Lily Chimes In On 500,000 In 2018 Tesla Production Target & Santa Monica Solar Mandate — 3 Minutes with Zach (& Lily)
I honestly love our community of readers here on CleanTechnica. But the size of everything has grown so large that I can’t keep up with Twitter, Google+, Facebook, or even email. I’ve tried and tried and tried. Additionally, while a spend a ton of time in the comments under our articles, I don’t see everything (that requires something like 40 hours a week — ask Bob).
To try to open up a communication channel for our dedicated readers (and hopefully not spammers … though, they always seem to find me), I thought up a new weekly video series. I’m making it more personal than your typical “talk to us” media thing too, because I see many of you as friends, close friends, and even family (lookin’ at you, Bob). So, I’m creating these videos with my little girl, Lily, and my wife (behind the camera … after this week).
The “series” is called “3 Minutes with Zach (& Lily),” and I’ll aim to keep these videos to 3 minutes or fewer … with the “remaining” time for chatting in the comments. 😀
The aim is that I will see every single comment, while also opening up a little more in a real-world way and throwing some thoughts out there succinctly about the biggest cleantech stories of the week (in my limited opinion, of course). Also, I look forward to creating these with my girls (we have another one on the way as well!) and being able to watch them grow in this fun way as well. 😀
In this first video, Lily and I quickly give our opinions on Tesla’s new production target of 500,000 electric cars by 2018 (rather than 2020) and Santa Monica’s new rooftop solar mandate for new buildings. I hope you enjoy it. 😀
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Thanks, Lily is gorgeous. Do you need one of those woolly mufflers(for the mic!) ? You could check with Lily.
Haha, I’ll ask her 😉
Honestly, am super stoked about doing this just for the fun of it and ability to look back at her at these different stages later. 😀
I didn’t realize it was going to be so windy. And was just using the iPad mini. Will watch out for that in the future.
Congratulations on the growing family.
Zgadzam się z Lily
I’m with Lily on the timing of the 500,000. It’s all very opaque – but then it should be for competitive reasons. Which ultimately makes it sound like the CEO is tossing out stuff off the top of his head for the bull case, and crazy talk for the bear case. Good call Lily!
Haha, good call. 😀
I like Elon Musk’s recent comment about production requires more creativity than design (now I can’t find a reference–need help if anyone can source it). That comment came not long before the 500,000 production target per year change to 2018 from 2020. This change did not come out of the blue nor was it just tossed out, in my opinion. Perhaps they realized that if Toyota can produce 747,000 vehicles per month, Tesla ought to be able to produce 42,000 per month. It’s only 5.6% of what Toyota does, and Tesla has now been in producing cars for a decade (come July 19th).
http://www.statista.com/statistics/267274/worldwide-vehicle-sales-of-toyota-since-2007/
http://techcrunch.com/gallery/a-brief-history-of-tesla/slide/4/
Production and manufacturing can yield more innovation than the actual design and engineering of the vehicle?
I think he’s saying that there is a lot of room for creativity in the production process. He’s not talking about the product but how it is manufactured.
Yes, I believe the word he used was ‘innovation’ though. It was in his reply to the final question of the conference call (http://edge.media-server.com/m/p/c67hnavs Question at ~1:07:00) His exact words (starting at ~1:08) were, “We believe that manufacturing technology is itself subject to a tremendous amount of innovation. In fact, we believe that there is more potential for innovation in manufacturing than there is in the design of the car… by a long shot.”
Just a minute or two earlier, he speculated that the Fremont plant could potentially produce 1,000,000 vehicles per year (independent of the wisdom of doing such a thing). Presumably, such an increase would be the result of the above innovations in manufacturing.
OK so…don’t get all didactic on me bro 🙁
I just put the ? mark at the end since I didn’t recall his exact words. Production engineering has improved processes and productivity while pushing down prices in larger scales of auto production across new learning curves for 100 years. I figure yeah, Elon Musk gets that! Though I can’t speak for his views.
Hows that for a full on run-on sentence 🙂
I really like it. I’ve gotten so used to him exploding expectations(whether good or bad) that the fact Tesla has been moving “according to plan” feels like it has only given the trolls enough time to catch up.
I’m also proud of him keeping the target moving.
All that said, its easy for me to be indifferent to how this goes, I’m waiting until 2019 or 2020 for my 3 anyway. Can’t see any reason I won’t get it within 3 months of ordering by then.
Congratulations! You’ll going to be even busier soon.
Beware of pimping out your kids online. Pandora’s box.
Children have a right to grow up out of the public spotlight, IMHO.
She absolutely loves it. 😀 But yes, something I will keep thinking about.
omgeeeeee!