I love an optimistic point of view, and 450k certainly is one. I just wonder how long they can keep casting without stopping. It's really going to be like a smelting factory in that area of Giga Austin.
At
Demand will probably outpace production for the next decade, and so far, there's only one place in the world that'll be making the Cybertruck. I think production will hover around 250k/year.
Apparently Tesla is still getting a lot of reservations and I suspect reservation count will increase after launch—that’s happened with every other model so far.
Now the real question is how many IDRA machines do you need to sustain 500k/year.
@Crissa, all that tells us is that: (1) the number they have is smaller than social media and that stupid spread sheet would suggest, (2) they have no issue fulfilling orders over several years, or (3) they will, as you suggest, expand production. Elon mentioned that their first year they would target a 150K run rate by the end of the year and, as you recall, there was much discussion here as to how many they might produce in 2023 as a result. But they might be able to hit 250K in 2024. So 3,000/week by the end of 2023 and 5,000/week by the end of 2024. That is how many front/rear castings they will have to make to hit those numbers. I think that is more than they are making with their 6K-ton gigapresses now.
We know that there is only room in the die-casting area of the factory for 2 9K-ton gigapresses so you are probably getting ahead of yourself with that prediction. Take a look at how many Model Ys they are delivering at present (i.e., about 2,000/week, with 4 operating 6K-ton gigapresses). It is very likely that they will not exceed 2,000 CTs per week in 2023.
Demand is what exists beyond the early reservations. No one will know what that is until they open up the site for orders again. They seemed to believe they could satisfy the demand at 250K per year way back when, and they already knew, then, what the reservation list looked like. I am on everyone's side here but I just don't see them being able to make so many gigacastings with even 2 machines. I think we need to temper our expectations for production volume.
2000CTs per week would not be enough. In fact, it could become a problem given the very large demand.
But that is the problem. "Temper our expectations for production volume... with 2 machines" There is something strange about all that.
We have NO IDEA what the demand is. Why do people keep saying that we do when the only one that knows is Tesla and they haven't said squat for 2 years about the reservation list. We know that we cannot believe the spread sheet because it uses the Tesla order number and Tesla order numbers include everything they sell (as far as we know). What would you say about the demand if you found out that there are only 500K reservations and that there is a 30% take rate divided over, say, 3 trims. I have no idea what the reservation number is but there will be a take rate, there will be several trims that aren't manufactured all at once (initially), and there are other factors that determine when a reservation number comes up and so how many need to be built in what timeframe. I am making this up out of whole cloth, but if it turns out that there are only 150K reservations that would upgrade to a quad-motor trim then 2 gigapresses would be adequate for that run. I am just saying that this whole thing is very fluid and that even 'thinking' about a 500K run rate is too much.
So, I understand that the +- 1.6M reservations number we have been given means perhaps nothing? Was is there to be used as a prediction and production planning? The number of gigapressess will need to be in line with the real demand for CT production. Whatever that number is.
Tesla has a pretty good idea. We also know orders are still coming in consistently from the spreadsheep. For every previous launch, pre order size was indicative of demand.
