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Isn't Tesla Fremont widely considered a failure? The Model S was an expensive car with a bad reputation for quality. Then in 2017 they introduced the Model 3

Isn't Tesla Fremont widely considered a failure? The Model S was an expensive car with a bad reputation for quality. Then in 2017 they introduced the Model 3 and their "Alien Dreadnought" automation. That significantly delayed mass production of the Model 3 and almost bankrupted the company. Tesla turned things around by building a factory in Shanghai, and learning how to build a car from the Chinese. They then basically copied the Shanghai factory to Germany.

luckydata 1y ago
no, that factory makes a ton of cars. had teething problems like every other car factory in the world. source: my significant other worked at tesla for a decade, now at Rivian.
nomel 1y ago
What's are your metrics of "failure"? Fremont factory has produced 3 million cars, in a manufacturing hostile/barren California (and thus Nevada gigafactory), covering ~50% cars produced yearly. [1] > Tesla turned things around by building a factory in Shanghai ~50% are made in China, with ~50% of those being sold in China (well until this year), avoiding significant Chinese tariffs. [2] [1] https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-fremont-nevada-3-million/ https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-fremont-nevada-3-million/ [2] Nice historic graph, including poor sales this year. https://carnewschina.com/2025/03/10/tesla-exports-3911-cars-from-china-in-february-down-87/ https://carnewschina.com/2025/03/10/tesla-exports-3911-cars-...
- bryanlarsen 1y ago
  Sure, and the vast majority of those 3 million were cars were built after they disassembled their "alien dreadnought" factory and Tom Zhu et al went to China to learn how to build cars, and brought that knowledge back.
  - nomel 1y ago
    And all the other US manufactures originally learned how from Japan. Some of their original manufacturing ideas didn't work out, and they iterated to better processes. That's not failure. That's plain old boring fucking engineering. Do you think China is bad or something? Everyone, especially in the industry, knows that there's more manufacturing expertise in China, because that's where the vast majority of the world has outsourced their manufacturing (and pollution), for decades, and the forseable future. Just ask the politicians, who have been singing "manufacturing is never coming back to the US" for decades, to justify their policies that prevent people from manufacturing in their backyards.
    - rootusrootus 1y ago
      > And all the other US manufactures originally learned how from Japan. Who learned Kaizen from an American.
      - nomel 1y ago
        And the good ideas go round and round.
      - IAmBroom 1y ago
        If your goal is proving inherent superiority of one group over another, you've already failed. Good ideas are useful to successful people.
        rootusrootus 1y ago
        > If your goal is proving inherent superiority of one group over another, you've already failed. It is not, why would you think such a thing?
- notglossy 1y ago
  Just wanted to point out that California, for being barren of manufacturing and hostile to it, is actually the largest manufacturer in the USA in terms of people employed and economic output. https://nam.org/mfgdata/ https://nam.org/mfgdata/
  - nomel 1y ago
    > in terms of people employed It's also multiple times the size of most states. Per capita is probably a better metric, where it ranks 34th. > and economic output I can't find the raw data, so I'm not sure what they're counting. It says "computer and electronics" is highest, which is 2x above chemical, which makes me very suspicious. I work in manufacturing that happens 100% in China. Would I be counted? Are they counting AMD or Qualcomm, where their chips are manufactured in Taiwan (or Arizona)? How much of this is military/government contracts (which aren't subject to many of these pressures)?
  - pchristensen 1y ago
    That's because it's so much more populous. That link shows that CA is 34th in % of workers employed in manufacturing (similar to TX and MA). CA is tops in many, many absolute measures because it has almost 10M more people than the next state, TX.
    - maxerickson 1y ago
      Is the argument then that it's better to manufacture in Rhode Island than it is Los Angeles?
      - nomel 1y ago
        If you're an individual looking for a manufacturing job, then yes, absolutely.
      - pchristensen 1y ago
        Just that "largest manufacturing state in the USA" isn't a very helpful measure, since the largest state in basically every measure of development. This tweet shows the same problem with absolute numbers giving misleading appearances: https://x.com/xkcd/status/1339348000750104576 https://x.com/xkcd/status/1339348000750104576: There are more Trump voters in California than Texas, more Biden voters in Texas than NY, more Trump voters in NY than Ohio, more Biden voters in Ohio than Massachusetts, more Trump voters in Massachusetts than Mississippi, and more Biden voters in Mississippi than Vermont.
Animats 1y ago
That was a Musk problem. His two lead manufacturing execs quit when he wanted the plant automation installed without the usual factory testing, to cut the time to production in half. It didn't work. For a while, Tesla Fremont had a huge work force working in tents in the parking lot. Cost per car went up and quality went down, but cars came out. Tesla still seems to have quality problems, and never delivered the promised $30,000 car. Although BYD did.
- nomel 1y ago
  Chevy did, with the Bolt. > Although BYD did I don't believe this is true, due to the < $30k cars not meeting US safety regulations.
  - dwood_dev 1y ago
    They're meeting the EU regulations and selling the entry level electric for €23k in Germany. I can't attribute their lack of presence in the US market to them when their cars face a 100% tariff.
    - Animats 1y ago
      Someone from BYD remarked that a current goal is to dominate in the 100+ countries that don't have a domestic auto industry. They can afford to wait out countries with tariff barriers. Meanwhile, BYD has a bus factory in California. Stanford's in-house bus line uses them.
bsder 1y ago
> Tesla turned things around by building a factory in Shanghai, and learning how to build a car from the Chinese. That has very little to do with Fremont the facility. The Fremont facility is where Toyota showed GM how to build cars properly--an expensive lesson which GM and Tesla both decided to ignore. I would suggest that the real "innovation" of Tesla's foreign factories was simply getting them far enough away from Musk that he couldn't easily screw them up ...

luckydata 1y ago

no, that factory makes a ton of cars. had teething problems like every other car factory in the world. source: my significant other worked at tesla for a decade, now at Rivian.

nomel 1y ago

What's are your metrics of "failure"? Fremont factory has produced 3 million cars, in a manufacturing hostile/barren California (and thus Nevada gigafactory), covering ~50% cars produced yearly. [1] > Tesla turned things around by building a factory in Shanghai ~50% are made in China, with ~50% of those being sold in China (well until this year), avoiding significant Chinese tariffs. [2] [1] https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-fremont-nevada-3-million/ https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-fremont-nevada-3-million/ [2] Nice historic graph, including poor sales this year. https://carnewschina.com/2025/03/10/tesla-exports-3911-cars-from-china-in-february-down-87/ https://carnewschina.com/2025/03/10/tesla-exports-3911-cars-...

bryanlarsen 1y ago
Sure, and the vast majority of those 3 million were cars were built after they disassembled their "alien dreadnought" factory and Tom Zhu et al went to China to learn how to build cars, and brought that knowledge back.
- nomel 1y ago
  And all the other US manufactures originally learned how from Japan. Some of their original manufacturing ideas didn't work out, and they iterated to better processes. That's not failure. That's plain old boring fucking engineering. Do you think China is bad or something? Everyone, especially in the industry, knows that there's more manufacturing expertise in China, because that's where the vast majority of the world has outsourced their manufacturing (and pollution), for decades, and the forseable future. Just ask the politicians, who have been singing "manufacturing is never coming back to the US" for decades, to justify their policies that prevent people from manufacturing in their backyards.
  - rootusrootus 1y ago
    > And all the other US manufactures originally learned how from Japan. Who learned Kaizen from an American.
    - nomel 1y ago
      And the good ideas go round and round.
    - IAmBroom 1y ago
      If your goal is proving inherent superiority of one group over another, you've already failed. Good ideas are useful to successful people.
      - rootusrootus 1y ago
        > If your goal is proving inherent superiority of one group over another, you've already failed. It is not, why would you think such a thing?
notglossy 1y ago
Just wanted to point out that California, for being barren of manufacturing and hostile to it, is actually the largest manufacturer in the USA in terms of people employed and economic output. https://nam.org/mfgdata/ https://nam.org/mfgdata/
- nomel 1y ago
  > in terms of people employed It's also multiple times the size of most states. Per capita is probably a better metric, where it ranks 34th. > and economic output I can't find the raw data, so I'm not sure what they're counting. It says "computer and electronics" is highest, which is 2x above chemical, which makes me very suspicious. I work in manufacturing that happens 100% in China. Would I be counted? Are they counting AMD or Qualcomm, where their chips are manufactured in Taiwan (or Arizona)? How much of this is military/government contracts (which aren't subject to many of these pressures)?
- pchristensen 1y ago
  That's because it's so much more populous. That link shows that CA is 34th in % of workers employed in manufacturing (similar to TX and MA). CA is tops in many, many absolute measures because it has almost 10M more people than the next state, TX.
  - maxerickson 1y ago
    Is the argument then that it's better to manufacture in Rhode Island than it is Los Angeles?
    - nomel 1y ago
      If you're an individual looking for a manufacturing job, then yes, absolutely.
    - pchristensen 1y ago
      Just that "largest manufacturing state in the USA" isn't a very helpful measure, since the largest state in basically every measure of development. This tweet shows the same problem with absolute numbers giving misleading appearances: https://x.com/xkcd/status/1339348000750104576 https://x.com/xkcd/status/1339348000750104576: There are more Trump voters in California than Texas, more Biden voters in Texas than NY, more Trump voters in NY than Ohio, more Biden voters in Ohio than Massachusetts, more Trump voters in Massachusetts than Mississippi, and more Biden voters in Mississippi than Vermont.

Animats 1y ago

That was a Musk problem. His two lead manufacturing execs quit when he wanted the plant automation installed without the usual factory testing, to cut the time to production in half. It didn't work. For a while, Tesla Fremont had a huge work force working in tents in the parking lot. Cost per car went up and quality went down, but cars came out. Tesla still seems to have quality problems, and never delivered the promised $30,000 car. Although BYD did.

nomel 1y ago
Chevy did, with the Bolt. > Although BYD did I don't believe this is true, due to the < $30k cars not meeting US safety regulations.
- dwood_dev 1y ago
  They're meeting the EU regulations and selling the entry level electric for €23k in Germany. I can't attribute their lack of presence in the US market to them when their cars face a 100% tariff.
  - Animats 1y ago
    Someone from BYD remarked that a current goal is to dominate in the 100+ countries that don't have a domestic auto industry. They can afford to wait out countries with tariff barriers. Meanwhile, BYD has a bus factory in California. Stanford's in-house bus line uses them.

bsder 1y ago

> Tesla turned things around by building a factory in Shanghai, and learning how to build a car from the Chinese. That has very little to do with Fremont the facility. The Fremont facility is where Toyota showed GM how to build cars properly--an expensive lesson which GM and Tesla both decided to ignore. I would suggest that the real "innovation" of Tesla's foreign factories was simply getting them far enough away from Musk that he couldn't easily screw them up ...