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I guess because most of their competitors are 100 yrs old? Making cars is really, really hard. Tesla’s first mass produced car was only ten years ago, and their

I guess because most of their competitors are 100 yrs old? Making cars is really, really hard. Tesla’s first mass produced car was only ten years ago, and their top two models 6 and 3 years ago. The average age of their entire fleet is in the low single digits. In the car world that’s just getting started.

cde-v 3y ago
By that logic every prostitute runs a startup. edit: (not really a great example, just wanted to play off of 'the world's oldest profession') Better example would be calling Macy's a startup because Hudson's Bay Company was founded in the 1600s.
gonzo41 3y ago
Honestly, That's not good enough. In the car world you can recruit car engineers to fix simple car production problems. Objectively most of Tesla's issues are due to the poor fit and finish of the cabin and general fitment of things together. IF you ignore the whole electric engine and just treat it like and ice vehicle, Telsa should just be building on the knowledge of others and hiring Toyota engineers to help the nail things like delivery a simple service schedule. Making sure that cars roll of the line with everything tight and having spares ready for consumable parts. It's not an acceptable excuse to shrug your shoulders and say that they're new at this. The concept of delivering a vehicle isn't new and Telsa has a TON of money. Change the genre of product to Tech / software engineering. If Telsa was a software company shipping a crap product that broke all the time and then suddenly you found out that they didn't do XYZ of industry standard you'd hold them to account for not taking standard approaches to standard problems.
- Closi 3y ago
  Tesla produced the same number of cars in 2022 as they did in all years combined from 2012-2020. If you think it's easy to just stand up that level of production capacity, and that they are actually they are just ignoring simple production problems, then you are underestimating the challenge. Things like panel gaps are not necessarily easy fixes - i.e. what if you know the solution to a 1mm improvement, but can't easily fix it without taking the production line down for x weeks because you need to change the robot arm and conveyor system?
  - nradov 3y ago
    Other manufacturers like Toyota would actually shut the production line down to fix such problems instead of shipping defective products.
    - Closi 3y ago
      I guarantee they wouldn’t shut down the line while they wait for a fix for within-tolerance panel gap improvements - they would work on designing a fix that would be implementable on the line while continuing manufacture. Designing, Testing and Commissioning an improvement will often take many months. The zero defect thing is fixing issues early rather than fixing them at the end - not shutting down the whole line if you identify that a tolerance can be improved and waiting for the fix.
      - harimau777 3y ago
        As I understand it, the parent post is talking about defects that cause actual issues. If that's the case, then it sounds to me like the gaps aren't within tolerance.
        Closi 3y ago
        The parent post is talking about fit and finish.
    - zdragnar 3y ago
      As long as it isn't the Daihatsu unit, apparently: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/20/toyotas-daihatsu-to-halt-vehicle-shipments-as-safety-scandal-widens.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/20/toyotas-daihatsu-to-halt-veh...
  - jprd 3y ago
    Then you take it down and not make a sub-par product. I'm not sure why we all need to ascribe some sort of Messianic vibe to a car company. I'm also not sure I want to bow to the altar of "whip your well-paid employees to sacrifice the best years of their lives to push out meh vehicles" either. 1000% behind the electric push, but dang y'all, it is car company
- amazingman 3y ago
  >In the car world you can recruit car engineers to fix simple car production problems. I'm no "car engineer", but I doubt most of Tesla's production issues are "simple". >Change the genre of product to Tech / software engineering. If Telsa was a software company shipping a crap product that broke all the time and then suddenly you found out that they didn't do XYZ of industry standard you'd hold them to account for not taking standard approaches to standard problems. Software is the last comparison I would have made. First of all Tesla is a software company. Secondly, the software industry is notorious for terrible products gaining massive market share. cough Google Docs/Sheets/Slides.
  - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
    I don't know why you think Google Docs, Sheets and Slides are terrible products, I personally think they're great and much better than the alternatives that came before them, particularly in the problems they wanted to solve: fully Web-based document creation, editing and storage, and collaboration.
- mattmaroon 3y ago
  He merely asked why it’s considered a startup. Startup companies take employees from established competitors all the time. Startups can also make products poorly too.
- scoofy 3y ago
  There is an entire iterative engineering process called The Toyota Way based in strong cultural practice called Kaizen. It’s easy to poach engineers. It’s impossible to poach a business culture.
jjav 3y ago
> Making cars is really, really hard. There's a HN meme of sorts that goes like "I can build that same website functionality in a weekend, why does company XYZ employ 5000 people to do it?!" It's a recurring theme because there's some truth to it. Someone can indeed build the core functionality of that website in a weekend, if they ignore 99% of the difficult work of doing it in production and supporting customers and all the rest of the mundane but important parts. Building a car isn't that hard really. Lots of people do one-off car build in their garage with basic tools and a shoestring budget. And they can build a fun car which works! Sure, it's not maintainable nor supportable but they built it and it works great. So while Tesla is well past the guy in a garage stage, they are still at the stage of "building cars is really easy" (if you ignore all the maintainability and supportability and long tail of parts availability and everything else that established manufacturers know how to do).

cde-v 3y ago

By that logic every prostitute runs a startup. edit: (not really a great example, just wanted to play off of 'the world's oldest profession') Better example would be calling Macy's a startup because Hudson's Bay Company was founded in the 1600s.

gonzo41 3y ago

Honestly, That's not good enough. In the car world you can recruit car engineers to fix simple car production problems. Objectively most of Tesla's issues are due to the poor fit and finish of the cabin and general fitment of things together. IF you ignore the whole electric engine and just treat it like and ice vehicle, Telsa should just be building on the knowledge of others and hiring Toyota engineers to help the nail things like delivery a simple service schedule. Making sure that cars roll of the line with everything tight and having spares ready for consumable parts. It's not an acceptable excuse to shrug your shoulders and say that they're new at this. The concept of delivering a vehicle isn't new and Telsa has a TON of money. Change the genre of product to Tech / software engineering. If Telsa was a software company shipping a crap product that broke all the time and then suddenly you found out that they didn't do XYZ of industry standard you'd hold them to account for not taking standard approaches to standard problems.

Closi 3y ago
Tesla produced the same number of cars in 2022 as they did in all years combined from 2012-2020. If you think it's easy to just stand up that level of production capacity, and that they are actually they are just ignoring simple production problems, then you are underestimating the challenge. Things like panel gaps are not necessarily easy fixes - i.e. what if you know the solution to a 1mm improvement, but can't easily fix it without taking the production line down for x weeks because you need to change the robot arm and conveyor system?
- nradov 3y ago
  Other manufacturers like Toyota would actually shut the production line down to fix such problems instead of shipping defective products.
  - Closi 3y ago
    I guarantee they wouldn’t shut down the line while they wait for a fix for within-tolerance panel gap improvements - they would work on designing a fix that would be implementable on the line while continuing manufacture. Designing, Testing and Commissioning an improvement will often take many months. The zero defect thing is fixing issues early rather than fixing them at the end - not shutting down the whole line if you identify that a tolerance can be improved and waiting for the fix.
    - harimau777 3y ago
      As I understand it, the parent post is talking about defects that cause actual issues. If that's the case, then it sounds to me like the gaps aren't within tolerance.
      - Closi 3y ago
        The parent post is talking about fit and finish.
  - zdragnar 3y ago
    As long as it isn't the Daihatsu unit, apparently: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/20/toyotas-daihatsu-to-halt-vehicle-shipments-as-safety-scandal-widens.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/20/toyotas-daihatsu-to-halt-veh...
- jprd 3y ago
  Then you take it down and not make a sub-par product. I'm not sure why we all need to ascribe some sort of Messianic vibe to a car company. I'm also not sure I want to bow to the altar of "whip your well-paid employees to sacrifice the best years of their lives to push out meh vehicles" either. 1000% behind the electric push, but dang y'all, it is car company
amazingman 3y ago
>In the car world you can recruit car engineers to fix simple car production problems. I'm no "car engineer", but I doubt most of Tesla's production issues are "simple". >Change the genre of product to Tech / software engineering. If Telsa was a software company shipping a crap product that broke all the time and then suddenly you found out that they didn't do XYZ of industry standard you'd hold them to account for not taking standard approaches to standard problems. Software is the last comparison I would have made. First of all Tesla is a software company. Secondly, the software industry is notorious for terrible products gaining massive market share. cough Google Docs/Sheets/Slides.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  I don't know why you think Google Docs, Sheets and Slides are terrible products, I personally think they're great and much better than the alternatives that came before them, particularly in the problems they wanted to solve: fully Web-based document creation, editing and storage, and collaboration.
mattmaroon 3y ago
He merely asked why it’s considered a startup. Startup companies take employees from established competitors all the time. Startups can also make products poorly too.
scoofy 3y ago
There is an entire iterative engineering process called The Toyota Way based in strong cultural practice called Kaizen. It’s easy to poach engineers. It’s impossible to poach a business culture.

jjav 3y ago

> Making cars is really, really hard. There's a HN meme of sorts that goes like "I can build that same website functionality in a weekend, why does company XYZ employ 5000 people to do it?!" It's a recurring theme because there's some truth to it. Someone can indeed build the core functionality of that website in a weekend, if they ignore 99% of the difficult work of doing it in production and supporting customers and all the rest of the mundane but important parts. Building a car isn't that hard really. Lots of people do one-off car build in their garage with basic tools and a shoestring budget. And they can build a fun car which works! Sure, it's not maintainable nor supportable but they built it and it works great. So while Tesla is well past the guy in a garage stage, they are still at the stage of "building cars is really easy" (if you ignore all the maintainability and supportability and long tail of parts availability and everything else that established manufacturers know how to do).