each version. So while 1.7 vehicles per minute sounds impressive, if there are 5 separate production lines then that is 1.7 vehicles per 5 minutes for each line. So about 2.5 minutes per vehicle.

So what are the stats on Tesla production lines? I imagine that when a line first gets up and running the stats are not that good. But once things get dialed in, I believe Elon was shooting for each vehicle coming out in under 1 minute. Then in order to increase volume, they increase the number of lines producing.

Given Ford's meager estimates for how many F150 Lightnings they will be producing, I'm going to guess that the Lightning line will not be doing 2.5 vehicles per minute. But given Tesla's backlog plus their experience optimizing production lines, I'd bet that it won't be too long before the CT line is producing better than 1 CT per minute. At those rates, it doesn't take Tesla CTs long to outproduce the Lightning. Even if the CTs start even 1 year later.

 

[Ogre]

But given Tesla's backlog plus their experience optimizing production lines, I'd bet that it won't be too long before the CT line is producing better than 1 CT per minute. At those rates, it doesn't take Tesla CTs long to outproduce the Lightning. Even if the CTs start even 1 year later.

Tesla produced about 15,000 Model Ys in the first quarter of operation and about 30,000 in the second quarter. I’d expect the Cybertruck to be along those lines.

After 2 years of operation, Giga Shanghai is delivering more than 60,000 cars per month. It is about the same size as the Cybertruck portion of Tera Texas.

 

[FutureBoy]

Tesla produced about 15,000 Model Ys in the first quarter of operation and about 30,000 in the second quarter. I’d expect the Cybertruck to be along those lines.

After 2 years of operation, Giga Shanghai is delivering more than 60,000 cars per month. It is about the same size as the Cybertruck portion of Tera Texas.

And that is way faster than the Lightning production numbers here:

Kumar Galhotra, Ford’s president of the Americas and international markets, said the company expects to hit the 80,000 annual production rate during the second year of production, in 2023. He said Ford has gradually been “pulling levers” to increase production capacity of the F-150 Lightning throughout its supply chain.

One of the big differences between the Ford and Tesla production lines is that Ford is relying on many, many other companies in its supply chain. They can gradually pull levers to increase production but the coordination needed between companies is quite insane.

Tesla on the other hand, just limits the number of outside companies it needs to work with, promises to buy either on a massive contract or (like for batteries) "everything they can possibly produce". Then Tesla does the rest of the production themselves trying to keep up with or even overproduce the huge orders they have already bought into. If a supply company cannot keep up, Tesla doesn't drop them. Instead, Tesla finds alternative suppliers and finds a way to work with each of them on the same line. Famously writing completely new software to deal with a shortage of silicon chips from different suppliers.

If the Lightning will be produced at 80k per year after the second year, but the CT will be produced at 30k per quarter after the second quarter, how long till CT has more vehicles in the hands of customers? And how long till CT has doubled the number Lightnings out in the world? And this is only at the CT production numbers you estimate for the second quarter. Tesla generally keeps beating its previous quarter production numbers so even this math problem doesn't cover the full spanking Lightning is going to be getting in year 3 and beyond.

Sponsored