3 ms·
the falcon wing doors were a little wonky and the source of delays.... but the factory automation... i'm curious what you think.... because i think that is wh
by andrewtbham 10y ago
the falcon wing doors were a little wonky and the source of delays.... but the factory automation... i'm curious what you think.... because i think that is where they are really innovating. they say general assembly will be completely automated and no workers will touch these cars within a year or two.
- csours 10y agoAnything can be automated if it is designed for automation. The corollary is that if it cannot be automated, you don't do it (this will probably be an expensive lesson). The question is: Will the automation pay off? A machine that replaces 1 worker may cost $100,000 to $500,000 (factoring robotics, machine vision, and error proofing). The design for the part and design for automated assembly may be comparable. Now you've spent $1,000,000 to automate your carpet install. Congratulations. You could have installed carpet for 10 years manually at that price. The big question to me is: Can Telsa learn Design for Automation in a scalable way? Other companies have tried it before and has never really payed off. iPhones are still largely hand-assembled for instance. I think the approach may pay off in the next 10-20 years, especially in light of how cheap small components have become due to the rise of smartphones; and the rise of Machine Learning. To be clear,these are just my impressions from observations.