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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 'insider
by 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 agoWhat 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...
- snowwrestler 6y agoSpaceX and Tesla are both doing amazing things, no doubt. But there is a difference in how they got off the ground. SpaceX did everything it could to collect and leverage what was known about making rockets. They climbed as high as they could onto the shoulders of previous efforts before they started inventing. Remember, Musk started out trying to buy rockets. It was only after he had done all that research that he started to realize that he could make them instead. With Tesla, Musk did less of that. He allowed himself to think that since automakers couldn’t see the obvious opportunity in electric cars, they were hopelessly outdated in everything. Turns out that was wrong; carmakers do actually know how to make cars. This is evident in Tesla mistakes like buying a production line and not proving it before trying to use it in production. Musk is extremely smart and Tesla is full of smart people. They are making huge strides and maybe their manufacturing ops will pass existing automakers someday. But they haven’t yet (despite the hype), and I think they would be in even better shape today if they had been a bit more humble and done a more thorough job of tapping what was already known about automaking.