Featured Tesla needs to Catch up

Disney has done this also, for over a decade. Maybe my next assignment will be on one of their cruise ships - as one of my co-workers recently did ... TWO WEEKS!

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June + July (there was an inventory build in June) was an average of 14K cars for the US/month (10.1 K model 3 + 3.9K models S+X). That is easily sustainable. Add probably another 5000 per month for export (just the x and s) The factory should be able to easily pump out 19K/month in the next 5 months or 95K In August-December.

Tesla Uses more labor/car than say a Lexus or Toyota, so is it sustainable to drop labor/vehicle while increasing production? Of course it is, they simply need to drop closer to industry best practices. When they were rushing out to get cars built in June, they definitely grabbed extra labor and were even less efficient in terms of man hours per model 3. They claim that they can do a 9% reduction in work force and get to 6K model 3s/month at the end of august. If this really happens and they produce 14K model 3s in August, then there should be about 110K model 3s produced by tesla for the US market, and 40K model S and X for the US and rest of the world in the last 5 months of the year. That would be an average production of 32K/month in the last 4 months. It may be hard to do and might require additional investment especially in the paint shop.

US sales may not be sustainable in 2019 as the tax credit decreases, but production should be easy to increase, the questions really are cash burn and profitability. Tesla had $2.2B in cash at the end of Q2 of which $900M was deposits. They should be cash positive in Q3 and Q4, if they don't hit production snags. 2019 will take a lot of cash though and a capital raise to build the chinese factory and develop the model Y, Roadster, and Truck.

From the earnings call