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Can anyone explain why the Tesla build quality is so bad compared to established giants? Cost cutting? Higher US wages? Too little technical know how?

vb6sp6 4y ago
[dead]
blowski 4y ago
Is it any worse? Or perhaps Tesla is now in the trough of disillusionment stage of the hype cycle, so every bit of negative news is made out to be a big deal.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rich_sasha 4y ago
I suspect (but know nothing about manufacturing) that 90% of quality is boring, tedious things like quality control checklists, documenting processes, training low-level staff and so on. Neither of these things strikes me as something Elon Musk would consider time well spent. He's more like, "cybertruck!", "really self-driving this time!", and more recently, running Twitter.
- ejb999 4y ago
  ...and yet somehow he manages to launch and land way more rockets to space vs what NASA has been able to do for the last 50+ years...and at a tiny fraction of the cost. Guess he really is an idiot.
  - rsynnott 4y ago
    Well, first, that has nothing in particular to do with mass-producing cars. However, also: > Rockets from the Falcon 9 family have been launched 204 times over 13 years (Also Falcon 1 launched five times). There are multiple _single types_ of US and Soviet rocket which have launched more times than that. Atlas I, for instance, 514 launches. Titan II, 396. Kosmos: 610. Soyuz: _1,964_.
rsynnott 4y ago
Always sort of assumed that Musk just has a kind of distain for expertise; it's not like it is a deep dark secret how to do this properly.
danans 4y ago
> Can anyone explain why the Tesla build quality is so bad compared to established giants? Because they can? Up until this point Tesla had no real competitors in its segment, it has (had?) a religiously devoted fanbase, and lets face it: their cars out-performed their nearest ICE competitors (luxury sports sedans and SUVs) by a long shot. Therefore, they could afford to have lower build quality, because electric drive-trains are just so much damn better performing, and their cars in particular sold themselves for years based largely on image and identity. You only need to test drive a Chevy Bolt to understand how much better even a cheap EV is than most ICEs. Tesla's poor build quality isn't unprecedented either. Plenty of other niche luxury sports car brands also have been known to have bad build quality and require gobs of maintenance. But people who drive such cars tolerate such things due to the other benefits of the car. Technically, I think some of this is also because of Tesla's ruthless focus on reducing weight to maximize the range of their vehicles. They remove every last bolt or other metal component they possibly can (which does also lower cost). They have received high praise compared to their competitors by manufacturing optimization experts like Sandy Munro for this. But I think this approach can have its downsides when it comes to things like this issue, where it was trivial to detach the steering wheel. I don't have any proof that this issue was caused by that approach, but it's pretty plausible.

vb6sp6 4y ago

[dead]

blowski 4y ago

Is it any worse? Or perhaps Tesla is now in the trough of disillusionment stage of the hype cycle, so every bit of negative news is made out to be a big deal.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

rich_sasha 4y ago

I suspect (but know nothing about manufacturing) that 90% of quality is boring, tedious things like quality control checklists, documenting processes, training low-level staff and so on. Neither of these things strikes me as something Elon Musk would consider time well spent. He's more like, "cybertruck!", "really self-driving this time!", and more recently, running Twitter.

ejb999 4y ago
...and yet somehow he manages to launch and land way more rockets to space vs what NASA has been able to do for the last 50+ years...and at a tiny fraction of the cost. Guess he really is an idiot.
- rsynnott 4y ago
  Well, first, that has nothing in particular to do with mass-producing cars. However, also: > Rockets from the Falcon 9 family have been launched 204 times over 13 years (Also Falcon 1 launched five times). There are multiple _single types_ of US and Soviet rocket which have launched more times than that. Atlas I, for instance, 514 launches. Titan II, 396. Kosmos: 610. Soyuz: _1,964_.

rsynnott 4y ago

Always sort of assumed that Musk just has a kind of distain for expertise; it's not like it is a deep dark secret how to do this properly.

danans 4y ago

> Can anyone explain why the Tesla build quality is so bad compared to established giants? Because they can? Up until this point Tesla had no real competitors in its segment, it has (had?) a religiously devoted fanbase, and lets face it: their cars out-performed their nearest ICE competitors (luxury sports sedans and SUVs) by a long shot. Therefore, they could afford to have lower build quality, because electric drive-trains are just so much damn better performing, and their cars in particular sold themselves for years based largely on image and identity. You only need to test drive a Chevy Bolt to understand how much better even a cheap EV is than most ICEs. Tesla's poor build quality isn't unprecedented either. Plenty of other niche luxury sports car brands also have been known to have bad build quality and require gobs of maintenance. But people who drive such cars tolerate such things due to the other benefits of the car. Technically, I think some of this is also because of Tesla's ruthless focus on reducing weight to maximize the range of their vehicles. They remove every last bolt or other metal component they possibly can (which does also lower cost). They have received high praise compared to their competitors by manufacturing optimization experts like Sandy Munro for this. But I think this approach can have its downsides when it comes to things like this issue, where it was trivial to detach the steering wheel. I don't have any proof that this issue was caused by that approach, but it's pretty plausible.