- Without further ado lets get into
the fun stuff that happened this,
it was last week,
I believe it was last Friday.
Gayle King from CBS this morning had an exclusive interview
with Elon where they actually filmed inside of the factory.
And I have a few clips to share with you from that.
And then we'll kinda talk through each
one of those clips at the end.
They posted a seven minute video there,
and then they have several other little highlights as well.
So I'm just gonna go through kind of my
I think I have four clips here
that are the most interesting,
and kind of put them in context for you
and then we'll move on.
So here goes the first one.
This is Elon talking about production hell.
- You said to your team,
everybody get ready to meet the demand.
We're going to be in production hell.
- Yes.
- But you didn't expect this kind of production hell,
or did you?
- No it's worse than I thought.
- Why is that?
Why is it harder, what happened?
- We got complacent about some of the things
that we felt weren't our core technology.
We put too much new technology into
the Model 3 all at once.
- So to me the interesting thing about that is that he said,
they put too much technology in
the Model 3 all at once.
And I'm surprised by that.
It's the same thing they said about the Model X
where it makes a whole lot of sense because
the Model X is if you've ever been in one,
like this whole other level of technology and advancement.
It's like not even a,
it's a completely different level than the Model S.
The Model S is a completely different level
than the Model 3.
So for him to say that to me was pretty
surprising when I heard that.
I am interested in that maybe they put
too much tech into the assembly line
and how they were actually trying to make them.
And then you know Elon actually continued on here with
the next clip where he talks about
production hell and kind of how that works.
So here you go.
Here's the second clip where he's talking about
the manufacturing process a little bit
and I was surprised when I heard this,
as was Gayle as you'll see.
- Elon part of the thing I heard about the Model 3
is that there's too many robots that maybe.
- Yeah, yeah I agree.
- You think so too?
That maybe you need more people in here working.
- We do.
- [Gayle] In some cases the robots actually
slow the production right?
- Yes they do.
We're this crazy complex network of conveyor belts.
And it was not working.
So we got rid of that whole thing.
- This is cool Elon.
- Yeah.
- So that was real surprising to me and following on from
that there was this tweet where Elon even said that.
Where he said there was somebody quoted him from the article
said you know Elon must agree that
Tesla was relying on too many robots
to make Model 3 and needs more workers.
And Elon you know shout out to him, kudos to him,
owns it and says
"'Yeah, excessive automation in Tesla was a mistake.
"To be precise, my mistake.
"Humans are underrated."
This made me jump for joy
because a lot of what I've seen from Elon and Tesla
at times is a very defensive stance on a lot of these things
and for him to own up to this calling it his mistake,
and one that I think where you're
essentially saying that you know technology isn't,
that technology isn't here
and ready to do the job of a human at 100 percent yet
that humans are underrated,
it really speaks to you know the opposite of that
hubris we saw with the delete Facebook thing
over to you know a form of humility.
And I was really excited when I saw that
because it just showed that you know
he's human and he gets it.
As somebody that's managed teams for many years
and believes in the value of a human over a machine
this was exciting to me.
So I applaud Elon for really owning that
and coming to terms with that.
And hopefully that will lead to actual
you know better production
because I know that you know as a customer
that's probably what we're all waiting for here.
Okay now the next one is an interesting one,
where Elon actually gave us a glimpse into his life at Tesla
and kind of what's going on there.
Because as you know
he's no longer, he's sleeping at the factory.
So here's a look inside of where Elon is actually sleeping.
Let's take a look at that.
- He says he has resorted to pulling
all-nighters at the plant.
- When things get really intense,
I don't have time to go home and shower and change,
so I sleep here.
- I want to see, where is that?
- Uh here.
- I want to see.
- I mean it's pretty boring overall really.
(Elon laughs)
- It's actually cold in here too.
- Yeah I like it cold.
- So you have a, you like it cold?
- I sleep on the couch over there.
- So you're just laying here on the couch?
- Yeah.
Last time I was here I actually slept,
literally on the floor because the couch is too narrow.
- Yeah I was going to say,
and Elon I have to say,
it's not even a comfortable couch either.
- No it's terrible.
It's not a good couch.
- What is the number say for the last seven days?
What is the number?
- 2071.
- You're pleased with that?
- Yeah.
- For the time being?
- Yeah.
- Okay.
So,
(laughing)
he wasn't joking.
Which is shocking and what is up with this couch?
So I thought it would be fun,
we can actually help Elon here,
because it appears that he might need some help with this.
And so I created a Go Fund Me account
to buy Elon a couch.
The goal is a thousand bucks.
I looked on Wayfair.com where I do,
you know, we buy our home stuff here,
and I thought you know a thousand bucks
you can get a pretty decent couch
and probably ship it out to Freemont.
So there you go.
I put a link to this in the description.
And you know
the idea would be to share this with Elon
and if he isn't interested
or doesn't reply then we can take that money
and donate it to a charity for EV's or something else.
Let me know what you think.
I'll put a link to this Go Fund Me in the description there
after this video,
after the live stream is done so you can donate.
But hopefully you know by helping Elon in this way,
we can also help ourselves.
As Tesla enthusiasts and fans by you know,
giving him a better rest
which then in turns leads to better production.
Who knows.
Anyways I thought this would be kind of a fun,
a fun little thing to do.
And you know if it doesn't go anywhere,
then hey at least we can give whatever money is raised,
to some sort of charity to help EV adoption
here in the United States.
So the last clip I have for you is coming about
the production of the Model 3 itself.
And we have some numbers to look at
which I'm very excited about as you could imagine.
And so what I'll do is I'll play this clip
and then we'll actually do some math.
So here you go,
Elon talking about the production of the Model 3.
- But since then we've continued to do 2000 cars a week.
- Do you think that this is sustainable?
This pace is sustainable?
- Yeah, yeah.
We'll probably have, I don't know a three or four-fold
increase in Model 3 output in the second quarter.
- [Gayle] But Musk's critics have heard
predictions like those before.
A future the automaker has yet to reach.
- So I was interested in this because he's talking about a
three to four x increase for Q2 which is a huge increase.
That is like an insane amount.
So I went over and took a look here at the Bloomberg tracker
and they actually just ratcheted this down.
They updated it today.
And they're at 2866 right now per week
is what they're saying
what they're estimating Tesla is making.
And you can see that
it was over 3000 for a brief moment I think when I checked
this morning before they finally updated.
So if we plug all these numbers into our model
which I have here
and if you don't recall this I built this last week
you can go check out that video
and see more about it
see how it works
but you can essentially plug in some different numbers
and it'll calculate exactly what it looks like
based on that S curve.
So we're using the log growth curve as our model here
and this is what we've been told by Elon
that this is how it works.
And we just punch in these numbers.
So if we punched in 416 after the page refreshes of course
416 for time two.
See time one is set.
This is January seventh at a thousand.
So this is what they reported.
Now we're at 416
and we have him at 2500 here but
let's go down because
what Tesla actually said was 2071
and I believe that was as of 4/10.
So lets change that to 4/10 and let's ratchet this down
to two let me see if I can just drag it.
There we go.
This interface isn't the best
I might update that later today.
Okay so if we go to 2071 on 4/10 which is
I believe when they were filming this
you can see what it looks like here
so at that trajectory,
if the peak meaning the top of this
is 10,000 per week that they are able to make
then they'll be making around 200,000 Model 3's in 2018.
Now they would hit 5000 in September
using this model though.
So that's not exactly what I think that they are hoping to
and the reason the way this model works is
you take that thousand mark there
and then you go to the,
you know at January seventh
and then you go out to 4/10
and you see the increase there
so that gives it kind of that steepness
and you know where the peak is
and so the basic math here is using all those variables
to apply this log growth curve.
Now some people you know are going to disagree with this.
They're going to think kind of different,
different things about it,
but just the basic math of how this adds up
if this were to stand
it would be you know September
before they would actually hit that.
So of course nothing ever plays out exactly
like this so we'll monitor this over time
and try to see how it goes.
I'm curious what you guys think about that.
All the different clips there,
the different stuff that Elon said.
I think it was really revealing about how things are going
in the efforts that they're making.
And kind of what we can hope to see
from them for the rest of this year.
So look at the comment down below
and let me know what you guys think about that.