Car Research Fail of the Day

"StoneCold" (StoneCold) 04/04/2016 at 12:06 • Filed to: None

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I’m trying to find the record for most cars of one model sold in a day to compare to the Model 3. The highest I can find is the Mustang’s debut at 22,000.

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The Tesla pre-orders are reaching crazy numbers, but what will the actual keys-in-hand delivery numbers be, I wonder?

Random: In my search engine searches, I found Joe Girard is a scary guy to cross. Legend has it he buried his W-2 over an old boss’s grave.

Supreme Chancellor and Glorious Leader SaveTheIntegras > StoneCold 04/04/2016 at 12:16

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I’m guess it’ll still be an astronomically high number

Aaron M - MasoFiST > StoneCold 04/04/2016 at 12:22

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It’s not the greatest comparison, if only because every single day 1 sales record is capped by production capacity. What may be better is to find a list of every car that “sold out” of its initial run (I believe the Mustang debut did in fact run dealers out of stock) and then rank them by annual sales volume.

Currently the Fremont plant Tesla uses has a capacity of 50,000, so unless there is a significant upgrade in store their current pre-order numbers mean that the first 5 (!) years of production are spoken for. And that’s not even counting the assumption that they’ll continue to produce the Model S.

Dusty Ventures > StoneCold 04/04/2016 at 12:26

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I don’t have numbers for single-day sales, but I can tell you that it’s opening day sales alone would have made it the 19th best selling car of 2015, and the latest numbers (about 300,000) would have it battling for 6th best selling car of 2015. Of course because we <3 our trucks and crossovers, making that all vehicles instead of just cars changes it to 38th and 12th respectively, but considering we’re talking about less than a week of sales and those numbers are out of 288 vehicles sold last year, it’s definitly a massive accomplishment.

jariten1781 > StoneCold 04/04/2016 at 12:45

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I have a very difficult time, philosophically, comparing hands off, fully refundable, no-constraints pre-order numbers to production constrained/actual transfer of property numbers. Tesla's numbers are impressive, for sure, but I don't think there's really any automotive direct comparison to draw conclusions from...well maybe the Elio pre-orders haha.

DrScientist > Dusty Ventures 04/04/2016 at 12:47

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it is indeed...

did they give a figure on how many 3's the factory could produce in a year when up and running at full capacity?

StoneCold > jariten1781 04/04/2016 at 12:51

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I was looking for the number to have it ready to go when the Model 3 does come out. The deposit/pre-order/reservation numbers are super high, which has to, in some way, influence how many cars they have ready to go on launch day and how much effort is put into production and delivery.

Dusty Ventures > DrScientist 04/04/2016 at 12:56

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Not that I've seen

StoneCold > Aaron M - MasoFiST 04/04/2016 at 12:58

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It isn’t the best comparison, but it’s a fun one. :)

One of the questions I have is this influences capacity. Will quality be sacrificed to up numbers? What will the concentration of sales look like over the first year (early adopters then tail off, steady sales, or maybe parabolic)?

All things that don’t really matter, except maybe a liiiiiiitle bit to what the used market might look like. But still fun.

jariten1781 > StoneCold 04/04/2016 at 12:59

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Yeah, it’ll be interesting to see how they strategize on this.

Build up inventory and have a big launch day with fanfare where thousands of folks go driving off in Model 3s. Would be a pretty big ‘we’re here’ signal and has some benefits.

Or

Trickle out cars after they’ve got the line up and running. Loses the chance at a big event but allows changes/infant mortality/learning curve to be handled gracefully rather than building up inventory that would need to be reworked en masse. Plus, if the low rate production at the beginning is minimal it’d make every Model 3 sighting an event for a period of time so there’d still be buzz.

The production engineer in me would go with the second (rework is bad) but I can totally see the market potential for the first.

Brian, The Life of > StoneCold 04/04/2016 at 13:33

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The best salesman I’ve ever worked with had a saying that, as a Product guy, always gave me the hives ... even though it’s very true: “Never confuse selling with installing.” Or “delivery” in this case ;)

PotbellyJoe and 42 others > Aaron M - MasoFiST 04/04/2016 at 15:27

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True on current capacity, but NUMMI has been able to pump out 500,000 vehicles in a year in the past, so they are pretty underutilized at the moment. Plus their capacity is looking at two expensive units that are more involved than what the 3 will demand.

The naysayers and dooms-dayers out there spinning an injection of $232 million of capital as a negative are looking at the situation intentionally with those preconceptions.

If Ford, GM or Toyota could get people excited enough for their cars to get a free loan from the consumers to start their ramp-up, well, it would be a different car world.

It’s throwing a lot of Wall Street into a tizzy because it defies logic to pay 3% of a vehicle purchase without having a finalized product.

Just my $0.02

Aaron M - MasoFiST > PotbellyJoe and 42 others 04/05/2016 at 06:58

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I don’t think this means they *can’t* ramp up, but we’re likely to see some teething problems. Honestly, if the Model 3 shown is a complete car then most of what they’re doing between now and the first delivery date is going to be factory setup.

If the electric drive units are largely similar and/or even shared with the Model S, than we should both see better ramp-up AND possibly fewer reliability problems with the Model 3. But this is all speculation.