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Tesla's Simultaneous Brilliance and Incompetence Revealed in Teardown of Model 3
- TimJYoung 8y agoFor contrast, here's Sandy Munro on the Autoline Network show talking about his teardown of the BMW i3: https://youtu.be/uDr4L6BzpP8 https://youtu.be/uDr4L6BzpP8
- cowsandmilk 8y agoAnd here's him discussing the Model 3 teardown on Autoline (don't see a link to this in the article) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpCrkO1x-Qo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpCrkO1x-Qo
- Nokinside 8y agoHe is really praising the batteries and electronics as revolutionary. "Other automakers ignore Tesla's electronic at their peril, but Tesla ignored traditional car manufacturing so they are in peril." At one point Munro says that had Tesla outsourced the manufacture and design of of the car to a company like Magna they would have hit every target and even Toyota would be crapping their pants now. If the traditional mechanical parts of the car would have been even decent, Tesla would have mopped the floor with everybody.
- alasdair_ 8y ago>At one point Munro says that had Tesla outsourced the manufacture and design of of the car to a company like Magna they would have hit every target and even Toyota would be crapping their pants now. This would lead to hitting short-term targets at the expense of never really learning how to perform such tasks well in-house. Being able to design and manufacture cars seems pretty important stuff for a car maker to know how to do.
- Nokinside 8y agoThey are now risking with running out of money and bankruptcy. It would have been better idea to make money from outsourced Model 3 and continue R&D.
- justin66 8y ago> He is really praising the batteries and electronics as revolutionary. His opinion on the suspension design was interesting as well. He was so enthusiastic about it that he said the designer could do an F1 car, but in another part of the interview he mentioned that it was a questionable design for a car that was meant to hit a $37k price point.
- justin66 8y agoAnyone with even a passing interest in this kind of engineering owes it to themselves to watch these videos. It's just utterly fascinating. At least one of his interviews with Autoline talked about the business of costing and reverse engineering, which is almost as interesting as the pure engineering. He has a sense of humor about the controversy Tesla stuff inevitably engenders online. Craig Cole (on measured gaps and mechanical tolerances): i3 was the best. Where does the Model 3 fall on that scale? Way at the bottom, is it somewhere in the middle... can you share that? Sandy Munro: Now, I'm pretty sure there's gonna be Tesla fans here so I really don't know if I wanna say the truth, so, I will give you a nice lie. It's in the lower half.
- jsnell 8y agoI don't drive and don't care about cars in general, but I'm just riveted by this video.
- samfriedman 8y ago>Most confounding to Munro and his team was the body construction of the Model 3. "This car is the heaviest body-in-white I've ever seen," he said, calling the construction "ridiculous" and highlighting areas where Tesla needlessly added weight with things like excess metal flanges and overlapping layers of steel. "This adds weight without value," he said. Optimizing structural design is hard. There are plenty of examples of talented young engineers with lots of budget who can make a really clever and strong design, but it will frequently also be overengineered and far over weight or cost for its design purpose. An infamous example would be the Juicero juicer[0]. It takes a lot of experience and knowledge to make a highly optimized frame or structural component. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cp-BGQfpHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cp-BGQfpHQ
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago> It takes a lot of experience and knowledge to make a highly optimized frame or structural component. And if you don't optimize your competitors will and they'll deliver better value and take your market share.
- samstave 8y agoIf there is anything I want over engineered it is all things infrastructure. Bridges, buildings, planes and boats etc. Over-engineer them when life is on the line.
- oasisbob 8y agoOverbuilt and overengineered are two different things. Overbuild a car and you have mass in all the wrong places. Do it right, and you get passenger protection and crumple zones. The problems with over engineering are probably more subtle - you want time and money spent effectively.
- LoSboccacc 8y agothere's no reason to believe overengineering leads to safer results, yet alone competitive on the market or fit for the problem statement. case in point: airbus a380
- cvaidya1986 8y agoThey are iterating and optimizing the hardware rapidly treating it just like software. And pushing out versions that work fine to improve stuff later. It’s as if the car is communicating the Silicon Valley ethos with its seemingly random features that are simply optimized towards something that can be shipped ASAP. Interesting how one can deduce culture just by looking deep inside an artefact. One day aliens will try to decipher how early humans behaved by analyzing excavated iPhones.
- stcredzero 8y agoOne day aliens will try to decipher how early humans behaved by analyzing excavated iPhones. Those aliens will be our descendants. And they won't have to excavate. They'll just look up the right shop in Akihabara, or equivalent of the time. http://kk.org/thetechnium/technologies-do/ http://kk.org/thetechnium/technologies-do/
- cvaidya1986 8y agoThanks for Radium suppositories! What if humans have long left the Milky Way galaxy and aliens visit us then?
- stcredzero 8y agoWhat if humans have long left the Milky Way galaxy If out descendants become intergalactic spacefarers, then we probably won't ever all leave. and aliens visit us then? Those aliens will probably be our descendants. They'll just have to look up the information in their archives. It's not like keeping raw information is going to become so expensive, we have to delete it.
- ModernMech 8y agoImagine a universe so old and so populated that a good portion of the matter/energy available in the universe must be devoted to storing the histories of the various civilizations. Wars would break out over data resources, as factions war over access to storage and compute power. That assumes a future where humans colonize the stars and spread life through the universe. What's more likely for humanity is a future more like the matrix, except instead of being enslaved, we place ourselves there willingly. It seems to me the focus of most of our technology has been to figure out how to poke and prod our pleasure sensors to maximum effect. Forget the stars, we're going to invent our own personal paradises on Earth and just stay here.
- venning 8y ago> Everything that's below the floor pan is amazing. Everything above it is what it is. Honest question: Is everything below the floor pan designed and built by Panasonic?
- jernfrost 8y agoI thought Panasonic only made the cells and that tesla assembles the batteries, cooling system, electric drive train etc.
- cowsandmilk 8y agoHe was very complimentary of the circuit boards, saying he has no idea where they were sourced and basically saying they were the only company using cutting edge circuitry of a quality and density similar to the latest cell phones.
- devy 8y agoTesla's former VP of Autopilot Software&Hardware (oversees all low-voltage hardware, aka everything else besides High Voltage battery drivetrain) was Jim Keller[1][2], who also designed Apple's System on a Chip A4 mobile processor and an early AMD chip architect. So that makes a lot of sense. [1] https://electrek.co/2018/04/25/tesla-autopilot-jim-keller-leaving-chip/ https://electrek.co/2018/04/25/tesla-autopilot-jim-keller-le... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Keller_(engineer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Keller_(engineer)
- Fricken 8y agoJim Keller didn't have anything to do with developing the hardware for hw2. The board is from Nvidia, it's a stripped down variant of their Drive PX2 computers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Autopilot https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Autopilot https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_PX-series#Drive_PX_2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_PX-series#Drive_PX_2
- annerajb 8y ago
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoThat manufacturing a car isn't something a tech company excels in even though they can build a good battery doesn't surprise me one bit.
- cvaidya1986 8y agoPerhaps we can extrapolate from this how the first AI will behave. This empirical iterative approach towards optimization by its creator engineers will be baked into its ‘DNA’. The way it optimizes human happiness might be unexpected and we might be as puzzled as these analysts. I hope we know what we are doing in terms of AI development. This iterative approach can quickly lead to dangerous outcomes.
- ucaetano 8y ago"The fact that Tesla can simultaneously demonstrate brilliance and incompetence in the same vehicle is not surprising, considering it is a high-tech software company trying to master complex manufacturing processes that took established automakers more than 100 years to perfect." High-tech software company? Tesla is an automaker, not a software company. Sure, Elon comes from the software/tech/payments industry, but putting Zuckerberg in charge of Exxon wouldn't change the fact that Exxon is an energy/oil company.
- sjm-lbm 8y agoIt's a bit awkwardly worded, but I get their point (I think) - take your example and swap it, for instance: if you were to exchange all the employees at Facebook for employees at Exxon, the company structurally and culturally would still be an energy/oil company even if the product they were making was software. Likewise, Tesla runs, structurally and culturally, like a software company, even though they are building cars.
- samfisher83 8y agoYou definitely don't want to "Move fast and break things" at an oil company. They have very defined procedures for everything. Now days safety is paramount. You can't just change procedures even if its better because they can't afford a blowout or leak or accident. At Exxon you have a manual for everything and deviating from it is frowned upon.
- wand3r 8y agoTo carry the analogy from above, Exxon moved fast and broke the Prince William Sound. Safety is important obviously but innovation has real costs and software companies seem to learn a lot more and innovate more when they break things vs energy companies-- at least that is the meme. Also, energy companies move slow and still break things like the environment.
- jackfoxy 8y ago
- jonknee 8y agoThis quote is brutal: > A Tesla spokesperson said the primary car evaluated by Munro was built in 2017, adding: "We have significantly refined our production processes since then, and while there’s always room for improvement, our data already shows that Model 3 quality is rapidly getting better.” Sounds like Tesla is agreeing that they sold sub-par vehicles?
- LoSboccacc 8y agoIn this case may be but the statement itself says now is better than previously without explicit admission that previous quality was bad. It’s like apple, every year iphone is the best iohone yet, but that doesn’t imply directly that the previous model was bad.
- jonknee 8y agoIt would be huge news if Apple said new iPhone X's are better than launch day iPhone X's...
- Rexxar 8y agoWould it be news if Apple said that new iPhone X's cost less to build than launch day iPhone X's ?
- ggg9990 8y agoNo, because that doesn’t affect the customer. Tesla’s most loyal and gung-ho customers are punished for their enthusiasm by getting the worst Model 3s that will ever be made.
- saltcured 8y agoThe automobile market is not like smartphones. In spite of assembly lines, the identical unit is not stamped out one million times and sealed in glue. Car designs are quite modular and individual components and suppliers are revised during manufacture. There are far more intermediate sub-assembly steps and smaller volumes produced in each batch. It is common to see recalls and technical service bulletins that "patch" cars already delivered to gain some of the fixes devised after the car left the line. Sometimes these are direct replacements of parts,and sometimes they are literal patches of the older design, such as applying an extra gasket or some adhesive to resolve a rattle in an interior trim piece which was designed away in its next revision. While marketing maintains "model years" as a nominally uniform offering of a particular car, it is not uncommon to find odd half-year or worse hybrids which mix together cosmetic and mechanical features of different years. These happen when the manufacturer drains out certain supply chains and integrates unusual combinations of the different modules into specific cars. People focus on the visible parts like cosmetic body trim or interior features, but this also applies to mechanical and electronic parts buried deep inside the car.
- tlb 8y agoIs the intellectual asymmetry between creating a design and analyzing it so large that a small teardown team can reliably analyze trade-offs in a design created by a large engineering group? For example, when they say "this flange is larger than necessary", how can they know all the possible reasons it might be necessary? Perhaps it adds stiffness or crash energy absorption, or is used to grasp the part during assembly, or avoids a resonant frequency.
- solarkraft 8y agoMunro claims to have a lot of engineering an tear down experience. I guess that's what they sell. That said I don't expect them to be 100% correct on all the trade-offs.
- rando444 8y agoIt seems as they can't reliably analyze the decisions. >highlighting areas where Tesla needlessly added weight with things like excess metal flanges and overlapping layers of steel. "This adds weight without value," he said. it feels rather presumptuous to assume that the added value isn't safety.. which isn't something you can assess in a teardown. In the next paragraph: "He was also puzzled by Tesla's unconventional use of multiple welding techniques in close proximity to one another. "I don't get it," he said. "There's a lot of technology [used] here, but what we don't understand is why they used the technology they did." Not understanding something != bad
- falsedan 8y agoFor a lay person, sure. But these are experts at automotive engineering. Imagine if you were reviewing a new developer's code, and you were puzzled by a particularly non-idiomatic implementation where you can't see the reasons for avoiding the idiomatic version. Are you going to think that maybe this is some technique you're unfamiliar with, or that the person who'se still quite new to developing might not be aware of the idiomatic verions?
- rando444 8y ago
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- birdman3131 8y ago>The fact that Tesla can simultaneously demonstrate brilliance and incompetence in the same vehicle is not surprising, considering it is a high-tech software company trying to master complex manufacturing processes that took established automakers more than 100 years to perfect. This is wrong. At the very least it would be since the 60's and probably later. Seeing as 1963 was the first time CNC was used by the auto industry as far as I can tell. While they have been making cars for over 100 years you really can't include the time before technologies like CAD and CAM. And even those took a while to see widespread usage. Add to that the ability modern CAD software has to model stresses bases on the different forces in play makes a hell of a difference. Even just going back 12 years and the amount of computing you have access to vastly changes. That was when AWS came out. AWS lets you compute massive amount of engineering data without having to invest into a super computer. (Not to say the auto industry did not have those super computers before then.)
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- joe_the_user 8y agoI think it's reasonable to talk of a culture of engineering (or design) going back earlier than a given technology. A large company has to make sure at any given that a new approach does everything that an older approach does. The company may have access large customers for testing and requirements gathering so they can wind-up doing technology X "correctly" even if they start-out behind on technology X. With the variety of changes different companies go through (being bought, sold, spun-off, etc), it's certainly an interesting question whether a company retains a given "core competency" or any core competency at a given time. I know in the case of CNC manufacturing, the devices were essentially programmable lathes and one can talk of a "CNC programmer" but the system was designed to leverage the existing knowledge and population of manual lathe operators and there's no relation to computer programmers and instead the "touch stone" is ordinary lath operation I believe (a CNC programmer makes $22/hour average conveniently). Thus it's reasonable to say manufacturing culture in the US references things earlier than CNC. You can see a similar thing in the way Photoshop, Illustrator and cousins ape paper and pencil tools - the standards, skills and terminology of layout were carried through the transition (to the point that these industry standard tools have an interface that seems fairly pathological to newbies).
- happertiger 8y agoAre they working with Tesla to provid this feedback into their production flow? There is no mention of it. Does anyone know?
- SteveCoast 8y agoI just read a book about Henry Ford. They evolved the model T rapidly so models coming off the line weeks or months apart had significant differences. They kept evolving it for years Reminded me of the model 3. So, I don't have a ton of faith in a single datapoint on Tesla build quality.
- pests 8y agoSkunk Works did the same. Ben Rich mentions how by the time #9 of a plane rolled off the manufacturing floor they had devised new methods or better way of doing things. With meticulous record keeping they would be able to go back and re-engineer earlier planes.
- carlivar 8y agoThe Model T cost being so cheap due to supply and assembly line innovation is a big difference. The Model 3 at $49k starting price messes up the comparison. A shame the $35k version remains vaporware since that would be a more apt comparison I think. People can and should be pickier for that extra $14k.
- dotancohen 8y agoOne doesn't even need to go that far back to find relevant examples. The head of manufacturing at Spacex recently started that no two Falcon 9 cores were built identically.
- Xunxi 8y agoSo Munro purchased the Model 3 in early December for $72,000 and the benchmarking study goes for $87,000 apiece? I presumed those reports could fetch 6 figures considering the scope of work that goes into generating the findings as well as the limited number of automobile manufacturer's who would be interested in it
- decacorn1 8y agoNo one in the auto industry considers Munro a reputable source. This keeps circulating entirely for clickbait purposes.
- _ph_ 8y agoIt would seem odd that as Elon has his experience with SpaceX in the background, and SpaceX engineers are consulting for Tesla, that the metal construction was done overly clumsy without a reason. Equally likely is, that they had a clear plan when designing the metal work on the Model 3 - but it is not obvious to people trained in the way the automobile industry works, as Tesla certainly is thinking differently.
- olivermarks 8y agohttps://youtu.be/CpCrkO1x-Qo https://youtu.be/CpCrkO1x-Qo 90 minute discussion of Tesla 3 with Munro and others on the excellent autoline network youtube channel ('Really heavy, really expensive')
- nojvek 8y ago87k for a benchmark report. That’s something. Car makers manufacture in millions so 87k is a tiny expense for a high quality competitive analysis by a 3rd party unbiased firm. I love tiny business that are the forefront leaders in a small profitable nice.
- inertial 8y agoThere's was also this article a few months ago on some glaring flaws in Tesla vs i3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16305520 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16305520