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> 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 measurement
by mabbo 9y ago
> 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.
It's cute lines like this that make the fanboys love Musk. Myself included.
- neilk 9y agoThis really didn’t make sense to me. Every 10x increase in precision surely causes a huge jump in price. I don’t know anything about mechanical engineering but this is one of those things that is true across disciplines. This blog seems to confirm that guess.[1] And in the same email he says they’re going to ruthlessly cut costs. Is there some supply-chain advantage that arises from super tight tolerances that I’m not seeing? As far as I can tell this raises costs, and makes you more vulnerable to supply-chain disruption since fewer suppliers can keep up. He offers no justification, other than some hypothetical obsessive Tesla owner being impressed. [1] https://metalcutting.com/your-tight-tolerance-could-be-seriously-affecting-part-cost/ https://metalcutting.com/your-tight-tolerance-could-be-serio...
- vlehto 9y agoI know something about mechanical engineering and doing away with needlessly tight tolerances is one of the most efficient ways to cut costs. If the cars are designed so that there is some genuine need or benefit from general extra tight tolerancing, then the issue is way way worse than merely tolerancing out of ignorance. In that case the design work is going to result in high workload in assembly in addition of high workload in fabrication. I sincerely hope it was just a cheap marketing stunt aimed at consumers.