18 ms·

Tesla employees say automaker produces flawed parts requiring costly rework

133 points by ilamont 9y ago

txsh 9y ago
Some guy who wrote some software that got bought by Paypal isn’t qualified to run a car company? Who would have known?
- is_true 9y ago
  SpaceX
  - txsh 9y ago
    Can't put a satellite in orbit. Good marketing though.
    - shadowfacts 9y ago
      Ah yes, because all these [1] successfully completed missions were made up for marketing purposes. [1]: http://www.spacex.com/missions http://www.spacex.com/missions
- bufferout 9y ago
  Some book merchant now operates half the worlds computing infrastructure. Who would have known? etc etc
sweden 9y ago
Sensanionalist article. So Tesla makes sure to manually fix flaws in the parts of cars that are manufactured before using them. Sounds like every manufacturing line ever. Is it an efficient manufacturing process? Probably not but I don't see how the end costumer should care about this. The problems in the manufacturing line are already well known and commented by Elon Musk. This is a company that have been mass producing cars for only 5 years, it's normal that they are still catching up with the process.
- jotm 9y ago
  Another 10 years and it will be easy to see a pretty accurate rate of failure for Teslas. People can make up their minds then. So far it seems to be average - for a mid-class sedan. The price is almost twice as high as it would be for an average ICE car in the same class, because you're paying for early adoption of EVs. If the above comment on stock shorting and reputation war is true, then you can only trust actual drivers, not the news or even Tesla itself.
  - mikeash 9y ago
    Your comment seems to imply that more expensive cars are more reliable, which as far as I know is not true.
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    Huh? An Accord or Camry is the benchmark for quality. Fancy cars are usually less reliable. Teslas are like a Prius circa 2006. Mostly about projecting your eco-consciousness and hipness except it’s a luxury car. GM and now Honda already beat them to an affordable midsize car, it just looks like a Chevy and is missing the hype. Nissan beat them to an economy EV.
    - refurb 9y ago
      There might some "eco-consciousness" going on, but it seems to me most Tesla buyers would fall into the car/tech geek category. The car is viewed as so bleeding edge that it attracts a lot of these folks.
    - krrrh 9y ago
      ...and Jauguar is months away from to shipping a strong competitor to the Model S in volume.
- kazen44 9y ago
  > This is a company that have been mass producing cars for only 5 years, it's normal that they are still catching up with the process. this, getting a production line optimized can take years, especially if you are relatively new to the field and the company has little instituted knowledge at hand. I know in Europe for instance, many plants that fabricate parts for the big three have been doing so since the early 50's, and thus have an amazing body of knowledge on what works and what doesn't in terms or producing high quality parts in high numbers. Tesla does not seem to really have this knowledge.
obblekk 9y ago
For those catching up on Tesla news - there's a PR war going on between Tesla Inc. and many hedge funds who are short TSLA stock. As a result, it's tough to tell what's truth and what's imaginary. Tesla wants people to believe in them in order to continue selling cars to customers (who probably wouldn't buy if they thought the company was going bankrupt) and stock/bonds already issued to investors. Short sellers want to give people doubt to cause a decrease in stock price in order to benefit from their short position. Both parties are probably acting in good faith - Tesla wants people to see how good they are and short sellers want people to see how risky they are. But as a result the news is crowded and it's generally hard to know the truth. Just remember, in the US the Supreme Court has ruled that it's legal for news publications to lie to their readers/viewers.
- GuiA 9y ago
  > Just remember, in the US the Supreme Court has ruled that it's legal for news publications to lie to their readers/viewers. Link please?
  - sschueller 9y ago
    Isn't that ruling just allowing news stations to segment certain time frames as news and others as entertainment? They still can't make stuff up during news segments.
    - icegreentea2 9y ago
      No, I don't think that's it. I think OP is referring to "NEW YORK TIMES CO. v. SULLIVAN" where the Supreme Court placed the bar of something being libel as the accused having 'actual malice' which is in itself is somewhat slipperly defined as having knowledge that they were lying, or recklessly not investigating what they were publishing.
      - Lazare 9y ago
        I dunno if that's what OP meant or not, but either way I'd note the actual malice standard only applies to public officials and public figures, which is defined fairly narrowly. I certainly don't think that qualifies as a decision that "the news media can lie". In fact, to the extent you can prove the news media was lying in a report about a public figure (that is, the news media published something they knew to be false), that's explicitly covered. That's the opposite of what OP claimed.
empath75 9y ago
It’s interesting that Tesla is seen is a technology company and tech companies are almost obsessive about applying Japanese auto manufacturing techniques to software development, but Tesla has managed to get this so wrong. Small batch production, obsessive quality control at all steps of production, etc, it’s all straight out of The Goal or The Phoenix Project.
kryptiskt 9y ago
What turned me pessimistic about Tesla was this piece of news from a month ago: "During a conference call following the released of the company’s financial results today, Tesla confirmed that its President of Sales and Services, Jon McNeill, is leaving the company. Home Solar Power Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed that Sales and Services will be reporting to him directly without any plan for someone to replace McNeill." https://electrek.co/2018/02/07/tesla-president-sales-service-elon-musk/ https://electrek.co/2018/02/07/tesla-president-sales-service... If Musk can't let go of the micromanagement, Tesla isn't going to scale.
csours 9y ago
Disclaimer up front: I work for a Tesla competitor. Tesla is making several very interesting bets on the Model 3. Bet 1: Model 3 mix - Tesla is betting that the ratio of expensive, high-content Model 3s to cheap, low-content Model 3s will be sufficient to make enough money to offset investments and pay back loans. It will not be sufficient to make a small profit on each Model 3 sold given the debt load that Tesla has accrued, so they will want to sell a good ratio of expensive Model 3s. If it takes to long to produce the cheaper Model 3s, Tesla will lose some potential customers. Many investors are looking at that "top line" right now - the number of customers and potential customers. If the top line moves too much, investors may get spooked. Bet 2: Vertical Integration - Most automakers rely on a web of parts suppliers, who are under enormous pressure to reduce costs, but Tesla produces most of its components in-house. The contract with an external parts suppliers ensures that the supplier is responsible for any re-work or replacement of defective parts. This allows the automaker to concentrate on internal production issues. Tesla's bet is that internal production of parts will lead to better and cheaper components. This has not worked for any other automaker. Traditional OEMs shoot for a mix of components where the internally produced components are part of the company's core competence: Body Shells, Engines, Transmissions - and externally produced components may be generic - switches, latches, seats, frames, tires, wheels, etc. If Tesla spends too much capital on component manufacturing, they will be inefficient and investors pressure them. Additionally and probably more importantly, if Tesla is not able to spend the time and attention to iterate on cost and quality of these parts, it will also lose this bet. Personal opinion: I think Tesla has learned the wrong lesson from previous dealings with suppliers. For instance, the original Roadster was designed with a two speed transmission. A supplier claimed they could make it, but it never really worked. Tesla learned the lesson that suppliers are stupid and suck at making new things - I think they should have learned that lesson that it is really really hard to make new things. Bet 3: Automation - But first a detour - There are 3 main areas of auto assembly, and most manufacturers have already fully or almost fully automated 2 of them: Body Shop (welding and assembly of the body shell) and Paint Shop. The 3rd area is General Assembly. General Assembly is the bloody, thorny, devilish poster child for multiple single points of failure. A high feature vehicle may have on the order of 1000 assembly stations (aka footprints) in General Assembly. The Model 3 is designed with much lower complexity in mind, and may only have 100 footprints. If and when any of those 100 footprints has an equipment failure or parts issue, ALL 100 stop running in a short amount of time. Human assembly workers are rather resilient and can figure out a multitude of small issues on each and every operation. This may allow for a hypothetical variation of 5% in non-critical parts. Automated assembly may only allow for a 1% variation. Additionally, automated assembly only runs well when EVERYTHING is designed for automation. That is not impossible, but it is expensive and time consuming. --- Most importantly, these three bets are linked: If not enough base models are sold, the cost of design and equipment spending will be excessive on a per vehicle basis. If internally produced parts are too far out of spec, you have strong negative impacts on automation. If automation fails, you cannot produce enough vehicles at a low enough price to satisfy your low-end customers. But, if Tesla wins all three bets, they win big time.
ctur 9y ago
This rings true to anyone who has owned a Tesla, especially if they purchased it when the model was new. Repeated trips to get minor things fixed is not uncommon. Nonetheless, they are excellent cars and worth the early adopter frustration (IMO).
exabrial 9y ago
Flagged because of the quotes in the article. If hacker news is going to make accusations, can we at least base them on, you know, facts. If we can't do that can we at least base them on statistics?
cerved 9y ago
The Machine That Changed the World largely attributes Toyotas success to avoiding costly repair/rework, it's a phenomenal book.
- geerlingguy 9y ago
  And if you’re arguing over things like supplier management, inventory management, rework due to QA issues, European vs US vs Japanese manufacturing philosophies and efficiencies, and haven’t read this book, you should. It’s basically a foundation for modern automotive manufacturing discussion (though slightly dated now, as it was written in the 90s).
ggg9990 9y ago
When my friend bought a model S I went over to drive it and found that it’s one of the shittiest feeling cars in that price bracket (buttons doors etc) but as soon as you get your foot on the “gas” pedal it’s the best car I’ve ever experienced.
RivieraKid 9y ago
I've been a long time fan, then sceptical fan and now I think Tesla will probably fail in some way (such as being bought by a competitor). What convinced me was following @TeslaCharts on Twitter. For example, here's a recent series of tweets: https://twitter.com/TeslaCharts/status/974087889997975552 https://twitter.com/TeslaCharts/status/974087889997975552 Having followed both the bullish and bearish sides, the bearish one is more convincing. What is confusing about this company is that they make (in some aspects) a great, unique and innovative product but on the other hand they're in a very bad financial situation, have production and quality issues and their CEO tends to bullshit.
Animats 9y ago
These are the problems Detroit had before Toyota forced them to get their act together.
mdekkers 9y ago
Luxury automaker Tesla is manufacturing a surprisingly high ratio of flawed parts and vehicles I laughed at this opening line of the article. Tesla isn't a "luxury automaker". It is all cheap, badly fitting plastic inside, and sitting down in any Tesla doesn't feel (to me) like any kind of "luxury" experience. Tesla is "expensive", not "luxury". I get that they have to pay for the tech and innovation, but when I drop over 100k EUR for a car, I expect a certain overall experience, not feeling like I am sitting in a collection of the cheapest possible parts.

133 points by ilamont 9y ago

txsh 9y ago

Some guy who wrote some software that got bought by Paypal isn’t qualified to run a car company? Who would have known?

is_true 9y ago
SpaceX
- txsh 9y ago
  Can't put a satellite in orbit. Good marketing though.
  - shadowfacts 9y ago
    Ah yes, because all these [1] successfully completed missions were made up for marketing purposes. [1]: http://www.spacex.com/missions http://www.spacex.com/missions
bufferout 9y ago
Some book merchant now operates half the worlds computing infrastructure. Who would have known? etc etc

sweden 9y ago

Sensanionalist article. So Tesla makes sure to manually fix flaws in the parts of cars that are manufactured before using them. Sounds like every manufacturing line ever. Is it an efficient manufacturing process? Probably not but I don't see how the end costumer should care about this. The problems in the manufacturing line are already well known and commented by Elon Musk. This is a company that have been mass producing cars for only 5 years, it's normal that they are still catching up with the process.

jotm 9y ago
Another 10 years and it will be easy to see a pretty accurate rate of failure for Teslas. People can make up their minds then. So far it seems to be average - for a mid-class sedan. The price is almost twice as high as it would be for an average ICE car in the same class, because you're paying for early adoption of EVs. If the above comment on stock shorting and reputation war is true, then you can only trust actual drivers, not the news or even Tesla itself.
- mikeash 9y ago
  Your comment seems to imply that more expensive cars are more reliable, which as far as I know is not true.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  Huh? An Accord or Camry is the benchmark for quality. Fancy cars are usually less reliable. Teslas are like a Prius circa 2006. Mostly about projecting your eco-consciousness and hipness except it’s a luxury car. GM and now Honda already beat them to an affordable midsize car, it just looks like a Chevy and is missing the hype. Nissan beat them to an economy EV.
  - refurb 9y ago
    There might some "eco-consciousness" going on, but it seems to me most Tesla buyers would fall into the car/tech geek category. The car is viewed as so bleeding edge that it attracts a lot of these folks.
  - krrrh 9y ago
    ...and Jauguar is months away from to shipping a strong competitor to the Model S in volume.
kazen44 9y ago
> This is a company that have been mass producing cars for only 5 years, it's normal that they are still catching up with the process. this, getting a production line optimized can take years, especially if you are relatively new to the field and the company has little instituted knowledge at hand. I know in Europe for instance, many plants that fabricate parts for the big three have been doing so since the early 50's, and thus have an amazing body of knowledge on what works and what doesn't in terms or producing high quality parts in high numbers. Tesla does not seem to really have this knowledge.

obblekk 9y ago

For those catching up on Tesla news - there's a PR war going on between Tesla Inc. and many hedge funds who are short TSLA stock. As a result, it's tough to tell what's truth and what's imaginary. Tesla wants people to believe in them in order to continue selling cars to customers (who probably wouldn't buy if they thought the company was going bankrupt) and stock/bonds already issued to investors. Short sellers want to give people doubt to cause a decrease in stock price in order to benefit from their short position. Both parties are probably acting in good faith - Tesla wants people to see how good they are and short sellers want people to see how risky they are. But as a result the news is crowded and it's generally hard to know the truth. Just remember, in the US the Supreme Court has ruled that it's legal for news publications to lie to their readers/viewers.

GuiA 9y ago
> Just remember, in the US the Supreme Court has ruled that it's legal for news publications to lie to their readers/viewers. Link please?
- sschueller 9y ago
  Isn't that ruling just allowing news stations to segment certain time frames as news and others as entertainment? They still can't make stuff up during news segments.
  - icegreentea2 9y ago
    No, I don't think that's it. I think OP is referring to "NEW YORK TIMES CO. v. SULLIVAN" where the Supreme Court placed the bar of something being libel as the accused having 'actual malice' which is in itself is somewhat slipperly defined as having knowledge that they were lying, or recklessly not investigating what they were publishing.
    - Lazare 9y ago
      I dunno if that's what OP meant or not, but either way I'd note the actual malice standard only applies to public officials and public figures, which is defined fairly narrowly. I certainly don't think that qualifies as a decision that "the news media can lie". In fact, to the extent you can prove the news media was lying in a report about a public figure (that is, the news media published something they knew to be false), that's explicitly covered. That's the opposite of what OP claimed.

empath75 9y ago

It’s interesting that Tesla is seen is a technology company and tech companies are almost obsessive about applying Japanese auto manufacturing techniques to software development, but Tesla has managed to get this so wrong. Small batch production, obsessive quality control at all steps of production, etc, it’s all straight out of The Goal or The Phoenix Project.

kryptiskt 9y ago

What turned me pessimistic about Tesla was this piece of news from a month ago: "During a conference call following the released of the company’s financial results today, Tesla confirmed that its President of Sales and Services, Jon McNeill, is leaving the company. Home Solar Power Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed that Sales and Services will be reporting to him directly without any plan for someone to replace McNeill." https://electrek.co/2018/02/07/tesla-president-sales-service-elon-musk/ https://electrek.co/2018/02/07/tesla-president-sales-service... If Musk can't let go of the micromanagement, Tesla isn't going to scale.

csours 9y ago

Disclaimer up front: I work for a Tesla competitor. Tesla is making several very interesting bets on the Model 3. Bet 1: Model 3 mix - Tesla is betting that the ratio of expensive, high-content Model 3s to cheap, low-content Model 3s will be sufficient to make enough money to offset investments and pay back loans. It will not be sufficient to make a small profit on each Model 3 sold given the debt load that Tesla has accrued, so they will want to sell a good ratio of expensive Model 3s. If it takes to long to produce the cheaper Model 3s, Tesla will lose some potential customers. Many investors are looking at that "top line" right now - the number of customers and potential customers. If the top line moves too much, investors may get spooked. Bet 2: Vertical Integration - Most automakers rely on a web of parts suppliers, who are under enormous pressure to reduce costs, but Tesla produces most of its components in-house. The contract with an external parts suppliers ensures that the supplier is responsible for any re-work or replacement of defective parts. This allows the automaker to concentrate on internal production issues. Tesla's bet is that internal production of parts will lead to better and cheaper components. This has not worked for any other automaker. Traditional OEMs shoot for a mix of components where the internally produced components are part of the company's core competence: Body Shells, Engines, Transmissions - and externally produced components may be generic - switches, latches, seats, frames, tires, wheels, etc. If Tesla spends too much capital on component manufacturing, they will be inefficient and investors pressure them. Additionally and probably more importantly, if Tesla is not able to spend the time and attention to iterate on cost and quality of these parts, it will also lose this bet. Personal opinion: I think Tesla has learned the wrong lesson from previous dealings with suppliers. For instance, the original Roadster was designed with a two speed transmission. A supplier claimed they could make it, but it never really worked. Tesla learned the lesson that suppliers are stupid and suck at making new things - I think they should have learned that lesson that it is really really hard to make new things. Bet 3: Automation - But first a detour - There are 3 main areas of auto assembly, and most manufacturers have already fully or almost fully automated 2 of them: Body Shop (welding and assembly of the body shell) and Paint Shop. The 3rd area is General Assembly. General Assembly is the bloody, thorny, devilish poster child for multiple single points of failure. A high feature vehicle may have on the order of 1000 assembly stations (aka footprints) in General Assembly. The Model 3 is designed with much lower complexity in mind, and may only have 100 footprints. If and when any of those 100 footprints has an equipment failure or parts issue, ALL 100 stop running in a short amount of time. Human assembly workers are rather resilient and can figure out a multitude of small issues on each and every operation. This may allow for a hypothetical variation of 5% in non-critical parts. Automated assembly may only allow for a 1% variation. Additionally, automated assembly only runs well when EVERYTHING is designed for automation. That is not impossible, but it is expensive and time consuming. --- Most importantly, these three bets are linked: If not enough base models are sold, the cost of design and equipment spending will be excessive on a per vehicle basis. If internally produced parts are too far out of spec, you have strong negative impacts on automation. If automation fails, you cannot produce enough vehicles at a low enough price to satisfy your low-end customers. But, if Tesla wins all three bets, they win big time.

ctur 9y ago

This rings true to anyone who has owned a Tesla, especially if they purchased it when the model was new. Repeated trips to get minor things fixed is not uncommon. Nonetheless, they are excellent cars and worth the early adopter frustration (IMO).

exabrial 9y ago

Flagged because of the quotes in the article. If hacker news is going to make accusations, can we at least base them on, you know, facts. If we can't do that can we at least base them on statistics?

cerved 9y ago

The Machine That Changed the World largely attributes Toyotas success to avoiding costly repair/rework, it's a phenomenal book.

geerlingguy 9y ago
And if you’re arguing over things like supplier management, inventory management, rework due to QA issues, European vs US vs Japanese manufacturing philosophies and efficiencies, and haven’t read this book, you should. It’s basically a foundation for modern automotive manufacturing discussion (though slightly dated now, as it was written in the 90s).

ggg9990 9y ago

When my friend bought a model S I went over to drive it and found that it’s one of the shittiest feeling cars in that price bracket (buttons doors etc) but as soon as you get your foot on the “gas” pedal it’s the best car I’ve ever experienced.

RivieraKid 9y ago

I've been a long time fan, then sceptical fan and now I think Tesla will probably fail in some way (such as being bought by a competitor). What convinced me was following @TeslaCharts on Twitter. For example, here's a recent series of tweets: https://twitter.com/TeslaCharts/status/974087889997975552 https://twitter.com/TeslaCharts/status/974087889997975552 Having followed both the bullish and bearish sides, the bearish one is more convincing. What is confusing about this company is that they make (in some aspects) a great, unique and innovative product but on the other hand they're in a very bad financial situation, have production and quality issues and their CEO tends to bullshit.

Animats 9y ago

These are the problems Detroit had before Toyota forced them to get their act together.

mdekkers 9y ago

Luxury automaker Tesla is manufacturing a surprisingly high ratio of flawed parts and vehicles I laughed at this opening line of the article. Tesla isn't a "luxury automaker". It is all cheap, badly fitting plastic inside, and sitting down in any Tesla doesn't feel (to me) like any kind of "luxury" experience. Tesla is "expensive", not "luxury". I get that they have to pay for the tech and innovation, but when I drop over 100k EUR for a car, I expect a certain overall experience, not feeling like I am sitting in a collection of the cheapest possible parts.