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Originally Posted by Agni
Elon Musk has been saying from the start that the Model 3 will the car that will make the company profitable.You must realize that they had huge R&D expenses until this point. Also to the point about cost of labor, Tesla factory is almost all automated, its the most automated car factory in the world.
And you are right there are headwinds for Tesla, but the headwinds where much MUCH stronger a few years ago and they have successfully navigated them. So lets see what happens but im definitely impressed so far.
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It's true Musk said the Model 3 will be the car that will make the company profitable, saying it and making it happen are different things. While it is true the UAW has slowed some level of automation for the domestic US auto industry most of those fights have been won at this point and most plants have a high level of automation (meaning other manufacturers are not left in Tesla's apparent efficient EV production wake), but the NUMMI plant where Tesla builds can have only a certain level of efficiency regardless of automation. As I said before, getting nearly 50% of the production cost out of the Model S is going to be a feat. Understanding some of the tooling is amortized over three model lines and the engineering costs are also amortized over the Models S X and now 3, it still will be a feat to see happen; I hope it does.
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A manual transmission can be set to "comfort", "sport", and "track" modes simply by the technique and speed at which you shift it; it doesn't need "modes", modes are for manumatics that try to behave like a real 3-pedal manual transmission. If you can money-shift it, it's a manual transmission. "Yeah, but NO ONE puts an automatic trans shift knob on a manual transmission."