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Nobody is saying they should sacrifice completeness, and nobody is receiving incomplete or unfinished cars. According to the article, it's an average of 37 min

Nobody is saying they should sacrifice completeness, and nobody is receiving incomplete or unfinished cars. According to the article, it's an average of 37 minutes of extra work per car that has to happen.

eropple 8y ago
A friend has a Tesla without a back bumper because it fell off when it rained. She's not alone, either. Tesla's saying Tesla should sacrifice completeness because Tesla chose to sacrifice completeness. And a car with a bumper that falls off in the rain is in some way one of incomplete or unfinished.
- Klathmon 8y ago
  I worked as a mechanic several years ago, I can't tell you the number of times we were working on a car before it was sold. Cleaning up seals, fixing window motors, applying recalls. 2 years ago I bought an Audi that I was unable to get into after it dropped below freezing for the first time, because the window leaked water internally which froze and the door can't be opened unless the window comes down slightly. That doesn't mean the Audi was unfinished, or that all Audis are awful... Shit happens, not every car is perfect, and i'm not saying it is, i'm just saying that they aren't selling half-finished cars. Defects are defects, not an incomplete product.
  - gamblor956 8y ago
    Nobodies saying that other cars are defect free. But what they are saying is that Teslas have more defects than other cars, which is a problem--especially when they have yet to scale up to meaningful production quantities. Having this many defects with this few cars made indicates serious production quality control issues, which just gets worse as production scales.
    - Klathmon 8y ago
      Why do people think it's easy to make perfect cars in small numbers? I would assume that defects will go down as they scale up, as things will become less manual and more automated, and they find the common problems and fix them at manufacturing time. Are there other car companies that started from nothing that went a different direction? Did they start with nearly perfect cars then get progressively worse as they scaled up? Did they plan to mass manufacturer cars?
    - extrapickles 8y ago
      The Model 3 is still roughly in its first year of production and I would expect it to have more defects that need rework than a car that has been made for 10. They don’t state in the article that the quoted facts about other automakers are for cars in their first model year.
sandworm101 8y ago
These are cars that aren't coming off the line clean. Toyota/honda/BMW would see this as a horrible situation. They would say that with so many errors needing fixing that there is little doubt other errors are happening unnoticed.
- Klathmon 8y ago
  Why do you think Tesla doesn't see this as a horrible situation? Pretend your are Honda and you just found out this is happening, what do you do? Shut down the plant and fix it properly? Who is going to fund that? What happens if it causes other issues? How long can you afford to do this? Or would you get some people to fix the problem after production manually while you worked on solving the root of the issue? Exactly what Tesla is doing here...
  - gamblor956 8y ago
    That is exactly what Honda would do. Shut down the plant and fix it properly. In fact, that's what every other carmaker actually does, except that they do trial runs of their factory lines before actually initiating mass production precisely so they can identify and fix problems in the assembly line like the ones Tesla is now facing.
    - Klathmon 8y ago
      And who will fund that? Because Tesla is not Honda, they don't have the ability to sit back and spend a year or 2 on just prototyping assembly, they don't have the decades of experience running factories like this, they don't have the money to shut everything down for a few months to fix what amounts to 37 minute of fixes per car... It seems absolutely insane to me that they Honda would stop the world for something like that. It's like what, $15 per car in labor? $30 per car in labor? And you want to stop the whole factory output for potentially weeks to stop that? That seems like a monumental waste of time and money.
      - jonathankoren 8y ago
donarb 8y ago
This from Electrek.com: "For some unknown reason, Tesla says that it won’t be shipping the Performance Model 3 with the spoiler included in the performance package for the early production of the vehicle. Owners will be able to have it shipped and installed at their local service center. The badge was also a question mark for a long time since the first 50,000 Model 3 vehicles that Tesla produced had no badge beyond the Tesla logo." https://electrek.co/2018/07/19/tesla-model-3-performance-spoiler-badge/ https://electrek.co/2018/07/19/tesla-model-3-performance-spo... The factory not installing something that was part of the vehicle means that the car is incomplete.

eropple 8y ago

A friend has a Tesla without a back bumper because it fell off when it rained. She's not alone, either. Tesla's saying Tesla should sacrifice completeness because Tesla chose to sacrifice completeness. And a car with a bumper that falls off in the rain is in some way one of incomplete or unfinished.

Klathmon 8y ago
I worked as a mechanic several years ago, I can't tell you the number of times we were working on a car before it was sold. Cleaning up seals, fixing window motors, applying recalls. 2 years ago I bought an Audi that I was unable to get into after it dropped below freezing for the first time, because the window leaked water internally which froze and the door can't be opened unless the window comes down slightly. That doesn't mean the Audi was unfinished, or that all Audis are awful... Shit happens, not every car is perfect, and i'm not saying it is, i'm just saying that they aren't selling half-finished cars. Defects are defects, not an incomplete product.
- gamblor956 8y ago
  Nobodies saying that other cars are defect free. But what they are saying is that Teslas have more defects than other cars, which is a problem--especially when they have yet to scale up to meaningful production quantities. Having this many defects with this few cars made indicates serious production quality control issues, which just gets worse as production scales.
  - Klathmon 8y ago
    Why do people think it's easy to make perfect cars in small numbers? I would assume that defects will go down as they scale up, as things will become less manual and more automated, and they find the common problems and fix them at manufacturing time. Are there other car companies that started from nothing that went a different direction? Did they start with nearly perfect cars then get progressively worse as they scaled up? Did they plan to mass manufacturer cars?
  - extrapickles 8y ago
    The Model 3 is still roughly in its first year of production and I would expect it to have more defects that need rework than a car that has been made for 10. They don’t state in the article that the quoted facts about other automakers are for cars in their first model year.

sandworm101 8y ago

These are cars that aren't coming off the line clean. Toyota/honda/BMW would see this as a horrible situation. They would say that with so many errors needing fixing that there is little doubt other errors are happening unnoticed.

Klathmon 8y ago
Why do you think Tesla doesn't see this as a horrible situation? Pretend your are Honda and you just found out this is happening, what do you do? Shut down the plant and fix it properly? Who is going to fund that? What happens if it causes other issues? How long can you afford to do this? Or would you get some people to fix the problem after production manually while you worked on solving the root of the issue? Exactly what Tesla is doing here...
- gamblor956 8y ago
  That is exactly what Honda would do. Shut down the plant and fix it properly. In fact, that's what every other carmaker actually does, except that they do trial runs of their factory lines before actually initiating mass production precisely so they can identify and fix problems in the assembly line like the ones Tesla is now facing.
  - Klathmon 8y ago
    And who will fund that? Because Tesla is not Honda, they don't have the ability to sit back and spend a year or 2 on just prototyping assembly, they don't have the decades of experience running factories like this, they don't have the money to shut everything down for a few months to fix what amounts to 37 minute of fixes per car... It seems absolutely insane to me that they Honda would stop the world for something like that. It's like what, $15 per car in labor? $30 per car in labor? And you want to stop the whole factory output for potentially weeks to stop that? That seems like a monumental waste of time and money.
    - jonathankoren 8y ago

donarb 8y ago

This from Electrek.com: "For some unknown reason, Tesla says that it won’t be shipping the Performance Model 3 with the spoiler included in the performance package for the early production of the vehicle. Owners will be able to have it shipped and installed at their local service center. The badge was also a question mark for a long time since the first 50,000 Model 3 vehicles that Tesla produced had no badge beyond the Tesla logo." https://electrek.co/2018/07/19/tesla-model-3-performance-spoiler-badge/ https://electrek.co/2018/07/19/tesla-model-3-performance-spo... The factory not installing something that was part of the vehicle means that the car is incomplete.