Tesla posts big loss, cuts production of Models X and S to catch up on Model 3
Since this came out as part of the Tesla earnings, here&#x27;s my recap from their earnings release and call....<p>- Tesla will be late getting up to 5,000 units a week of Model 3. It will happen at the end of Q1 instead of the end of this year.  The bottleneck is batteries.<p>- Some lines are at only 500 cars a week. Namely the battery pack assembly, body shop welding and final vehicle assembly.<p>- The $2.92 a share loss was much bigger than the $2.27 analysts expected.<p>- The company burned $1.4 billion and has $3.5 billion in cash. Raising money shouldn&#x27;t be necessary.<p>- Automotive gross margins fell from 28% to about 18% and will slip to 15% next quarter.<p>- Auto revenue grew 10% to $2.4 billion as sales of Model S and X grew.
Revenue is at risk, though. Tesla will divert resources from Model S and X to the Model 3.<p>- Tesla didn&#x27;t say much about China. The company added a supercharger station with 50 chargers in Shanghai, but no word on a new plant.<p>- Musk expects to spend $1 billion on capital expenditures next quarter. That&#x27;s consistent with expectations for ramp up for Model 3.<p>- Tesla installed 109 megawatts of ``energy generation systems&#x27;&#x27; in the third quarter. It acknowledges this is an underwhelming figure: ``the lower deployments are in large part a result of deliberately de-emphasizing commercial and industrial solar energy projects with low profit and limited cash generation.&#x27;&#x27;<p>As to the battery delay....  Tesla says it&#x27;s the suppliers fault. &quot;key elements&quot; of the battery module assembly had to be taken over and redesigned, Musk says.<p><i></i>EDIT<i></i><p>- most importantly, Elon has moved his desk to the giga factory as that is where the largest bottleneck is.