20 ms·

100% explainable by Tesla's five principles of manufacturing: 1. Make the requirements less dumb: "All designs are wrong, it’s just a matter of how wrong." - M

• ajross 3y ago
  Meh. Like everything else with Tesla this is mostly an exercise in Who Can Best Express the Situation as a Confirmation of Priors. In the real world, stuck accelerators are a common (but very dangerous) failure mode in all vehicles (just google "stuck accelerator"), and this isn't even the first vehicle to be dinged with such a problem at the design level. Which of those principles did Toyota violate when they had an almost identical issue in 2009? Not to say this isn't bad, or shouldn't be fixed, or that there won't be a legitimate root cause analysis produced that tells us something interesting. But what you wrote seems poorly grounded.
  • thinkingtoilet 3y ago
    >Which of those principles did Toyota violate when they had an almost identical issue in 2009? None. https://www.motortrend.com/news/toyota-found-not-at-fault-in-2009-unintended-acceleration-death-case-416113/ https://www.motortrend.com/news/toyota-found-not-at-fault-in... The conspiracy theorist in me says this came at a time when the US auto market wasn't great and it was amplified to get people to buy American cars.
    • canadianfella 3y ago
      [dead]
    • ajross 3y ago
      That was one case that didn't find evidence for fault. The ability to stick a Toyota accelerator with the floor mats due to design issues was very well documented, all over youtube, and the recall was very real. In fact the evidence looks just like this situation with the Cybertruck. So getting back to the confirmation of priors point: it's telling that you view one as a "conspiracy" and the other as The Truth.
      • notaustinpowers 3y ago
        I may not be part of the collective here, but I find it within the realm of acceptable that a $30,000 car would have issues that should absolutely not be present on a $100,000 car. I don't see Porsche's, Hellcat's, and BMW's having issues with something that has been a resolved non-issue for decades at this point.
        • rascul 3y ago
          BMW has recently had a lot of issues over years with some PCV valve setups. Looks like they've recalled almost 1 million vehicles and have tried multiple times to address the issue. https://bimmers.com/blog/pcv-valve-heater-recall-explained/ https://bimmers.com/blog/pcv-valve-heater-recall-explained/ I don't know enough if that meets your requirement of "something that has been a resolved non-issue for decades at this point" but it's something that BMW has apparently been trying and failing to fix for awhile now.
          • notaustinpowers 3y ago
            A valve for emissions is a fuck up, but not kind of fuck that that's the poorly made fake metal accelerator covers in a $100,000+ car can fall off and unintentionally accelerate the vehicle (which can go 0-60 in 3.9s) to a top speed on 112MPH, that's also made out of stainless steel that will destroy anything it hits, including you. I have higher expectations for my poorly made death machines.
  • oceanplexian 3y ago
    > In the real world, stuck accelerators are a common In my car from the mid 90s' the solution to a stuck accelerator is pretty trivial. You can physically shift the transmission, which is a mechanical connection, into neutral. Worst case you can turn the key which electrically disconnects the ignition. And stuck accelerators were rarely a problem because the throttle was a physical cable.
    • NickM 3y ago
      pretty trivial It doesn't matter how trivial it is to override a stuck pedal, it's still a serious hazard, because even if you have the option to shift into neutral a driver may not think of that or may not react in time. It's also trivial to override it in the Cybertruck: just press the brake pedal. Braking is hard-coded to cut off the accelerator, so if both pedals are pressed the brake wins and the accelerator is ignored. Still a big problem though.
      • organsnyder 3y ago
        I had this exact situation happen a number of years ago when I was driving our '97 Ford Taurus (it had undergone a number of repairs at that point, including an engine overhaul, so it probably wasn't due to an OEM defect). My first reaction was to stomp on the brakes, but it was immediately clear that the engine was winning that battle; so, I quickly shifted into neutral and pulled into the turning lane. My wife was in the car with me and remarked that she didn't think she would have known what to do, especially to react that quickly. Our current vehicles are a manual transmission Civic and a PHEV Pacifica. The Civic is easy—just press in the clutch—but the Pacifica would be more tricky; I guess I'd start with the brakes, then the shifter (which is just an input to the computer, of course), then hold down the power button, and then look for a place to ditch.
        • netsharc 3y ago
          > then hold down the power button on APCI computers, the power button is software-controlled, i.e. it sends a signal to the OS, if the OS is currently frozen (or is configured to ignore it), pressing the power button does nothing. But to override this, if you hold it for about four seconds, a hardware shutdown still happens (is it done by the motherboard?). There are also other functions, like holding the power button for 30 seconds to enter into recovery mode on iPhones. I wonder if holding the power button on a running EV car does anything similar...
  • root_axis 3y ago
    > Who Can Best Express the Situation as a Confirmation of Priors. That's what happens when your CEO spends a lot of time publicly engaged in culture war politics.
    • andrewflnr 3y ago
      Yes, it happens, but lots of stupid things happen all the time. It's still for us to let other people's stupidity cloud our judgement. Even if one of those stupid people is the CEO of the company involved...
      • root_axis 3y ago
        You're not wrong, but it's rare that people believe their judgement is clouded, in fact, they likely feel their judgement is highly informed by what they view as stupidity or genius.
  • bigstrat2003 3y ago
    > Like everything else with Tesla this is mostly an exercise in Who Can Best Express the Situation as a Confirmation of Priors. Man that's so true, and something incredibly frustrating about the discourse around Tesla (and Elon Musk more generally). The discussion is dominated by people who either worship the ground Elon walks on, or who think he's a cartoon villain. Neither is true, of course. But most of the time, those are the framings which dominate. I really hate it.
    • demondemidi 3y ago
      I think most rational people see him as a grown up bratty rich kid. Except now he has the power to control the outcome of wars. So now cartoon villain isn’t too far off.
      • bigstrat2003 3y ago
        He's just a dude. He does some smart things, he does some stupid things. He's nowhere near a cartoon villain.
  • wigster 3y ago
    why does the truck not just use the same accelerator as the (proven) car?
    • cjk2 3y ago
      Agile car. The accelerator was made in a different sprint.
  • HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
    > almost identical issue in 2009? Or Audi in 1984?
• HPsquared 3y ago
  Sounds more a problem of NOT following #2. The metal plate is unnecessary, after all.
  • gpm 3y ago
    I suspect that making their cars look stylish is extremely important to every car company's bottom line.
    • atoav 3y ago
      Especially if you make a meme car that many like to see made, but far fewer would actually drive.
• cjk2 3y ago
  Smells like Tesla is car Boeing.
  • xeromal 3y ago
    Not at all. Boeing required their parts manufacturers to design and build parts for a given budget and Boeing just sat there and glued it together. Sometimes they didn't even do that. They just used their position to bully the smaller component companies into skimping on high quality parts while denying they had involvement. Tesla does most stuff in house
    • troq13 3y ago
      What do you mean? The parts are all made in China.
• PurpleRamen 3y ago
  This reads like Elon is a real life Chaos Monkey?
• HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
  > 2. Try and delete parts Hopefully someone who knows what I'm talking about will chime in, but there was a CEO of a small consumer electronics company who was infamous for walking around the labs and randomly removing parts from designs on the breadboard. If the device still worked, well that's one less part that was needed. Makes for a cheap, if extremely fragile device. Wish I could remember the guy's name though.
  • ladberg 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muntzing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muntzing
  • thirdhaf 3y ago
    Could have been Earl Muntz, who was in the TV manufacturing business, learned about this from one of Bob Pease’ columns. https://www.electronicdesign.com/technologies/industrial/boards/article/21771148/whats-all-this-muntzing-stuff-anyhow https://www.electronicdesign.com/technologies/industrial/boa...
    • Salgat 3y ago
      >And for those further out, where the Muntz TVs did not work, those could be returned at the customer's additional effort and expense, and not Muntz's. What a truly awful approach to saving money. Just mislead the customer and have them pay the price associated with that. Good thing we have consumer protection laws now.
      • troq13 3y ago
        Every Tesla owner I know is constantly taking their car for maintenance and "small fixes".
    • HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
      Thanks. Pease Porridge is also where I first heard of it.
    • 3y ago
• marcosdumay 3y ago
  You know, if applied within reason all of those make for really great engineering principles. I'm not sure you are fairly interpreting them.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • andrewmcwatters 3y ago
    Yeah, all of these sound like goals that engineering should work towards, basically anywhere. You can reword them into modest principles. 1. Simplify requirements. 2. Reduce widget usage and determine limits. 3. Omit work where possible. 4. Time is of the essence. 5. Remove manual labor.
    • marcosdumay 3y ago
      Number 4 is grossly misinterpreted by the OP, and you inherited it. It doesn't mean "assemble it faster" at all, it means "make more prototypes".
    • RaftPeople 3y ago
      Let's go a step further: 1. Optimize
      • andrewmcwatters 3y ago
        You have to have actual strategies to do this, or you reduce meaningful interpretation.
  • stetrain 3y ago
    Yeah, it's really a question of timing. If the "parts being added back in" is happening at design time, or early validation testing, then fine. If it's an important part and it's being added back after shipping a physical product to customers, that's a different story altogether.
• cduzz 3y ago
  Colin Chapman, "guy who made lotus" had the maxim "Simplify, then add lightness" had similar guidance. Take everything out of the race car, then if something breaks add the last thing you took out back in. I imagine he'd get frustrated at a car still running on the victory lap.... "Darn, the wheels are still on we made the wheel hubs too strong." The problem here is safety. Making a race car that disintegrates as it crosses the finish line is best for winning a race, but probably isn't terribly robust in an accident. I don't think Musk is trying to make "barely safe enough" cars, but he is exploring a bunch of design limits. I think the CT specifically is an engineering sample or beta program for the model 2, designed to have low uptake and validate a bunch of _really_ big changes to "normal car" architecture. When some of those gambles turn out to be bad after 2 years, they'll have to fix thousands of dud trucks not millions of model 2s.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • ToucanLoucan 3y ago
    I have no intention whatsoever of spending 6 figures on a car or truck to be Musk's guinea pig and I cannot fathom who would.
    • open592 3y ago
      I’ve never seen a car get the same amount of attention at this price point. There is certainly a slice of the population who is excited by the idea of people stopping and taking a picture of their car. The slice is not big, but it’s enough to satisfy Tesla.
      • tsimionescu 3y ago
        I think it's more likely that it's enough to satisfy Musk. Tesla as a company is probably hurt much more by selling the Cybertruck than if they hadn't made it and had focused on a normal car.
        • 3y ago
• napierzaza 3y ago
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• fckgw 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • willvarfar 3y ago
    This comes up quite regularly on HN and gets debunked every time. A not very complete list of sources saying they have worked with him on engineering problems https://cleantechnica.com/2022/11/16/incorrect-claims-about-elon-musk-dont-help-critiques-of-how-hes-running-twitter-or-tesla/ https://cleantechnica.com/2022/11/16/incorrect-claims-about-... What definition of 'engineer' is Elon Musk not?
    • ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
      His job is literally CEO, not Engineer, and he doesn't practice engineering for his day job. There are more cases of him shitposting on twitter than there are attestations of his engineering chops from fans in that article. This isn't an indictment on him, or his ability to learn: if you do anything only a few times a week or a few times a month, instead of 8 hours per day, you likely won't learn that thing very quickly. Especially if, when you do it, it resembles more of a pointy-haired boss swooping in on a meeting, telling someone to change something when you have no idea what the implications or history are, and then going back to twitter shitposting.
      • indoordin0saur 3y ago
        Your job is what you do, not what your title is. He definitely makes engineering decisions, whether you like those engineering decisions or not.
        • FireBeyond 3y ago
          > He definitely makes engineering decisions, whether you like those engineering decisions or not. That's the crux of one of the big complaints at Boeing at the moment. Accountants / beancounters making engineering decisions. Engineering presents options 1 and 2, with cost and effort breakdowns. Accountant executives select option 1. That doesn't make them engineers, because they've made an engineering decision.
• croes 3y ago
  I think he missed #1 on the whole cybertruck design.
• CharlieDigital 3y ago
  This approach makes sense when designing something novel. You just don't yet know what's necessary and what is excess when dealing with novelty. A decorative brake pedal faceplate? I'm pretty certain that there's decades of design and engineering precedence that has already coalesced on a basic fastener design that is low cost, durable, and safe.
  • theturtletalks 3y ago
    Normal car manufacturers look at things like: the door handle, physical controls, having lane indicators on their respective sides, a glove box handle, rear view mirrors As solved things. Removing the door handle on Teslas is not innovative, it’s to stroke Elon’s ego. These changes aren’t innovative, they’re changes for the sake of changes.
    • tw04 3y ago
      To be clear: removing the door handle or making one that retracts on the outside makes a ton of sense and I'm in complete support of. It significantly improves aerodynamics. Removing them from the inside: idiotic, I hated it in my old corvette which at least had an obvious physical button to push, I hate it more in Tesla's with their capacitive button that literally nobody can figure out opens the door without instructions.
      • nyc_data_geek 3y ago
        Removing the one on the outside makes no sense whatsoever when it ices over and you can't open the door.
        • eddieroger 3y ago
          Normal handles can ice over, too, they're just easier to free up from ice. I'm not defending Musk here, but even a broken clock is ~right~ wrong in the same was as others twice a day.
• jksmith 3y ago
  2. seems literal, but I've heard him use it more generally as a statement toward leaning out a delivery process. Don't add complexity unless the complexity is worth the dysfunction it addresses.
• SilasX 3y ago
  Except that reasoning also "explains" non-events such as the halting of the Tesla S, 3, X, and Y models.
• chrisq21 3y ago
  Seems like a convenient way to spin any deadly oversight into a result of sticking by their "principles"
  • cal85 3y ago
    Not sure why they’d want to spin it that way
• littlestymaar 3y ago
  While these principles are interesting, there's no need to add “Musk” as if you were quoting the scriptures. Plus they aren't particularly original as half of them are basically the tenets of “Toyotism”, which is the mainstream way of running car manufacturing since the eighties.
• adolph 3y ago
  The 5 Principles: I think it is worth watching the original Everyday Astronaut (which evannex.com cites). Here is Musk listing and explaining each: https://youtu.be/t705r8ICkRw?t=800 https://youtu.be/t705r8ICkRw?t=800 Text article: https://everydayastronaut.com/starbase-tour-and-interview-with-elon-musk/ https://everydayastronaut.com/starbase-tour-and-interview-wi... Sample story told: And I asked the, the battery safety team, 'cause I was like, what are these mats for? I said are they for fire protection or something? They said, "No, they are for noise and vibration. "So you don't get that." And I said, "But you're the battery department." And I asked a NVA noise vibration analysis team, what's it for, they said fire safety. So literally it was like being in a Goldberg cartoon. It was like actually, I feel like I'm in a Goldberg cartoon quite frequently.