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Boeing is another in the long list of companies that were taken over by process and finance people and driven into the ground with short term thinking largely c
by rapatel0 3y ago
Boeing is another in the long list of companies that were taken over by process and finance people and driven into the ground with short term thinking largely centered on reducing cost-structure and financial engineering.
Elon has a great diatribe describing how the big automakers largely broke down and outsourced most parts manufacturing just became system integrators and customer support. In the short term, this is great for the bottom line, but it hollows out the engineering culture and make it extremely difficult to innovate. Imagine trying to get 100s suppliers to make small tweaks to each of their parts. Also, imagine when you need multiple suppliers to work together to build (NDAs, IP agreements, etc). You get buried in bullshit
Great companies are generally lead by R&D (product, science, engineering) with strong finance / process acting as gravity to keep the company grounded & functioning. When finance / process take over, then gravity will dominate and you crash
- lenerdenator 3y agoIronic for Elon to be complaining about the bureaucracy of automakers and how it drags down production quality.
- fasteddie31003 3y agoElon fan boy here. My Tesla has been a pretty solid car compared to any Crysler or GM car that I've owned before.
- fkyoureadthedoc 3y agoYou should try owning a Toyota
- psunavy03 3y ago. . . who had their own major scandal about self-accelerating vehicles.
- idontpost 3y ago[dead]
- peterfirefly 3y agoWhich mysteriously only affected the US -- while the Toyota's remained extremely safe cars there.
- cyanydeez 3y agoyeah, you should've switched to any number of japanese imports.
- dahart 3y agoI used to think the same, but I’m not sure sure anymore after having a Honda CRV completely die on me last year when it was ~5 years old, well maintained, and lightly driven. It may have been the electronics design that prevented any mechanics from being able to diagnose what was wrong. There was a recall on the air compressor that might have contributed. Can’t be sure, but the electrical systems all stopped functioning due to an unknown problem. We tried to have it serviced over and over again, paid to replace many parts that were not the cause and did not fix anything, only to have the issue persist and then one day (on the way to the shop for another service) the timing belt melted and took out a number of other parts with it. After $5k in repairs, it ran fine for a few weeks and then the electronics shut down again over an unknown problem. Honda at least recognized this was design failure and ended up covering some of the repair costs, but I couldn’t get rid of this lemon fast enough. Personally, I suspect we’ve recently entered a new age of cars that depend on electronics much much more heavily than before, and that we do not have great data yet on the reliability of these software systems, and that Japanese mechanical engineering advantages of yesteryear don’t necessarily mean they have good software, nor does it compete with bad software.
- coliveira 3y agoWell, if you compare to Chrysler or GM, anything will do.
- hef19898 3y agoAerospace is all about process and safety so. And hell, Elon almost ruined Tesla with his drive to over-automate manufacturing. Getting to work 100s of suppliers, not all of which are directly managed by the OEM, together is happening all day, every day in all industries building hardware. Seriously, HNs ignorance when it comes to real engineering and manufacturing is really frustrating.
- dpflan 3y agoWhat would be good resources to learn more about "real engineering and manufacturing" to help educate the community?
- chx 3y ago> Aerospace is all about process and safety so. As an aside, this is so much so the often used phrase "aerospace grade" whatever, especially on Kickstarters is just bull. There's nothing special in the materials, what they are concerned about is the ability to track every piece to where it comes from.
- applied_heat 3y agoAnd be confident it is what it is meant to be, and meet the standards it is meant to meet
- hef19898 3y ago
- spamizbad 3y agoTeslas are perfectly fine vehicles with by far the most impressive software technology. But I wouldn't exactly hold them up as being particularly high quality, especially compared to Japanese and Korean automobiles.
- AmVess 3y agoNo better or worse than US or EU cars manufacturers, all of whom have been doing this a LOT longer than Tesla.
- spamizbad 3y agoI would say there are definitely fit-and-finish areas where they lag behind both (eg: panel alignment). That's not really around reliability tho.
- amluto 3y ago> far the most impressive software technology. I find it somewhat impressive in the sense of “wow, they put a lot of not-really-necessary software in here and it still manages to mostly work reliably.” But the actual critical software parts the make it work as a car are not, in my book, particularly impressive. My first car’s ECU glitched once in the entire time I had it, and I think it was actually quite unusual for a car of that model to have an ECU glitch at all. My Tesla regularly has glitches that affect the ability to start the car or operate systems that really ought to work all the time.
- matthewdgreen 3y ago>Elon has a great diatribe describing how the big automakers largely broke down and outsourced most parts manufacturing For a company that purports to be an energy storage and generation business (with cars as an initial application), Tesla remains hugely dependent on their own suppliers. Panasonic occupies a major chunk of Tesla's own Gigafactory and has repeatedly delayed the production of new cells [0], [1]. [0] https://electrek.co/2024/01/15/panasonic-to-soon-make-new-batteries-for-tesla-could-reduce-ev-prices-report/ https://electrek.co/2024/01/15/panasonic-to-soon-make-new-ba... [1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/panasonic-delays-production-new-tesla-battery-improve-performance-2023-05-10/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/panasonic-delays-producti...
- toomuchtodo 3y agoPanosonic is trying to keep up with Tesla. There are technical challenges with the 4680 cell manufacturing process they are attempting to resolve that are leading to suboptimal yields. https://cleantechnica.com/2023/12/24/tesla-4680-battery-production-is-trapped-in-production-hell/ https://cleantechnica.com/2023/12/24/tesla-4680-battery-prod...
- amluto 3y agoI’m no expert, but I do recall Tesla saying, at the beginning, that they were using 18650 cells because they were widely available. Well over a decade later, the major battery makers are producing prismatic cells in volume, and Tesla is still working on their fancy new cylindrical cell. I wonder if they’re doing this is due to some kind of design inertia at this point. Right now, I can buy US-assembled complete energy storage systems (not necessarily at volume), retail, using prismatic LFP cells, for a lower price per unit energy than the Tesla Megapack.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoTesla uses prismatic cells as well. You are no expert (as you said), and of course you can buy your own storage cheaper than turnkey utility scale systems. Energy developers aren’t building their own systems; they cut Tesla a check and install the asset (orchestrated by Autobidder). https://insideevs.com/news/542064/tesla-model3-lfp-battery-pack/ https://insideevs.com/news/542064/tesla-model3-lfp-battery-p... > Tesla uses LFP cells supplied by a Chinese manufacturer - CATL, which has basically become a strategic partner with a contract for the next several years. > Because the LFP chemistry does not offer as high energy density as NCA or NCM, Tesla uses LFP only in the standard range versions of its cars (produced in Shanghai and soon globally). LFP will be used also in Tesla's energy storage systems.
- LeifCarrotson 3y ago> Great companies are generally lead by R&D (product, science, engineering) with strong finance / process acting as gravity to keep the company grounded & functioning. When finance / process take over, then gravity will dominate and you crash But to continue the metaphor, a great company will have enough forward momentum that at any time they can pull back on the stick, relying on inertia in their supply chain, designs, customer name recognition, and existing capital assets to briefly zip almost straight upwards really, really fast for a short amount of time. If you want an upwards trajectory for 100 years, it won't work, you'll soon stall, but if you want an upwards trajectory for the next quarter it works phenomenally well! The root of the problem, I think, is that it's really hard to measure long-term assets like culture and trust, but really easy to game short-term metrics by dumping long-term assets.
- SoftTalker 3y agoThis ignores the reality that most customers will buy the car / take the flight that is $5 cheaper and don't care about any of that. Great engineering culture doesn't mean a lot if can't sell your product.
- jewayne 3y agoYeah, those 737 MAXes are selling like HOTCAKES these days!
- SoftTalker 3y agoThey will be next year, and customers will be back on Kayak and Expedia sorting by price and clicking the top result to book.
- geraneum 3y ago> big automakers largely broke down and outsourced most parts manufacturing just became system integrators and customer support Apple outsources manufacturing and it’s doing just fine. Has not hallowed out their engineering yet.
- dghlsakjg 3y agoApple very famously maintains incredible control over their partners' and their process.
- peteradio 3y agoWhy did the engineers allow this? They had no power? Why? I have a general sense that many engineers take the position of "tell me what to do and I will only ask why X times." I think its a self-serving but ultimately shortsighted position like a tragedy of the commons. Did engineers actually push back on these decisions? "I walk" etc? At some point a man needs to be willing to go back to the dirt with a hoe in hand when his principles are subverted. I get it, you can find yourself in a position of a slow moving landslide and have to deal with things related to sunk costs in a boiling bucket and your companion is only a frog. Still, where does this lead in the long term? Engineers should see themselves as the brick and mortar of a nation not some extractive force in a financialized environment. What are you leaving your(the) children? I was reading a story about the decisions made by miners in UP Michigan in 1912. You know what they did when shit sucked? They walked and did something else for 2 years. They let the equipment rot with intent going as far as to coerce the machine maintainers to cease and desist with machine hibernation procedures.
- dmoy 3y ago> I was reading a story about the decisions made by miners in UP Michigan in 1912. You know what they did when shit sucked? They walked and did something else for 2 years. They let the equipment rot with intent going Jesus, or what the miners in the Appalachians did in 1912. After the mining company refused to deal with a unionized workforce, they were replaced by armed guards. The miners got kicked out of there housing, etc. So in response, the miners formed a militia and went to war with the company, like literal war with guns. They got steamrolled by the state guard. But eventually that got them to negotiate a 9 hour workday. Then they did it again 10 years later, except that time they got steamrolled by the US military, and then the feds threw hundreds in prison for treason.