Tesla Slashing Model 3 Parts Orders From Supplier Hoya Due To Production Bottleneck — What Are The Implications?

Tesla will be slashing orders for parts from the Taiwan-based auto component manufacturer Hota Industrial Mfg. Company by around 40% from December onwards, according to reports from Economic Daily News.

That report quotes Hota Chairman Shen Kuo-jung as saying that Tesla informed him that firm orders would be slashed to 3,000 sets per week down from 5,000 a week starting in December — owing to a “bottleneck” in Model 3 production that apparently can’t be quickly resolved.

On this note, we can also add that we’ve heard from a SpaceX employee waiting for her/his Model 3 that a delivery date still isn’t confirmed, and that’s after the order delivery was potentially going to move up from October—December to September. In other words, it seems that this bottleneck hit sometime in September and has been big enough to require a change in Tesla’s December order from Hota. (An important note regarding this case, though: Tesla is known to have communication gaps between the factory and sales/inside sales advisor staff and it’s unclear what actually prompted this buyer’s sales advisor to say that there was a possibility she/he would get her/his car in September. Also, the delivery timeframe still shows as October—December 2017, so there’s no indication of delay on the customer side yet.)

Back to the news, the change makes for a fairly significant drop in orders (down 2,000 a week). Presuming that the reports are accurate, are things even worse as regards Tesla Model 3 production than has been publicly acknowledged? How much of a disparity between Tesla’s official Model 3 production goals and actual production numbers will there be over the coming months?

I can’t provide any definitive answers to those questions, but the coverage from Reuters does provide some further information that’s interesting: “Tesla may delay scheduled weekly shipments of 10,000 parts in March by a few weeks until May or June, the report added.

“Hota, which makes gears and axles for vehicles, and Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Earlier this month, Tesla said production bottlenecks had left the company behind its planned ramp-up for the new Model 3 sedan. It began production of the model in July.”

How far behind, though, remains something of an open question. I suppose it’s a question we’ll get an answer to soon enough, though.