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's my recap from their earnings release and call....- 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.- Some lines are at only 500 cars a week. Namely the battery pack assembly, body shop welding and final vehicle assembly.- The $2.92 a share loss was much bigger than the $2.27 analysts expected.- The company burned $1.4 billion and has $3.5 billion in cash. Raising money shouldn't be necessary.- Automotive gross margins fell from 28% to about 18% and will slip to 15% next quarter.- 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.- Tesla didn't say much about China. The company added a supercharger station with 50 chargers in Shanghai, but no word on a new plant.- Musk expects to spend $1 billion on capital expenditures next quarter. That's consistent with expectations for ramp up for Model 3.- Tesla installed 109 megawatts of ``energy generation systems'' 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.''As to the battery delay....  Tesla says it's the suppliers fault. "key elements" of the battery module assembly had to be taken over and redesigned, Musk says.EDIT- most importantly, Elon has moved his desk to the giga factory as that is where the largest bottleneck is.