Thursday 19th April 2018. Firstly hi to Simon in New York who listens every day and sent some cracking suggestions about some interviews I could do, thank you, I appreciate it. And hello to Isabelle Conner from Sacramento who says “I heard you mention Patreon recently, I would happily support your show as I listen every day, if you ever decide to have supporters, and can I ask that put the shows on Soundcloud as I use their app for all my other podcasts”.  Well again thank you Isabelle and I’m investigating Soundcloud following your note, I think it’s a really great idea, and I will have answer for you in a couple of days. Onto the news, and coming up today…an electric car fit for a king and Electrify America will solve your range anxiety …but first… ELON MUSK LEAKED STAFF EMAIL Elon sent an email to all staff at Fremont and Gigafactory 1. I think highly likely to everyone in Tesla. I’ll read you some highlights and then offer come commentary. “First, congratulations are in order! We have now completed our third full week of producing over 2000 Model 3 vehicles. The first week was 2020, the second was 2070 and we just completed 2250 last week, along with 2000 Model S/X vehicles. Starting today at Giga and tomorrow at Fremont, we will be stopping for three to five days to do a comprehensive set of upgrades. This should set us up for Model 3 production of 3000 to 4000 per week next month. Another set of upgrades starting in late May should be enough to unlock production capacity of 6000 Model 3 vehicles per week by the end of June. Any Tesla department or supplier that is unable to do this will need to have a very good explanation why not. Model 3 production at Fremont will move to 24/7operations. This means that we will be adding another shift to general assembly, body and paint. Our car needs to be designed and built with such accuracy and precision that, if an owner measures dimensions, panel gaps and flushness, and their measurements don’t match the Model 3 specs, it just means that their measuring tape is wrong. I have asked the Tesla finance team to comb through every expense worldwide, no matter how small, and cut everything that doesn’t have a strong value justi? All contracting companies should consider the coming week to be a final opportunity to demonstrate excellence. Any that fail to meet the Tesla standard of excellence will have their contracts ended on Monday. – Communication should travel via the shortest path necessary to get the job done, not through the “chain of command”. Any manager who attempts to enforce chain of command communication will soon find themselves working elsewhere. Always pick common sense as your guide. If following a “company rule” is obviously ridiculous in a particular situation, such that it would make for a great Dilbert cartoon, then the rule should change.” And that’s where I’ll stop, and those are just some edited highlights of parts I was particularly intrigued by. You can read the full email over at Electrek. It was released out of trading hours and some internet commentators say it’s more of a press release passed off as an internet email apparently leaked – you can decide what you make of that conspiracy theory. I would say that 6,000 Model 3’s per week is more than double their current rate, although that is a stretch goal with 5,000 being the minimum. It’s also clear than quality is important, and I’ve seen how forums and tweets went from picking on how bad some Tesla fit & finish was, to it being a running joke, to something which was widely regarded as fact. I’ve never seen a Model 3 up close so I can’t comment. But perhaps that stings Elon, or perhaps it’s commercially hurting them, so quality becomes the focus. And finally profitability is interesting. There was always going to be a day when the spending had to be in check, and that day was yesterday. From now on it looks like they’ve built up enough momentum to start to pick off the spending which isn’t crucial, having t