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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

by 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.
- foepys 9y ago
  Tesla tried to buy that knowledge by aquiring German robotics specialist Grohmann. When the acquisition was complete, Tesla in classic startup fashion tried to pressure employees into overtime and to cut all obligations Grohmann had to other, mostly German, car manufacturers. This resulted in Grohmann's CEO leaving the company in protest and unions threatening strikes. I image quite a few top execs and engineers left with the CEO and went to VW, BMW, and Daimler. Even lower level employees leaving would be hard on Tesla as those people, despite "just" doing blue-collar work, are highly trained specialists.
  - gmueckl 9y ago
    The overtime claim csme up a whule ago already and back then I could not find a supporting source. There was a payment negotiation shortly after Grohmann was bought, but thay did not seem out of the ordinary, either. Remember that Grohmann is a German company operating under German law, which is very different from U.S. labor laws.
- simion314 9y ago
  Is Tesla using fresh people without experience? I imagine they would hire people with experience to setup the factories and the processes, it would be much more expensive to use people fresh from the school without experience.
  - user5994461 9y ago
skybrian 9y ago
How do you know this happens on every manufacturing line ever? I'm no expert, but it doesn't sound like something Toyota would do.
- SteveGerencser 9y ago
  No, it isn't. Generally, in mass production, there is an acceptable failure rate where x parts are simply binned because they fail a quality check. It's built into the process. I would assume that Tesla does not over the available overhead to simply toss parts that can be fixed to work rather than tossing them out.
- swimfar 9y ago
  I don't have any experience with Toyota. But it definitely happens at the German manufacturing plants I've been to. There is an established process for pulling a vehicle off the line and reworking it. Sometimes there are specific "backup" stations for a process that isn't yet proven to be reliable. I mostly worked in getting new models and lines up though, so it may be something that nearly never happens after the first 5k-10k cars or so.
  - refurb 9y ago
    It less about a car needing rework and more about Tesla knowingly delivering cars with major issues to customers. But as someone else mention on HN, they have a customer base that will accept it, so i can see why they do it.
- serf 9y ago
  it's extraordinarily common on production lines with very high value items. aerospace is a good example of such an industry.
lttlrck 9y ago
I imagine customers on the reservation list care about this very much. When will get their Model 3? Can they wait that long? If they wait will it have problems? Will it be out of date compared to what else is on offer at that point, with depreciated value?
dragontamer 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. What should our expectation of Tesla's manufacturing process be when the CEO makes tweets like this: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/881757617416056832 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/881757617416056832 ???
- kjksf 9y ago
  How does Musk's ambitious goals relate to manufacturing quality? He made similarly over-optimistic predictions about SpaceX. They were several years late with their rockets and yet SpaceX crushes competition today. If you seek some objective measure of Tesla's engineering capabilities, maybe the fact that Model S was named best overall car 2 years in a row by Consumer Reports should be more pertinent that Musk's tweets (http://time.com/3721049/tesla-model-s-consumer-reports-car/ http://time.com/3721049/tesla-model-s-consumer-reports-car/).
  - dragontamer 9y ago
    That's nice and all, but the investor is interested in whether or not a company makes money. For a company like Tesla which is on the order of LOSING $1.8 Billion / year, the fact of the matter is that ramping up Model 3 production ASAP is incredibly important. https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/tsla/financials https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/tsla/financials Tesla's cash flow is in a poor state, and the company is relying upon hypothetical Model 3 shipments to carry them over. It doesn't matter how good a car is if they can't build it. With that said, maybe a bank will sponsor them some debt, or maybe the investors will throw more money in another stock dilution. As long as the banks / investors are happy, Tesla isn't really at risk of going bankrupt. But with that said, its unlikely for the share price to increase or to issue a dividend.
    - krrrh 9y ago
      Apparently 25% of Tesla’s cash on hand is reservation deposits for model 3 cars.
objclxt 9y ago
It's no more sensationalist than Tesla's own claims about how many Model 3s they could get off their production line, claims they have completely failed to hit.
Someone 9y ago
I don’t think this article is about whether Tesla can make its customers happy, but about whether it can make so many customers happy that it can make its investors happy. Extra work means higher per unit costs and, likely, lower production numbers, both of which would impact what the company is worth.
Spooky23 9y ago
The thing to be concerned about is that in going for the full vertical integration play, they have folks worried about things like lock buttons and door handle production. It’s pretty obvious that the magic of Tesla is the battery and the in-car “avionics” and telemetry. For every $1 worrying about lock buttons, a dollar is lost to batteries and other, material things.
- avs733 9y ago
  and 'disruption' as a goal is why they get lost in those mistakes.

by sweden 9y ago

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.

foepys 9y ago
Tesla tried to buy that knowledge by aquiring German robotics specialist Grohmann. When the acquisition was complete, Tesla in classic startup fashion tried to pressure employees into overtime and to cut all obligations Grohmann had to other, mostly German, car manufacturers. This resulted in Grohmann's CEO leaving the company in protest and unions threatening strikes. I image quite a few top execs and engineers left with the CEO and went to VW, BMW, and Daimler. Even lower level employees leaving would be hard on Tesla as those people, despite "just" doing blue-collar work, are highly trained specialists.
- gmueckl 9y ago
  The overtime claim csme up a whule ago already and back then I could not find a supporting source. There was a payment negotiation shortly after Grohmann was bought, but thay did not seem out of the ordinary, either. Remember that Grohmann is a German company operating under German law, which is very different from U.S. labor laws.
simion314 9y ago
Is Tesla using fresh people without experience? I imagine they would hire people with experience to setup the factories and the processes, it would be much more expensive to use people fresh from the school without experience.
- user5994461 9y ago

skybrian 9y ago

How do you know this happens on every manufacturing line ever? I'm no expert, but it doesn't sound like something Toyota would do.

SteveGerencser 9y ago
No, it isn't. Generally, in mass production, there is an acceptable failure rate where x parts are simply binned because they fail a quality check. It's built into the process. I would assume that Tesla does not over the available overhead to simply toss parts that can be fixed to work rather than tossing them out.
swimfar 9y ago
I don't have any experience with Toyota. But it definitely happens at the German manufacturing plants I've been to. There is an established process for pulling a vehicle off the line and reworking it. Sometimes there are specific "backup" stations for a process that isn't yet proven to be reliable. I mostly worked in getting new models and lines up though, so it may be something that nearly never happens after the first 5k-10k cars or so.
- refurb 9y ago
  It less about a car needing rework and more about Tesla knowingly delivering cars with major issues to customers. But as someone else mention on HN, they have a customer base that will accept it, so i can see why they do it.
serf 9y ago
it's extraordinarily common on production lines with very high value items. aerospace is a good example of such an industry.

lttlrck 9y ago

I imagine customers on the reservation list care about this very much. When will get their Model 3? Can they wait that long? If they wait will it have problems? Will it be out of date compared to what else is on offer at that point, with depreciated value?

dragontamer 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. What should our expectation of Tesla's manufacturing process be when the CEO makes tweets like this: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/881757617416056832 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/881757617416056832 ???

kjksf 9y ago
How does Musk's ambitious goals relate to manufacturing quality? He made similarly over-optimistic predictions about SpaceX. They were several years late with their rockets and yet SpaceX crushes competition today. If you seek some objective measure of Tesla's engineering capabilities, maybe the fact that Model S was named best overall car 2 years in a row by Consumer Reports should be more pertinent that Musk's tweets (http://time.com/3721049/tesla-model-s-consumer-reports-car/ http://time.com/3721049/tesla-model-s-consumer-reports-car/).
- dragontamer 9y ago
  That's nice and all, but the investor is interested in whether or not a company makes money. For a company like Tesla which is on the order of LOSING $1.8 Billion / year, the fact of the matter is that ramping up Model 3 production ASAP is incredibly important. https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/tsla/financials https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/tsla/financials Tesla's cash flow is in a poor state, and the company is relying upon hypothetical Model 3 shipments to carry them over. It doesn't matter how good a car is if they can't build it. With that said, maybe a bank will sponsor them some debt, or maybe the investors will throw more money in another stock dilution. As long as the banks / investors are happy, Tesla isn't really at risk of going bankrupt. But with that said, its unlikely for the share price to increase or to issue a dividend.
  - krrrh 9y ago
    Apparently 25% of Tesla’s cash on hand is reservation deposits for model 3 cars.

objclxt 9y ago

It's no more sensationalist than Tesla's own claims about how many Model 3s they could get off their production line, claims they have completely failed to hit.

Someone 9y ago

I don’t think this article is about whether Tesla can make its customers happy, but about whether it can make so many customers happy that it can make its investors happy. Extra work means higher per unit costs and, likely, lower production numbers, both of which would impact what the company is worth.

Spooky23 9y ago

The thing to be concerned about is that in going for the full vertical integration play, they have folks worried about things like lock buttons and door handle production. It’s pretty obvious that the magic of Tesla is the battery and the in-car “avionics” and telemetry. For every $1 worrying about lock buttons, a dollar is lost to batteries and other, material things.

avs733 9y ago
and 'disruption' as a goal is why they get lost in those mistakes.