5 ms·

SpaceX works around that by using consumer grade stuff and just replicating it 3 times. Tesla also managed to handle issues with supply shortages very well. Th

SpaceX works around that by using consumer grade stuff and just replicating it 3 times. Tesla also managed to handle issues with supply shortages very well. The old practices are just not good enough.

hulitu 5y ago
Tesla is not a car. It looks like one, it might behave a bit like one but i would not touch such a thing even with a 9 m pole. I heard too many horror stories about Tesla requirements.
- bayindirh 5y ago
  If it looks like a duck (car), and moves like a duck (car), and quacks like a duck (car), then it's a duck (car) in my book. What other thing should it have? An ICE? Then Nissan Leaf, Ford F150 electric, and BMW i series are not cars either.
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> SpaceX works around that by using consumer grade stuff and just replicating it 3 times Falcons get refurbished after short flights. That reduces the emphasis on durability. Redundancy defends against random errors, reducing the need for radiation hardening. It does less against wear and tear.
pas 5y ago
> The old practices are just not good enough. True, but also think about the path dependence of the old companies. They have withered a lot of ups and downs, they are not the innovators, they are the very slow incrementalists that despite this release a new boring model every few years dressed up as the new best thing ever. (If you have seen a car from one manufacturer you have seen them all from them for the past decades too.) The whole car industry is a relatively high volume & low margin & medium risk business. (The unit economics is great, but any risk kills profitability, so there was a lot of consolidation and convergence.) Basically the car industry is like the "iphone industry" except there's some actual price competition and worse fundamentals, plus Apple is relatively young (and Steve set up a pretty high pace, and expectations, plus the fundamentals of the components - eg. semi industry, radios, displays - are really moving forward, whereas internal combustion engines, and the material science of other car components are not).
- calvinmorrison 5y ago
  it's really fantastic though, for parts availability and reliability. People don't remember how absolute shit any pre-80's vehicle is. Like, shit tier reliability from carbs, tune ups, constant work. 100k? that car is dead and done! Now the average vehicle age has been climbing and climbing. The best part is that 2005 brake caliper is probably just a slightly more refined version from the 90's
  - pas 5y ago
    Yes, exactly, no questions there :) I remember here in the 90s (barely post-USSR Hungary) going anywhere with a typical car was almost like a choose your own adventure, where adventure meant something will randomly go wrong, and if you are lucky you have spare parts with you, or maybe you can simply find a workaround (for example when the cooling system loses all the water because the radiator suddenly bursts means you could still make progress, of course slow and stopping if the engine gets too hot). And in the early 90s nobody had mobile phones, so it involved a bit of hitchhiking to the nearest phone too!
    - calvinmorrison 5y ago
      Cars tend to fail more disastrously now, but less often. If my coil back goes I am SOL. There's a reason they tell you to keep one in the trunk. The difference to that and a cap+rotor is, a cap and rotor is about 12 bucks and can be done on the side of the road without tools, and that cap and rotor fits about 50 million 4 cylinders manufactured in the last 50 years, and tends to degrade more gracefully. On the flip side, cars now tend to run more efficiently till they break fully and go into limp mode or won't run - a lot less tuneups and tweaking, no adjusting the valves and carb as the car ages
      - bayindirh 5y ago
        I've lost coil twice. Once was during driving. I lost a single cylinder, check engine light turned on. I was able to drive up to 70Km/h without my check engine light start blinking (means "you can melt your catalytic convertor, exhaust is too fuel rich, reduce throttle!"). Went to my service guy, he put down his tea on my engine, replaced it and his tea was half (~10 minutes). Also put in a new set of plug wires since my set was ~18 years old and gone hard at that point. I went to office, lost 30-40 minutes at most. The second one happened when the car was at park, at night. Started it in the morning, it was running off, so went to service. Same story. 70Km/h speed, 10 minute change, sans the cables this time. Newer cars tend to use one per plug. It's just a disconnect, pop-off, push in, plug, go. 2-3 minutes at most.

hulitu 5y ago

Tesla is not a car. It looks like one, it might behave a bit like one but i would not touch such a thing even with a 9 m pole. I heard too many horror stories about Tesla requirements.

bayindirh 5y ago
If it looks like a duck (car), and moves like a duck (car), and quacks like a duck (car), then it's a duck (car) in my book. What other thing should it have? An ICE? Then Nissan Leaf, Ford F150 electric, and BMW i series are not cars either.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

> SpaceX works around that by using consumer grade stuff and just replicating it 3 times Falcons get refurbished after short flights. That reduces the emphasis on durability. Redundancy defends against random errors, reducing the need for radiation hardening. It does less against wear and tear.

pas 5y ago

> The old practices are just not good enough. True, but also think about the path dependence of the old companies. They have withered a lot of ups and downs, they are not the innovators, they are the very slow incrementalists that despite this release a new boring model every few years dressed up as the new best thing ever. (If you have seen a car from one manufacturer you have seen them all from them for the past decades too.) The whole car industry is a relatively high volume & low margin & medium risk business. (The unit economics is great, but any risk kills profitability, so there was a lot of consolidation and convergence.) Basically the car industry is like the "iphone industry" except there's some actual price competition and worse fundamentals, plus Apple is relatively young (and Steve set up a pretty high pace, and expectations, plus the fundamentals of the components - eg. semi industry, radios, displays - are really moving forward, whereas internal combustion engines, and the material science of other car components are not).

calvinmorrison 5y ago
it's really fantastic though, for parts availability and reliability. People don't remember how absolute shit any pre-80's vehicle is. Like, shit tier reliability from carbs, tune ups, constant work. 100k? that car is dead and done! Now the average vehicle age has been climbing and climbing. The best part is that 2005 brake caliper is probably just a slightly more refined version from the 90's
- pas 5y ago
  Yes, exactly, no questions there :) I remember here in the 90s (barely post-USSR Hungary) going anywhere with a typical car was almost like a choose your own adventure, where adventure meant something will randomly go wrong, and if you are lucky you have spare parts with you, or maybe you can simply find a workaround (for example when the cooling system loses all the water because the radiator suddenly bursts means you could still make progress, of course slow and stopping if the engine gets too hot). And in the early 90s nobody had mobile phones, so it involved a bit of hitchhiking to the nearest phone too!
  - calvinmorrison 5y ago
    Cars tend to fail more disastrously now, but less often. If my coil back goes I am SOL. There's a reason they tell you to keep one in the trunk. The difference to that and a cap+rotor is, a cap and rotor is about 12 bucks and can be done on the side of the road without tools, and that cap and rotor fits about 50 million 4 cylinders manufactured in the last 50 years, and tends to degrade more gracefully. On the flip side, cars now tend to run more efficiently till they break fully and go into limp mode or won't run - a lot less tuneups and tweaking, no adjusting the valves and carb as the car ages
    - bayindirh 5y ago
      I've lost coil twice. Once was during driving. I lost a single cylinder, check engine light turned on. I was able to drive up to 70Km/h without my check engine light start blinking (means "you can melt your catalytic convertor, exhaust is too fuel rich, reduce throttle!"). Went to my service guy, he put down his tea on my engine, replaced it and his tea was half (~10 minutes). Also put in a new set of plug wires since my set was ~18 years old and gone hard at that point. I went to office, lost 30-40 minutes at most. The second one happened when the car was at park, at night. Started it in the morning, it was running off, so went to service. Same story. 70Km/h speed, 10 minute change, sans the cables this time. Newer cars tend to use one per plug. It's just a disconnect, pop-off, push in, plug, go. 2-3 minutes at most.