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I am fascinated by their attempts to simplify manufacturing but this does bring up the question, how easy is it to change what this casting machine produces? Wi

I am fascinated by their attempts to simplify manufacturing but this does bring up the question, how easy is it to change what this casting machine produces? Will they make similar changes to the 3? One question is will the heat pump design make its way to the 3 or are changes to the 3 just on hold. I am curious how long they will go without changing the outward design of the 3 or Y. Most manufacturers find it necessary to iterate every few years to keep customers interested and show progress while Tesla shows progress mostly through features added OTA. They already have range numbers down for a significant lead covering a few years so they are not under the same pressure. edit: This all goes back to Musk's question to engineers why can't a car be in as few pieces as possible using a matchbox/hot wheels car as example

djaychela 6y ago
I think a "model S Mark 2" is in the pipeline, from what I've heard on YouTube channels. I think the model Y is already massively simpler than the 3 is (from watching Sandy Monroe on YouTube), but whether it will be possible to perform such a modification to the 3 isn't clear. My suspicion is that there's to e much complication in that area of the car (rear suspension) to make a straight swap to the Y style of rear bodyshell section.
- mcot2 6y ago
  They will bring this manufacturing process and new rear body structure to the 3 for sure but it won’t be until they seriously ramp up Y and can afford to shut down the 3 lines for retooling. My best estimate would be no earlier than Q1 2021. They have an aggressive goal to hit 500,000 total deliveries in 2020 and they can’t afford any downtime on the 3 lines to hit that goal.
  - grecy 6y ago
    They'll also bring new manufacturing processes to their new factories. Musk said on the latest earnings call that new factories are building "better cars" with all the latest enhancements. So while Fremont might keep making "original" model 3, I think it's likely other new factories will skip straight to the new processes. So for example the factory in Berlin will just start with a monster press like this on day 1, so all Model Y built there will automatically have the "new" design. Same for the Model 3 and Model Y lines in Texas.
Alupis 6y ago
> This all goes back to Musk's question to engineers why can't a car be in as few pieces as possible using a matchbox/hot wheels car as example Because then trivial accidents become major costly repairs and/or result in totaling of the vehicle. There is an advantage of having separate body panels, support pillars, bumpers, etc. It can all be replaced separately.
- mcot2 6y ago
  Since they are now in the insurance business as well they will soon figure this out. Even was mentioned at the last conference call, they’ve admitted to making a lot of mistakes in the past about manufacturing for repairability. The transcript is not great but you get the point: “ It's like if you want to pay more for insurance, you can. But if you want to pay less, then please don't drive so crazy. Then people can make a choice. Like, OK, they want to drive aggressively. In that case, it'll be higher insurance. Or they want more capital enter driving and pay less. This was actually very helpful for us to have a feedback loop to see what is driving insurance expense. A lot of it is just -- it's like a little fender bender and the net fender bender because of the way that the body collision repair is being done. It costs like $15,000 or something crazy and like -- and then we can actually adjust the design of the car and adjust how the repair is done to actually have the fundamental cost of solving that problem would be less.So this has helped us under a whole bunch of facility things that we were doing basically without realizing it. But this is a problem with -- in general, with insurance is like if the insurance is, like, all you can eat, then the feedback loop for improvement is sweet. So this gives us a great feedback for improvement because it's basically a fundamentally better insurance product. I'd also like to say, I'm inspired of recruiting because if there's one thing I'd like to come out of this call, it's that a lot of great people want to join Tesla.” https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2020/07/23/tesla-tsla-q2-2020-earnings-call-transcript.aspx https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2020/07/23/te...
  - Alupis 6y ago
    From my understanding, Tesla has been offered help by many major automotive manufacturers such as VW, and rejected it. Perhaps that was foolish in hindsight, since most of their quality, workmanship and repairability problems stem directly from having to learn (through trail-and-error) all the same things the other manufactures learned long ago. The parallels with McDonalds taking Chipotle under their wing to teach supply chain management, distribution, food safety and more are undeniable. Chipotle's founders famously scoffed at learning _anything_ from McDonalds... which may have resulted in the numerous food safety handling issues they had a few years back (not washing raw produce that was transported through multiple handling facilities and then into stores), and legendary portion control variance (totally depends who makes your burrito... it may weigh a 1/2 lb, or 2lbs... a total coin flip). It's difficult to scale these complex organizations - why make it harder on yourself? Learn from other people's mistakes and try not to repeat them. foisting large insurance bills onto Tesla customers because Tesla couldn't design their car to be repairable, even by Tesla themselves - doesn't seem fair either.
mcot2 6y ago
At the end of the day it’s just a very large die casting machine. To switch out the part it is casting requires making new dies. It is expensive so you don’t want to be doing that a lot, but these machines are going to be probably doing 500,000 units/year at least so it’s very worth it at that volume.
avernon 6y ago
Over several conference calls they have roughly answered this. Their biggest limitation to what they want to do is engineering talent. And they want to grow really fast. So using scarce engineering talent to improve an existing process slightly is not aligned with those goals. They want all the talent building new factories and products. They do seem to still have small teams to make continuous improvements, and eventually those upgrades like the heat pump and improved body will be integrated. I think Elon guessed several years at a minimum on a call.
_ph_ 6y ago
Check the teardown video of the Model Y by Sandy Munroe. It clearly shows the cast parts, which now get replaced by a single large part. One can assume, that they will make similar changes to the Model 3 as soon as the cast machine exceeds the Model Y numbers, as it saves a lot of money in production.
hwillis 6y ago
> how easy is it to change what this casting machine produces? Swapping dies takes a few hours. Making new dies takes many months and costs some fraction of a million dollars. > I am curious how long they will go without changing the outward design of the 3 or Y. I really hope they make a car that looks different soon. Branding is just SO deeply engrained in the car industry; I think they're damaged by people considering the S and 3 basically exchangeable. They should really have different styling just to make people feel like they have more than one option in buying a Tesla. It makes the number of competing non-Tesla choices seem twice as large.
- Denvercoder9 6y ago
  > I really hope they make a car that looks different soon. The Cybertruck definitely looks different.
  - hwillis 6y ago
    sure, but it's also full of weird gimmicky shit so who knows when it'll show up, if it gets scaled. I'm thinking more about things like the roadster. Even for being relatively similar, the accents are all more aggressive and it creates a very distinct look that the 3XY absolutely do not. And then the most frustrating thing is that Musk clearly does not intend to make very many of them! He's treating it like an ultra halo car, when just having a convertible version of the 3 with a slightly different body would make the psychological choice to buy a Tesla far easier. Like, people don't even have to buy it. Just by existing it would make Tesla look more competitive- it just needs to seem like an accessible choice. The roadster would be perfect, but it's too expensive and full of unnecessary shit for no reason, and that totally ruins the benefit! It epitomizes what frustrates me with Musk- a great core idea, but deeply crippled by goofy whims.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

djaychela 6y ago

I think a "model S Mark 2" is in the pipeline, from what I've heard on YouTube channels. I think the model Y is already massively simpler than the 3 is (from watching Sandy Monroe on YouTube), but whether it will be possible to perform such a modification to the 3 isn't clear. My suspicion is that there's to e much complication in that area of the car (rear suspension) to make a straight swap to the Y style of rear bodyshell section.

mcot2 6y ago
They will bring this manufacturing process and new rear body structure to the 3 for sure but it won’t be until they seriously ramp up Y and can afford to shut down the 3 lines for retooling. My best estimate would be no earlier than Q1 2021. They have an aggressive goal to hit 500,000 total deliveries in 2020 and they can’t afford any downtime on the 3 lines to hit that goal.
- grecy 6y ago
  They'll also bring new manufacturing processes to their new factories. Musk said on the latest earnings call that new factories are building "better cars" with all the latest enhancements. So while Fremont might keep making "original" model 3, I think it's likely other new factories will skip straight to the new processes. So for example the factory in Berlin will just start with a monster press like this on day 1, so all Model Y built there will automatically have the "new" design. Same for the Model 3 and Model Y lines in Texas.

Alupis 6y ago

> This all goes back to Musk's question to engineers why can't a car be in as few pieces as possible using a matchbox/hot wheels car as example Because then trivial accidents become major costly repairs and/or result in totaling of the vehicle. There is an advantage of having separate body panels, support pillars, bumpers, etc. It can all be replaced separately.

mcot2 6y ago
Since they are now in the insurance business as well they will soon figure this out. Even was mentioned at the last conference call, they’ve admitted to making a lot of mistakes in the past about manufacturing for repairability. The transcript is not great but you get the point: “ It's like if you want to pay more for insurance, you can. But if you want to pay less, then please don't drive so crazy. Then people can make a choice. Like, OK, they want to drive aggressively. In that case, it'll be higher insurance. Or they want more capital enter driving and pay less. This was actually very helpful for us to have a feedback loop to see what is driving insurance expense. A lot of it is just -- it's like a little fender bender and the net fender bender because of the way that the body collision repair is being done. It costs like $15,000 or something crazy and like -- and then we can actually adjust the design of the car and adjust how the repair is done to actually have the fundamental cost of solving that problem would be less.So this has helped us under a whole bunch of facility things that we were doing basically without realizing it. But this is a problem with -- in general, with insurance is like if the insurance is, like, all you can eat, then the feedback loop for improvement is sweet. So this gives us a great feedback for improvement because it's basically a fundamentally better insurance product. I'd also like to say, I'm inspired of recruiting because if there's one thing I'd like to come out of this call, it's that a lot of great people want to join Tesla.” https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2020/07/23/tesla-tsla-q2-2020-earnings-call-transcript.aspx https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2020/07/23/te...
- Alupis 6y ago
  From my understanding, Tesla has been offered help by many major automotive manufacturers such as VW, and rejected it. Perhaps that was foolish in hindsight, since most of their quality, workmanship and repairability problems stem directly from having to learn (through trail-and-error) all the same things the other manufactures learned long ago. The parallels with McDonalds taking Chipotle under their wing to teach supply chain management, distribution, food safety and more are undeniable. Chipotle's founders famously scoffed at learning _anything_ from McDonalds... which may have resulted in the numerous food safety handling issues they had a few years back (not washing raw produce that was transported through multiple handling facilities and then into stores), and legendary portion control variance (totally depends who makes your burrito... it may weigh a 1/2 lb, or 2lbs... a total coin flip). It's difficult to scale these complex organizations - why make it harder on yourself? Learn from other people's mistakes and try not to repeat them. foisting large insurance bills onto Tesla customers because Tesla couldn't design their car to be repairable, even by Tesla themselves - doesn't seem fair either.

mcot2 6y ago

At the end of the day it’s just a very large die casting machine. To switch out the part it is casting requires making new dies. It is expensive so you don’t want to be doing that a lot, but these machines are going to be probably doing 500,000 units/year at least so it’s very worth it at that volume.

avernon 6y ago

Over several conference calls they have roughly answered this. Their biggest limitation to what they want to do is engineering talent. And they want to grow really fast. So using scarce engineering talent to improve an existing process slightly is not aligned with those goals. They want all the talent building new factories and products. They do seem to still have small teams to make continuous improvements, and eventually those upgrades like the heat pump and improved body will be integrated. I think Elon guessed several years at a minimum on a call.

_ph_ 6y ago

Check the teardown video of the Model Y by Sandy Munroe. It clearly shows the cast parts, which now get replaced by a single large part. One can assume, that they will make similar changes to the Model 3 as soon as the cast machine exceeds the Model Y numbers, as it saves a lot of money in production.

hwillis 6y ago

> how easy is it to change what this casting machine produces? Swapping dies takes a few hours. Making new dies takes many months and costs some fraction of a million dollars. > I am curious how long they will go without changing the outward design of the 3 or Y. I really hope they make a car that looks different soon. Branding is just SO deeply engrained in the car industry; I think they're damaged by people considering the S and 3 basically exchangeable. They should really have different styling just to make people feel like they have more than one option in buying a Tesla. It makes the number of competing non-Tesla choices seem twice as large.

Denvercoder9 6y ago
> I really hope they make a car that looks different soon. The Cybertruck definitely looks different.
- hwillis 6y ago
  sure, but it's also full of weird gimmicky shit so who knows when it'll show up, if it gets scaled. I'm thinking more about things like the roadster. Even for being relatively similar, the accents are all more aggressive and it creates a very distinct look that the 3XY absolutely do not. And then the most frustrating thing is that Musk clearly does not intend to make very many of them! He's treating it like an ultra halo car, when just having a convertible version of the 3 with a slightly different body would make the psychological choice to buy a Tesla far easier. Like, people don't even have to buy it. Just by existing it would make Tesla look more competitive- it just needs to seem like an accessible choice. The roadster would be perfect, but it's too expensive and full of unnecessary shit for no reason, and that totally ruins the benefit! It epitomizes what frustrates me with Musk- a great core idea, but deeply crippled by goofy whims.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]