Key to Tesla’s battery making still in Germany

Bloomberg

Tesla Inc. has all the tools to meet its planned Model 3 production rate in the first quarter. The problem is that a key to its future battery manufacturing is still in Germany.
The electric-car maker — which still plans to make about 2,500 of the cars a week by the end of March — designed a new automated system for module production at its battery factory near Reno, Nevada. The line is already working at Tesla’s German manufacturing unit Grohmann but needs to be shipped to the US next month to be put to use, Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said.
“That’s got to be disassembled, brought over to the Gigafactory, and re-assembled and then brought into operation at the Gigafactory. It’s not a question of whether it works or not. It’s just a question of disassembly, transport and reassembly,” he said on a conference call. Once that milestone is completed, Tesla will next need to fix material-handling constraints at its Fremont, California, assembly plant before it can reach its goal to make 5,000 Model 3 sedans a week by the end of June.
Tesla has pushed back targets several times for Model 3, the more affordable car it’s banking on to propel it from niche electric-car maker to more of a mass manufacturer. The slower production ramp has meant less money is coming in the door from customers taking delivery, and Wall Street is watching closely for any signs the targets could slip again. Tesla shares fell 8.6 percent to $315.23 in New York, the biggest one-day drop since June 2016.
Other aspects of Tesla’s latest quarterly loss were more positive. The company’s cash balance barely budged in the last three months of the year even as it struggled to make Model 3 sedans.
Paying customers are supporting Tesla through its production struggle — they’ve put down more than $850 million in deposits for vehicles including the Semi truck and Roa-dster sports car Musk showed off in November.
“The business is complex, and there’s almost always something for bears to focus on. But in Q4, we think most of the news was positive,” Piper Jaffray analyst Alexander Potter wrote in a report.
While it’s going to take time to get Model 3 production to targeted levels, the chief executive officer of both Tesla and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. has succeeded in captivating consumers in the meantime. Musk’s latest promotional stunt involved firing off a sports car into the sky atop the world’s most powerful rocket.
“If we can send a Roadster to the asteroid belt, we can probably solve Model 3 production,” Musk said on the conference call with analysts, shortly after tweeting another photo of his Roadster hurtling through space.