I have some questions about Tesla's global factory expansion. I don't have answers to these questions, and I don't presume that there aren't satisfying answers to them. Nonetheless, I haven't really seen these questions asked or answered so I'll lay them out here.
1: after Tesla's "alien dreadnought" aspirations crashed, leaving them with two barely-functional lines, they cobbled together a highly labor-intensive GA line out of scrap parts in a sprung structure. It seems that this is the production system being scaled globally. Why?
1(A): Why wouldn't Tesla iterate and refine its production system prior to making the huge investments in new plants? It's possible that it has and we haven't heard about it, but this seems unlikely. Most likely Tesla is scaling a labor-intensive line born of deep desperation.
2: Prioritizing speed to production/scale is how Tesla ended up with this suboptimal production system. Why then is Tesla emphasizing the speed with which it is standing up its new plants? Is this not a recipe to repeat at least some of the struggles of "production hell"?
3: given the labor-intensive nature of Tesla's current production system, why build in Germany rather than in one of the lower labor-cost countries in Eastern Europe? Similarly, why build in Shanghai, one of the priciest labor markets in China, when parts West would be cheaper?
4: Why build a greenfield plant in Europe? The Fremont deal showed how cheap Tesla could pick up an unwanted plant, and Europe has had too many car factories for decades now. The cost of shutting EU plants is insanely high. Why not pick up an unwanted plant on the cheap?
4(B): Why build a greenfield plant in a protected forest? The optics alone raise questions, but the additional regulatory compliance hurdle and potential for protests adds further baffling obstacles. I am positive there were many, many alternative options
3(A) (ugh, this thread's numbering is already a mess):Tesla's record with unions generally and German workers at Grohmann specifically are not promising for labor relations at a plant with German worker culture and labor laws. The gap in worldviews is massive.
5: WHY CAN'T TESLA PRODUCE 500K UNITS/YEAR AT FREMONT? AM I REALLY THE ONLY PERSON WHO THINKS THIS IS SUPER BIZARRE GIVEN EVERYTHING TESLA HAS PROJECTED ABOUT THIS PLANT (800K+/YEAR BY 2020)? AM I TAKING CRAZY PILLS? CAN WE PLEASE GET AN ANSWER ON THIS??
6: Finally (for now), the demand question. Tesla's China plant has to hit massive sales targets, but its vehicles aren't much cheaper than imports. EU sales don't look like endless hypergrowth. The growth narrative seems to all rest on Model Y now.
6(A): I don't doubt that Model Y will sell at least as well as Model 3, but does that justify two new factories? Meanwhile, if Model Y is such a hit how does Tesla supply US demand? Fremont is maxed out, so Y production likely requires reduced 3 volume. In Tesla's biggest market!
Anyway, those are the big questions I have. Again, I don't presume that there aren't good answers to these but we just haven't heard them. The critical responses to this thread so far are all "maybe you're making bad assumptions," which is possible but not a convincing answer.
