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As a point of comparison, the last US car company to be founded was Ford, in 1903. They all literally have a > 100 year head start in factories and whatnot. Ed

by SEJeff 8y ago

As a point of comparison, the last US car company to be founded was Ford, in 1903. They all literally have a > 100 year head start in factories and whatnot. Edit: GM in 1908 is the actual correct answer.

Alupis 8y ago
> They all literally have a > 100 year head start in factories and whatnot Which really begs the question - why did Tesla scoff at outside help from the big car companies? They've figured things out already...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- SEJeff 8y ago
  For ICE vehicles perhaps, not for EVs, or we'd see more than a token manufacturing capacity from them. How many times did they manufacture 200k Volts or i3 EVs? Where is their serious battery production? Anything even 1/2 as big as the current gigafactory (which is about 30% finished and is still the aggregate battery capacity of almost every battery factory in the world in 2016).
  - Alupis 8y ago
    Tesla's manufacturing woes are not with assembly of the EV components... it's with the build quality, speed and precision of assembling everything else, plus worker safety and required on-clock hours. This has been discussed here many times. It reminds me of Chipotle famously scoffing at McDonald's attempt to teach supply chain management and more... and then Chipotle routinely having shortages of food items, quality and consistency issues, or suffering from nation-wide food-safety outbreaks. Turns out they could have leaned a thing or two...
    - SEJeff 8y ago
      That's fair, but I'm still a bit skeptical as most other manufacturers outsource the overwhelming majority of things where Tesla does things in-house. I mean they had to create their own Seat for the Model X as they wanted them to take an amount of force no "off the shelf" seat could. As a result, the traditional "scale up by buying more" model simply doesn't work quite as well. That said, Tesla could learn TONS from the rest of the industry, but that is why guys like Deepak Ahuja are executives there, their experience.
      - Alupis 8y ago
        Yes, but you must acknowledge having a seat manufacturing company design and manufacture the seats probably would have resulted in a better, cheaper seat that was available sooner and with less trouble... after all, it's the only thing the seat manufacturer does as a business. (I also don't believe the forces were so great that no seat could be bought or made by another company... some of the Tesla models have good performance... but they aren't alone in that arena) The seat is a flagship example of NIH Syndrome - the same syndrome that has led to bloated costs, reduced profitability and poor quality and craftsmanship of Tesla vehicles. Tesla is figuring out how to do things for the first time - solving problems that have already been solved, and solved well by others. Looking towards the heavy-weights in the field and learning a few things could go a long way... Also, they've had a lot of executive turnover... we've all heard the stories about what it's like to work for Mr. Musk...
        SEJeff 8y ago
        I will acknowledge that they tried to have a seat manufacturing company design and manufacture the seats, and it failed: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-seats/teslas-seat-strategy-goes-against-the-grain-for-now-idUSKBN1CV0DS https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-seats/teslas-seat-s... Gotta say, as a Model 3 owner, I don't see any build quality or poor craftsmanship in the vehicle and I took a very long time doing final inspection at the service center before taking delivery. I'm not saying it has the same build quality as say a high end Mercedes or BMW (the model 3 isn't in that category of vehicle), but it is the nicest car I've ever driven as a daily driver. He is trying to do something differently, and he very well might do it slower as a result, but vertical integration will definitely lead to lower costs in the long run as there is simply less of the middle tier. When it comes to the guts, there is nothing but quality, and tesla easily stands alone in that regard: https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/19/tesla-model-3-stuns-german-engineers-wonders/ https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/19/tesla-model-3-stuns-ger... TL;DNR: People have been hating on Elon since he said that banking could be online (when he founded x.com that became most of what is now paypal), and when he said he would found a rocket company, and when he said his rockets would be reusable by landing on boats, etc. He'll get it eventually, or die trying.
brandonmenc 8y ago
> the last US car company to be founded was Ford GM, Chrysler, Jeep, and others were founded after Ford. Dodge didn't start making cars until 1914.
- SEJeff 8y ago
  Thank you for correcting me. My original comment was incorrect, but the point still stands. Dodge: 1900 Ford: 1903 GM - 1908 Chevrolet - Formally "Chevrolet Division of General Motors Company" is a division of GM founded in 1911 Jeep - not a car company but a division of FCA founded in 1943 Chrysler - "Fiat Chrysler America" aka FCA, was a division of Fiat founded in 1925 The last US car company to be founded was GM, in 1908, all of the others are simply divisions of existing entrenched players internationally. Tesla is the first to do this from scratch in the US in > 100 years. They are definitely the first to try it with EVs.
Theodores 8y ago
Ford were making a Liberator bomber every sixty three minutes during WW2, they built the factory and had the product rolling off the production line a year after the government requested it. A huge amount of WW2 inventory rolled off the Ford production line with Ford and not the government finding the capital and the land for the factory. The war in Europe would have been very different without Ford supplied planes and other materiel. Compared to other war time suppliers Ford 'aced it'. Yet despite the amazing things the original Henry Ford and Edsel did you don't get the impression that today's Ford has that same dynamism. The more out there ideas Ford had went with him. The company had shareholders in the stock market after Ford died and from then on the brakes were on as far as speculative, massively vertically integrated investments. Ford may have a 100 year head start but it is 75 or so years since their 'Elon grade' founder left them.
- SEJeff 8y ago
  Oh I was referring to manufacturing capacity, tooling, logistics. You don't need a Henry Ford or an Elon Musk to ace manufacturing, you need experience. Something Tesla has precious little of overall. That was the crux of my point.
  - kamaal 8y ago
    They have none of that when it comes EVs. The bigger problem is they don't have a Henry Ford anymore to build a new set of them. An even bigger problem is to toss out all that existing edge with ICEs to start afresh with EVs. The problem at the most basic level is MBAs have to compete with current era Henry Ford(Elon Musk). Most of them will quit when faced with even 1/100th the pressure Musk is in now.
empath75 8y ago
Ford was making 20,000 model T’s a week by 1920 and invented mass production in the process.
kamaal 8y ago
>>They all literally have a > 100 year head start in factories and whatnot. That's more of a disadvantage when faced with paradigm changing trends. Its always easy to do something new from scratch. Throwing away decades worth assets, IP, patents, product lines to compete is more or less impossible. You have tear down the whole company for this.

by SEJeff 8y ago

Alupis 8y ago

> They all literally have a > 100 year head start in factories and whatnot Which really begs the question - why did Tesla scoff at outside help from the big car companies? They've figured things out already...

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
SEJeff 8y ago
For ICE vehicles perhaps, not for EVs, or we'd see more than a token manufacturing capacity from them. How many times did they manufacture 200k Volts or i3 EVs? Where is their serious battery production? Anything even 1/2 as big as the current gigafactory (which is about 30% finished and is still the aggregate battery capacity of almost every battery factory in the world in 2016).
- Alupis 8y ago
  Tesla's manufacturing woes are not with assembly of the EV components... it's with the build quality, speed and precision of assembling everything else, plus worker safety and required on-clock hours. This has been discussed here many times. It reminds me of Chipotle famously scoffing at McDonald's attempt to teach supply chain management and more... and then Chipotle routinely having shortages of food items, quality and consistency issues, or suffering from nation-wide food-safety outbreaks. Turns out they could have leaned a thing or two...
  - SEJeff 8y ago
    That's fair, but I'm still a bit skeptical as most other manufacturers outsource the overwhelming majority of things where Tesla does things in-house. I mean they had to create their own Seat for the Model X as they wanted them to take an amount of force no "off the shelf" seat could. As a result, the traditional "scale up by buying more" model simply doesn't work quite as well. That said, Tesla could learn TONS from the rest of the industry, but that is why guys like Deepak Ahuja are executives there, their experience.
    - Alupis 8y ago
      Yes, but you must acknowledge having a seat manufacturing company design and manufacture the seats probably would have resulted in a better, cheaper seat that was available sooner and with less trouble... after all, it's the only thing the seat manufacturer does as a business. (I also don't believe the forces were so great that no seat could be bought or made by another company... some of the Tesla models have good performance... but they aren't alone in that arena) The seat is a flagship example of NIH Syndrome - the same syndrome that has led to bloated costs, reduced profitability and poor quality and craftsmanship of Tesla vehicles. Tesla is figuring out how to do things for the first time - solving problems that have already been solved, and solved well by others. Looking towards the heavy-weights in the field and learning a few things could go a long way... Also, they've had a lot of executive turnover... we've all heard the stories about what it's like to work for Mr. Musk...
      - SEJeff 8y ago
        I will acknowledge that they tried to have a seat manufacturing company design and manufacture the seats, and it failed: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-seats/teslas-seat-strategy-goes-against-the-grain-for-now-idUSKBN1CV0DS https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-seats/teslas-seat-s... Gotta say, as a Model 3 owner, I don't see any build quality or poor craftsmanship in the vehicle and I took a very long time doing final inspection at the service center before taking delivery. I'm not saying it has the same build quality as say a high end Mercedes or BMW (the model 3 isn't in that category of vehicle), but it is the nicest car I've ever driven as a daily driver. He is trying to do something differently, and he very well might do it slower as a result, but vertical integration will definitely lead to lower costs in the long run as there is simply less of the middle tier. When it comes to the guts, there is nothing but quality, and tesla easily stands alone in that regard: https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/19/tesla-model-3-stuns-german-engineers-wonders/ https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/19/tesla-model-3-stuns-ger... TL;DNR: People have been hating on Elon since he said that banking could be online (when he founded x.com that became most of what is now paypal), and when he said he would found a rocket company, and when he said his rockets would be reusable by landing on boats, etc. He'll get it eventually, or die trying.

brandonmenc 8y ago

> the last US car company to be founded was Ford GM, Chrysler, Jeep, and others were founded after Ford. Dodge didn't start making cars until 1914.

SEJeff 8y ago
Thank you for correcting me. My original comment was incorrect, but the point still stands. Dodge: 1900 Ford: 1903 GM - 1908 Chevrolet - Formally "Chevrolet Division of General Motors Company" is a division of GM founded in 1911 Jeep - not a car company but a division of FCA founded in 1943 Chrysler - "Fiat Chrysler America" aka FCA, was a division of Fiat founded in 1925 The last US car company to be founded was GM, in 1908, all of the others are simply divisions of existing entrenched players internationally. Tesla is the first to do this from scratch in the US in > 100 years. They are definitely the first to try it with EVs.

Theodores 8y ago

Ford were making a Liberator bomber every sixty three minutes during WW2, they built the factory and had the product rolling off the production line a year after the government requested it. A huge amount of WW2 inventory rolled off the Ford production line with Ford and not the government finding the capital and the land for the factory. The war in Europe would have been very different without Ford supplied planes and other materiel. Compared to other war time suppliers Ford 'aced it'. Yet despite the amazing things the original Henry Ford and Edsel did you don't get the impression that today's Ford has that same dynamism. The more out there ideas Ford had went with him. The company had shareholders in the stock market after Ford died and from then on the brakes were on as far as speculative, massively vertically integrated investments. Ford may have a 100 year head start but it is 75 or so years since their 'Elon grade' founder left them.

SEJeff 8y ago
Oh I was referring to manufacturing capacity, tooling, logistics. You don't need a Henry Ford or an Elon Musk to ace manufacturing, you need experience. Something Tesla has precious little of overall. That was the crux of my point.
- kamaal 8y ago
  They have none of that when it comes EVs. The bigger problem is they don't have a Henry Ford anymore to build a new set of them. An even bigger problem is to toss out all that existing edge with ICEs to start afresh with EVs. The problem at the most basic level is MBAs have to compete with current era Henry Ford(Elon Musk). Most of them will quit when faced with even 1/100th the pressure Musk is in now.

empath75 8y ago

Ford was making 20,000 model T’s a week by 1920 and invented mass production in the process.

kamaal 8y ago

>>They all literally have a > 100 year head start in factories and whatnot. That's more of a disadvantage when faced with paradigm changing trends. Its always easy to do something new from scratch. Throwing away decades worth assets, IP, patents, product lines to compete is more or less impossible. You have tear down the whole company for this.