Tesla To Sacrifice Configuration Options On Model 3 To Allow For More Production Volume

It would not surprise me to see the family sedan market do a two-model, choose-your-color approach because from a production and inventory standpoint it's a godsend.

A large dealer can easily have several hundred cars in the inventory so as to have a mix of colors and options. A move like this would allow dealers to dramatically slash inventories.

"Sacrificed" implies they had plans for a different interior and changed it to lower the cost, yet we have no indication that they ever did.

You won't miss anything they consolidated on the dash. Every car will eventually look this like this.

That's a subjective take, some like it plain and simple. The purpose of the car after all is to be affordable.

Remember Henry Ford in the early days? You can have any color, so long as it's black :-) The great grandfather of simplification, standardization, and rapid production had something.

I suspect Tesla's *temporary* decision to limit configuration is a smart and necessary step with the hope that it will:
- Get more Teslas into consumers' hands
- Regain some credibility with respect to meeting self-declared targets
- Save face with critical analysts

As always, I wish the best for Tesla and its customers. I'm still concerned for the company's viability.

$59 billion in market cap. thinks differently about the company's viability.

vdiv: Market Capitalization speaks to what stock traders/holders *believe*. In Tesla's case, this is stellar!

Accounting (assuming it's honest) speaks to the facts. It reveals a company's assets, liabilities, net worth, profit or loss. In Tesla's case, this sucks. This is what analysts have been concerned about, and continue to be concerned about. It's why many doubt Tesla's viability. It's not a guarantee that Tesla will fail, but it is an alarm bell worth paying attention to for anyone doing their due diligence.

Steve, you can stop being concerned about Tesla's viability. Anyone with a little bit of vision can clearly see they're on a winning path. Open your eyes brother.

They were added to the S&P 500 today based on their revenue, not their Market Cap.

Believe, think, concern... Tesla has indeed taken major risks and that most have paid off, and the ones that haven't have been shrugged off with a view of the big picture.

Oh, look! It's now $60 billion.

runninglogan1 and vdiv: I’d bet that neither of you have studied accounting, can read a balance sheet or income statement, and correctly interpret its story. As such, accounting is meaningless to you, so you focus only on Tesla’s stock price, and based on that alone, you interpret that as Tesla’s success metric (see my post of 6/7/2017 6:11:06 PM).

Enron, Nortel Networks, Research in Motion (now Blackberry), and Lehman Brothers are just a few examples of companies that one had an exceptionally strong stock value (Market Capitalization), but whose financials revealed serious issues. They’re all gone (Note: Blackberry is “not dead yet”… go figure).

Financial Analysts – those would be people who CAN read financial statements and correctly interpret them – have long be citing serious issues in Tesla Motors. They correctly predicted Tesla having to go back to capital markets (i.e., sell more shares) to raised money to keep production going. Twice! In spite of Musk stating that would not be so, and in spite of Tesla fans believing Musk knows what he’s talking about. That’s something to note, when financial analysts can predict what’ll happen in a company BETTER than its own owner!!! These same financial analysts have expressed concern for Tesla Motors, and are concerned about its viability. I share their concerns. That doesn’t mean you have to. You can still make money on trading TSLA, so long as there are enough believers to keep driving the price up.

And in case you’re curious, yes, I have studied accounting (amongst other things). I’m conversant enough to build enterprise-level accounting systems, as well as trans-system interfaces to accounting systems. It’s one of the things I do for a living, so I kinda have to know that accounting stuff pretty well.

You won't miss anything they consolidated on the dash. Every car will eventually look this like this.