Just as a note GM built nearly a 100 prototypes dating back to 2014. These were built with near production tooling and were used to give test drives at the CES launch in early 2016. About half were assembled in GM's PPO facility in Warren, MI and the other half were built in Korea.
These prototypes are used for powertrain, suspension calibration, software debugging, durability testing etc...
Then in spring of 2016 GM started what is called the validation build process. These cars were made on the assembly line in Orion, MI. These cars are used to validate the manufacturing process. Also some of these cars are used for final certifications. Eventually the cars move from non-saleable MVB's to saleable MVB's and these can be press cars and GM internal fleet vehicles for final validation before full production.
We don't really know Tesla's process. Tesla doesn't have a PPO facility like GM does. So they are forced to use production resources to make prototypes. The question is. Is this a run of prototypes for calibration, durability and to validate their math data? Or is this a more final version and it's a production validation? Or are they trying to do both at the same time (which can be very problematic).
