1,000 Model 3s a day and the 'game of pennies'

From:: Elon Musk
Date:: November 30, 2018 (Electrek describes it as sent to employees on November 30, 2018)
To:: All Tesla employees

Partial text. Only these passages were published; [...] marks a gap.

If you are able to help in any way with getting Model 3 production to a steady 1000 per day at excellent quality, everyone at the company should please consider this their top priority. Body production currently appears to be our limiting factor, so it needs the most support right now. Please focus on simplification and reducing cycle time first and then uptime. [...] It's important to bear in mind that the cost of the car is made up of about 10,000 unique parts and processes. depending on how you count it, the current cost of a standard range Model 3 would be around $38,000, so each part or process step only costs around $3.80. That means finding cost efficiencies is a game of pennies, even though it might not seem so.

About this email

Musk asks everyone to make a steady 1,000 Model 3s per day at excellent quality their top priority, names body production as the bottleneck, and explains that with about 10,000 parts and processes in a roughly $38,000 car, cost reduction is 'a game of pennies'.

Notes

Two passages as quoted by Electrek; the rest of the email was not published. The lower-case 'depending' after a full stop is as published.

Where it came from

Leaked to press; attribution single-source.

Tesla, company-wide memo. Tags: model-3, production, cost-cutting, body-line

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