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Musk comes in for criticism because he spends a lot time on condescending shit-talk about older competitors, and then part of the time talking about how hard it

Musk comes in for criticism because he spends a lot time on condescending shit-talk about older competitors, and then part of the time talking about how hard it is to do things that those older competitors spent decades laboriously working out. Like, yeah, who knew mass-producing quality cars was way harder than it looks at first? How about the millions of people who’ve been doing it for a century?

rblatz 6y ago
But they built their moat and got lazy behind it. It should be even easier for the legacy manufacturers to innovate because they figured out the hard stuff in scaling already.
- edmundsauto 6y ago
  Innovators dilemma, it’s hard to be innovative as well as optimized.
- snowwrestler 6y ago
  This is the sort of condescending stuff Musk likes to say. What, specifically, is the moat that they are behind? Auto manufacturing is one of the leanest and most competitive industries in the world. If they “got lazy” how come many manufacturers are still better than Tesla at basic fit and finish and hardware reliability? Do we suppose that Tesla is even lazier? (I don’t think that Tesla is lazy at all; I’m pointing out the flaw in using “laziness” as a metric.) A car is a collection of many things. Musk properly understands the impact of Tesla’s electric drivetrain. He underestimated the sustained difficulty of manufacturing the rest of the physical car at scale, just like you are. It’s tempting to look around the world at things as they are, and think that they must be easy since they’re already happening. People have been building cars for 100 years! How hard can it be? The truth is, a lot of what we take for granted in life is delivered through continuous effort against sustained difficulties. Tesla is certainly not the only carmaker who struggles with automation and quality. Musk does seem like the only carmaker CEO who is regularly surprised that those things are hard.
  - Delphiza 6y ago
    One part of the moat has to be the dealership laws, where the incumbent manufacturers created a false barrier to entry. There is nothing lean or optimal about legislating that competitors have an arbitrary number of brick and mortar locations. There are probably others in such an established and complex market.
  - rblatz 6y ago
    The moat is a few things, but most relevant to this conversation is manufacturing consistent quality vehicles at scale. Tesla has spent a ton of time trying to solve that, but people look past it because Tesla builds cars people want that aren’t being built by the legacy automotive industry. Weird, people want an electric car that doesn’t look like a dork-mobile who could have guessed. These companies are being dragged kicking and screaming into the future, and the best retort is inconsistent panel gaps.
  - buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
    The "laziness" clearly is not referring to manufacture quality. Obviously they are great at that. It's referring to the fact that a brand new ICE vehicle from 2021 looks exactly like a brand new ICE vehicle from 1990, with the addition of a backup camera, volume control on the steering wheel, and Carplay/Android Auto (which the car people didn't even invent). Obviously I'm being slightly facetious, but surely nobody can be impressed with the innovation of car companies over the past 30 years.
    - aidenn0 6y ago
      You forgot the innovation of a $1700 GPS that is less usable than a $200 garmin, much less google maps.
nickik 6y ago
Amazing how Musk getting something wrong, he is never hearing the end of it. With many things, Musk was right. Both in automotive and in space, people 'insiders' have many believes and many of them turned out to be wrong. SpaceX and Tesla got where they are by breaking conventional wisdom and if they had not done so, they wouldn't exist any more. It so happens reinventing mass manufacturing was not as easy as other things. Tesla is still working on it, and they are making improvements that other car companies have not thought about. With each factory and each now Model of car they are interdicting improvements. The very guy who does the interview with Elon that this information is built on was the former lead engineer at Ford and he believes Tesla is improving faster then anybody. He is incredibly impressed with the engineering and manufacturing at Tesla and how fast it is improving.
- __m 6y ago
  What improvements are they making that other car companies haven’t thought about?
  - nickik 6y ago
    - Mega Castings, casting have been used before, but never at the size Tesla does. Tesla has costume co-designed machines and they developed their own alloy to make it work. See: https://youtu.be/BwoiFC-HwPE?t=273 https://youtu.be/BwoiFC-HwPE?t=273 - Structural Battery Cell (Packs are structural in some cars, not cells) Eventually these two things together will basically be the main part of the car. This is nothing like anybody else does it: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0173/8204/7844/articles/1_9205c42f-5dbe-4acd-902c-927765aa05ee_1000x.jpg?v=1600879917 https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0173/8204/7844/articles/1_... - Fully integrated heating/cooling system 'Octovalve' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGffUODWWSE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGffUODWWSE) - Unifying chips to central computer - Stainless Steel Exoskeleton You can see a full breakdown of a last year Model Y here (same guy that did this interview with Elon, was very critical during Model 3 and impressed now): https://www.youtube.com/c/MunroLive/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/MunroLive/videos That is of course only for cars, the improvement in battery production that Tesla has made are arguably more interesting. A whole video series on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZQ5OmYf-Vg&list=PLyvdbTy3v1d5luwdDGPFPab9WWPmMW_cJ&index=1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZQ5OmYf-Vg&list=PLyvdbTy3v1...

rblatz 6y ago

But they built their moat and got lazy behind it. It should be even easier for the legacy manufacturers to innovate because they figured out the hard stuff in scaling already.

edmundsauto 6y ago
Innovators dilemma, it’s hard to be innovative as well as optimized.
snowwrestler 6y ago
This is the sort of condescending stuff Musk likes to say. What, specifically, is the moat that they are behind? Auto manufacturing is one of the leanest and most competitive industries in the world. If they “got lazy” how come many manufacturers are still better than Tesla at basic fit and finish and hardware reliability? Do we suppose that Tesla is even lazier? (I don’t think that Tesla is lazy at all; I’m pointing out the flaw in using “laziness” as a metric.) A car is a collection of many things. Musk properly understands the impact of Tesla’s electric drivetrain. He underestimated the sustained difficulty of manufacturing the rest of the physical car at scale, just like you are. It’s tempting to look around the world at things as they are, and think that they must be easy since they’re already happening. People have been building cars for 100 years! How hard can it be? The truth is, a lot of what we take for granted in life is delivered through continuous effort against sustained difficulties. Tesla is certainly not the only carmaker who struggles with automation and quality. Musk does seem like the only carmaker CEO who is regularly surprised that those things are hard.
- Delphiza 6y ago
  One part of the moat has to be the dealership laws, where the incumbent manufacturers created a false barrier to entry. There is nothing lean or optimal about legislating that competitors have an arbitrary number of brick and mortar locations. There are probably others in such an established and complex market.
- rblatz 6y ago
  The moat is a few things, but most relevant to this conversation is manufacturing consistent quality vehicles at scale. Tesla has spent a ton of time trying to solve that, but people look past it because Tesla builds cars people want that aren’t being built by the legacy automotive industry. Weird, people want an electric car that doesn’t look like a dork-mobile who could have guessed. These companies are being dragged kicking and screaming into the future, and the best retort is inconsistent panel gaps.
- buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
  The "laziness" clearly is not referring to manufacture quality. Obviously they are great at that. It's referring to the fact that a brand new ICE vehicle from 2021 looks exactly like a brand new ICE vehicle from 1990, with the addition of a backup camera, volume control on the steering wheel, and Carplay/Android Auto (which the car people didn't even invent). Obviously I'm being slightly facetious, but surely nobody can be impressed with the innovation of car companies over the past 30 years.
  - aidenn0 6y ago
    You forgot the innovation of a $1700 GPS that is less usable than a $200 garmin, much less google maps.

nickik 6y ago

Amazing how Musk getting something wrong, he is never hearing the end of it. With many things, Musk was right. Both in automotive and in space, people 'insiders' have many believes and many of them turned out to be wrong. SpaceX and Tesla got where they are by breaking conventional wisdom and if they had not done so, they wouldn't exist any more. It so happens reinventing mass manufacturing was not as easy as other things. Tesla is still working on it, and they are making improvements that other car companies have not thought about. With each factory and each now Model of car they are interdicting improvements. The very guy who does the interview with Elon that this information is built on was the former lead engineer at Ford and he believes Tesla is improving faster then anybody. He is incredibly impressed with the engineering and manufacturing at Tesla and how fast it is improving.

__m 6y ago
What improvements are they making that other car companies haven’t thought about?
- nickik 6y ago
  - Mega Castings, casting have been used before, but never at the size Tesla does. Tesla has costume co-designed machines and they developed their own alloy to make it work. See: https://youtu.be/BwoiFC-HwPE?t=273 https://youtu.be/BwoiFC-HwPE?t=273 - Structural Battery Cell (Packs are structural in some cars, not cells) Eventually these two things together will basically be the main part of the car. This is nothing like anybody else does it: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0173/8204/7844/articles/1_9205c42f-5dbe-4acd-902c-927765aa05ee_1000x.jpg?v=1600879917 https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0173/8204/7844/articles/1_... - Fully integrated heating/cooling system 'Octovalve' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGffUODWWSE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGffUODWWSE) - Unifying chips to central computer - Stainless Steel Exoskeleton You can see a full breakdown of a last year Model Y here (same guy that did this interview with Elon, was very critical during Model 3 and impressed now): https://www.youtube.com/c/MunroLive/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/MunroLive/videos That is of course only for cars, the improvement in battery production that Tesla has made are arguably more interesting. A whole video series on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZQ5OmYf-Vg&list=PLyvdbTy3v1d5luwdDGPFPab9WWPmMW_cJ&index=1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZQ5OmYf-Vg&list=PLyvdbTy3v1...