This reminds me of something that happened to my brother's Tesla the last time I saw him. He purchased a new Tesla about a year ago.
He normally lives in an area where winter temps are at a low of 40 F (~5 C). He came to visit, an I live in an area where temperatures routinely go above and below the freezing point of water. I also live in a very humid environmant (close to a large body of water).
My brother plugged in his Tesla overnight to charge, and the morning he was suppoed to leave, the charger would not come out. After after 15 minutes of searching online for a fix, it turns out that it is surprisngly common that the charger was frozen into the charger! Thankfully, we had a hair dryer and were able to unfreeze it.
I share this story because I an frankly surprised that for buying a new tesla, something like that was not tested and/or accounted for, and frankly makes me worry about buying one, because I wonder what else they do not test/account for.
Watch Bjorn's videos and you'll see that it certainly isn't confined to Tesla. Newer models have heated charge ports. With older vehicles, preconditioning the cabin for ~30 minutes supposedly helps.
Interesting. I live in a similar climate with fluctuating temperatures and I haven't had this issue but maybe the charge port on my PHEV is heated and I didn't realize. I have had the problem though where sometimes the charge port door is frozen shut during cold temperatures.
I learned from my friends who lived in upstate midwest that regular cars need electric heaters to warm the engine oil before the car can be started, which seems like a very similar story but without the tesla.
A lot of people don't seem to know this but California is a vast state with practically every single kind of climate and an incredible range in altitude.
I don't have enough experience in California to say just how cold it gets in some parts but it certainly does snow in mountainous areas.
I would drive past the Tesla offices in Palo Alto and be in S. Lake Tahoe in under 4 hours. Plenty of folks who work in that area head up to Tahoe for relaxation.
A not quite four hour drive, after a storm, when folks make allowances knowing batteries don't do well in the cold... is not quite the same as living in say, Detroit. Where it is frozen consistently maybe 1/3 of the year.
Most major automotive and ev companies use tools such as environmental chambers to do phases of R&D. (quite possibly all do but obvs can’t confirm, but do have first hand knowledge of several major companies adopting this) Even companies much smaller than Tesla.
Would be shocked if Tesla did not have this capability.
So who knows if this is part of their testing and validation, but it is not true that you can’t test for different environments than where the core design takes place. It is extremely common to do this in rapid fashion without having to transport things to an alternate climate.
Detroit automakers test their vehicles in places like Arizona and Alaska to account for different climates. I’d imagine Tesla does similar though with fewer test units and models to test some issues are not captured.
I saw a Model S driving in the Chicago suburbs a year or so before the introduction. There was a Roadster owner in my town and I wonder if he was offered the chance to do long-term testing in the weather here.
What I am getting out of your comment is that their weather doesn't go below freezing (which as a sister comment pointed out, California has plenty of places that are cold and snowy), which was my point. They don't have a test plan to include testing their cars for regular usage (I would think plugging in a car charger outside of a garage qualifies as normal usage) in weather conditions that a significant portion of the US population in fact have (weather conditions below freezing and humidity), but such weather conditions are not in their area.
Another interpretation is that Detroit (historical city of American car manufacturers) may have the legacy/institutional knowledge to build and test such edge cases whereas new Tesla does not.
Car manufacturers learned these lessons incrementally over decades while their competitors were doing the same. Tesla finds themself being inexperienced in a market where the established players are really good.
As an aside, car companies actually consult for others industries because they're so good at manufacturing. When I worked for a big defense/aerospace company I got a tour of their satellite assembly and they actually paid Honda to come in and improve their manufacturing pipeline. They claim the changes sped them up and lowered bugs found after manufacturing.
Most definitely and everyone knew Tesla was going to suffer from the manufacturing side of things. They went at it with the wrong attitude while it's by far the hardest part of being a car company pushing large volume.
Where I was wrong is that I thought the market would punish them heavily for that as customers for a car in this price range would care. I totally missed that the segment of rich people with enough disposable income to buy an average electric car as a statement was big enough to be viable. So, well played Tesla I guess.
> I totally missed that the segment of rich people with enough disposable income to buy an average electric car as a statement was big enough to be viable. So, well played Tesla I guess.
This is pretty dismissive. I'm not sure how many Tesla owners are trying to make a statement, nor are all Tesla owners over the moon with the product. You can see a prior comment I made: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21173756
There is probably much wider variation in Tesla quality than other car manufacturers, as the Model Y stories (detaching roof, hardware store wood trim hack jobs to hold assemblies) suggest. Their lack of respect for "legacy" practices throws the baby out with the bathwater. There's lots of valid criticism for Tesla.
All that being said, if you get a unit without the worst of those issues, you quickly learn to see the bigger picture and realize no competitors have yet built a comparably-capable EV. That is what drives the sales. They are here today.
EVs are not for everybody. But if they fit your automotive use case, when you need a car for transportation duties rather than the kind of pleasure that comes from driving a high-performance combustion-driven vehicle, they are so clearly the future. It's like using an LCD flat-panel monitor with a VGA connection in the early 2000s. Even before they got to the high standards they have now, those early units presaged that LCD monitors were obviously going to make CRTs obsolete. Tesla cars are the automotive equivalent of those LCDs. And it will be great for the consumer when Tesla no longer has the enormous lead that it still enjoys (years away).
Well, actually, I found your post to be mostly in agreement with me.
> There's lots of valid criticism for Tesla.
So it could be said they are an average car (in the sense that their quality is neither exceptional nor bad enough to be considered poor).
> EVs are not for everybody. But if they fit your automotive use case, when you need a car for transportation duties rather than the kind of pleasure that comes from driving a high-performance combustion-driven vehicle, they are so clearly the future.
We do agree they are the future, keyword being future. If you buy one today that's what you want to be seen as buying and are ready to suffer the pain points for it. That's what I call making a statement.
Most people would interpret "making a statement" to be a matter of signaling to others. I tried to make clear that people who buy these cars appreciate the benefits to themselves as the ones that drive and experience it, and that it has little-to-nothing to do with signaling to others. Early on in Tesla history, particularly with the Model S, I think you could argue there was a signaling element. Particularly well into in the Model 3 era, I don't think that holds to any major degree.
Alternatively, the car is so much better than the alternatives that small build issues aren't as big of a deal. That's my experience anyway, though I haven't had any major headaches. (It's not much of a statement car anymore, loads of people own them in my city.)
That’s not quite the same thing. Apple knew how to execute on hardware extremely well, the phone was basically perfect physically. What I mean is it didn’t have gaps on the side or the back falling off or some other issue like that.
Software features, like cut and paste, can be added later. Indeed it was.
But Tesla is getting fundamental build quality issues wrong.
Terrible screen resolution? It had by far the largest screen resolution, double the size of its competitors. The only common criticisms were EDGE and the high price. Otherwise it was universally acclaimed.
It was not universally acclaimed. Blackberry users were not at all convinced away from hardware keys at the start, and there were no enterprise integrations. Enterprise was hostile to the product on its networks.
You have to look at this from the perspective of Windows mobile users at the time. I.e the Wizard. That is what people who don’t get Tesla are using right now.
I read this and wonder "have you test driven one". The driving experience Tesla offered from just the EV drivetrain alone, not even all the software gadgetry, was so different that anything any ICE luxury car offered that it was immediately apparent.
It was technology. It was cutting edge. The potential was instantly and tangibly apparent.
There was definitely an "early adopter" feel to it as well. But you were hopping onto something fundamentally different that yet another turbocharged BMW with 400HP and leather.
I guess you either drive in one and get that feeling, or, well, you don't.
People looking to spend a lot of money on a car that isn't used are going to look for something that justifies the cost. A lot of people look at BMWs and think that's a waste of money, you can get a used german auto, a cadillac, or similar. The Tesla has instant differentiation.
Sure the big companies are talking a big game about getting into EVs...
People trump up Rivian and Lucid as "they'll show them how its done". Ditto with Porsche, even though I have great faith in their engineers eventually.
With whose battery factories? You could say the same about Lucid, VW, GM, Hummer, Cadillac. VW is at least starting on this, as is the EU, but they are behind.
It's like a small group of knights walking up to an army challenging them to a fight. Sure they may have slightly better armor and weapons, but an army is .. an army, and they get to say "you and what battery factory?"
I used to think that the possibility for solid state batteries would close the gap overnight, but I suspect that steady progress on lithium ion cells will simply match/outpace any headline splashing battery tech.
Tesla still has a big big lead in the battery, drivetrain, and architecture over the new players. The chinese companies are likely the biggest competition over the next 10 years.
Aside from VW, I don't have faith the execs will follow through on what is at least a decade long push. They're all just dabbling, and we'll see what happens when activist investors, earnings misses, stock options lost, and CEO turnover happens.
Many car parts are outsourced. Headlights, seats, airbags etc. I don't see how the batteries could be different. It's not like Tesla itself makes cells that are assembled into batteries in their factories, is it? Even if it does (I honestly don't know, last time I had this discussion about a year ago it had cells made by Panasonic though Panasonic line was located in their factory), Sony, Samsung, LG and aforementioned Panasonic still make these cells and sell to anybody who is willing to buy.
Well if you listen to some Tesla fanatics including boss man Elon himself, traditional car companies carry too much baggage from their ICE platforms to transition to EVs successfully, so all this “experience” they have is a net drag.
Meanwhile outside the Tesla/Musk bubble, traditional car companies do not have QC issues like Tesla’s and are even outselling Tesla in major EV markets like Europe.
At least Musk is finally admitting to the QC issues.
Tesla is not the only EV car on the market anymore.
The top selling EV in Europe in 2020 was the Renault Zoe, Volkswagen is catching up fast (they sold 56k ID 3 despite only going on sale in the second half of last year VS 85k Model 3 over 12 months), Tesla model 3 was second, but numbers are dropping.
If we are talking about quality, I think the new BMW and Mercedes will take the lead in the segment Tesla is being marketed right now.
Tesla numbers are good thanks to Norway buying a lot of them.
> AFAIK self driving as in unattended driving is not big in Europe, given that most of the driving happens in crowded cities and country roads.
In the UK at least they will not only have to work fine in very busy roads but also be fine in country lanes which are often very thin, very green, and pretty fast - this will be disproportionately a problem for Tesla's because this is where the rich live.
Dutch website is claiming that Renault Zoe R110 Life costs 33 590 [0]. Seems like I've missed 3500 subsidy from Dutch government.
Nobody is able to do true self driving like a taxi in city today. But it will be possible in this decade (I have 95% confidence) and it will be happening in Europe as well. Whoever achieves true, reliable, widely deployed self-driving first will crash competition. Car ownership will effectively disappear in the decade after that i.e. 2030 and later.
Yes, rural areas will probably be the last to switch since car density there is very low. But suburbs are certainly going to switch because it will make the life just much more pleasant. Drivers instead of paying attention to the road will be spending time on their phones. Instead of wasting time and space for parking they will just request cars on demand.
Yes, Musk is overly optimistic. On average you can double his predictions. And his missed predictions on self-driving are extreme even for him.
But Tesla is making progress. Maybe even more importantly, the world is making progress on fundamentals of machine learning. If you want more reliable estimate than Musk, then you can check forecast aggregators with established track record [0]. I've asked "When will Tesla self-driving taxis be available to Metaculus users?" [1] Metaculus being the forecast aggregator. Community predicts 25% before 2024, 50% before 2026, 75% before 2029, 95% before 2035.
I'm personally more aggressive and predict 95% before 2030.
I love how if Musk gets something wrong for years people who hate him relentlessly shit on him. However he has been right about so many other things, but those things are simply not talked about and all the experts who wrote op-eds telling him how wrong he was are long since forgotten.
And as soon as a prediction doesn't come true, they rejoice and celibate assuming because it hasn't come true in the original timeline it would never happen.
When SpaceX couldn't land the Falcon 9 for a couple years the amount of industry insider and SpaceX haters who celebrated was amazing to see, and now landing and re-flying boosters is beyond boring because it is so common.
I have seen this cycle so many times now. So, I guess sit around and feel superior for now, be sure in the fact that in 2027 nobody is gone remember all your comments.
I don't think it's useful to say traditional car companies are outselling Tesla in Europe; they're selling a differently positioned vehicle. It's like Android to Apple - $200 Android phones aren't "outselling" $1000 Apple phones in a lower income market.
Man people look at one statistic from Norway and simply make assumptions.
Tesla has 23% of the global BEV market, that is the same market share as 2019. And many of those other cars are small low range city cars. So in terms of BEV revenue Tesla is much more then 23%.
Tesla has focused on the US and China first. While VW and others had to focus on Europe first. To use that fact and argue 'even outselling Tesla in major EV markets' is just disingenuous.
Next, it simply not true that traditional car companies don't have QC issues. If you look at analysis you will see that other expensive cars are often not so much better then Tesla. In terms of safety, battery and drivetrain, we have seen traditional car companies have lots of issues.
Also, Tesla is not using market share in Europe because of Quality issues. That is simply what Tesla hater want to believe because it fit the narrative.
Not really, older car companies just make the same cars over and over again with slightly changed designs. They have decades of iteration on their designs and any major changes always end up having problems. Even then they have iterated into cheap junk for the most part aside from a few automakers. Plus, anything software related on these cars is horrible stinking garbage. Check any car older than 5 years and there will be 1-2 recalls on them.
Tesla is pretty much going through the same thing all automakers go through except it's "Tesla." Sure if they hired a few engineers out of retirement to consult they could have identified a few of these issues, but then they wouldn't have released before the balloon went up and the bulls gored them.
Generally, this isn't Tesla's biggest problem. Delivery, support, and maintenance are the big ones they are losing out on. That's what's making this recall such a big issue for them. They didn't have enough dealers to make repairs or spare parts which is why they are dragging their heels on recalls. But they are catching up there as well in typical Tesla fashion.
Sure they will piss off a few car owners, but people tend to be REALLY loyal to car brands. Just ask any Porsche owner who spends more time at the mechanic than on the road.
Most cars made today are absurdly high quality compared to when I was a youth 40 years ago. A typical car made in the 1980's would be lump of rust and barely functional after 50,000 miles. Nearly any car made today is still almost like brand new after 50,000 miles. The production quality improvements made by the auto industry are, IMO, nothing short of amazing.
> A typical car made in the 1980's would be lump of rust and barely functional after 50,000 miles.
True, but 1980 was more than 40 years ago. The cars since the early 2000s have been trending towards cheaper parts, lower quality transmissions, and turbo charged low displacement engines. They are dialing most cars production costs down until they last just long enough for the warranty to run out. Most car manufacturer warranties don't even have more than 60k miles.
Yes, but many car companies are 100 years older than Tesla.
They'll probably be going through growing pains for years to come. Rapid expansion at the cost of quality. However, they clearly don't have a demand problem as people are willing to tolerate these issues, for now.
Except that there most commonly sold car is half that, plus maybe $500. Then if you factor in cost of ownership, which its crazy not too, subtract another $5000 or so.
If you, like myself, prefer value and quality issue like body panel alignment then I agree, stay away from Telsa for now.
But it's subjective. I have friends that prefer an EVs with tech gadgets. And they're happy with their Telsa.
Feels like an efficient market to me. There's lot of car options at different price points and quality standards. Clearly a lot of Tesla's customer are happy with their offering.
What's the argument here? That Ford, Kia, Toyota, Chevy et al should start mis-aligning body panels on purpose because some people will accept it anyway - or not know any better?
Of course not, that would be absurd. Tesla has enjoyed a ravenous fanbase for quite some time - majority of which might be willing to accept shoddy workmanship just so they can claim to own a Tesla - that doesn't make it right nor okay.
Like I said earlier... the quality issues coming out of Tesla have no excuses. They are the absolute basics of production automobile manufacturing. The basics.
30 seconds spent in QC would catch mis-aligned body panels... but they allow them to go all the way out to customers, and then pretend they had no idea what's wrong if the customer tries to reject the vehicle.
These things are not mutually exclusive - you can simultaneously be in love with your Tesla while also being disappointed at the lack of fit-and-finish and quality control.
I think that's the exact point of the previous comment. Don't stand for misaligned panels? Don't buy a Tesla. The free market will promote those vehicles that have a good enough value proposition over the ones that don't.
I'd rather have a misaligned panel than a garbage infotainment system since my interactions with the infotainment are significantly higher. I'm assuming you don't check 99% of the cars you see for panel issues, but if it's a Tesla, you do - it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
While Tesla can probably improve its manufacturing and QC processes over time (as they have), other OEMs have it much harder with insourcing half the vehicle components back in-house while developing great software capabilities.
My Nissan Leaf cost even less than that. It was one of the first off the line, too; built after they swept all the tsunami debris out of the factory. The body panels line up just fine. Best not get me started on our $15K Scion's quality in comparison.
When you purchase a $75,000 car, there's a reasonable expectation basic, basic things like body panels will be aligned correctly[1][2][3]. You're not buying a prototype nor experimental vehicle - it's a full fledged production vehicle priced at an extreme premium.
Some of Tesla's vehicles are priced to compete with Porsche, high end Mercedes, high end BMW's, Land Rover's, etc. The things all those car manufacturers have in common is quality fit-and-finish on their expensive vehicles.
When your brand new vehicle has mis-aligned body panels - it does make you wonder what else is mis-aligned that you can't see...
Body panels being mis-aligned isn't some new manufacturing technique Tesla is experimenting with - that's just plain shoddy workmanship and a total lack of quality control. You cannot just hand-wave those issues away, particularly at the price point Tesla has maneuvered into for even their less expensive offerings.
Tesla is addressing these issues with metal casting cars in big pieces. If you watch the interview the issues are supposedly due to accumulation of errors on small parts. Metal casting will eliminate all these errors. They already do that on Model Y. They just don't have enough operational capacity to roll it out across all manufacturing lines according to Elon.
If you watch tear down by Sandy you can compare old Model 3 manufacturing and the new Model 3 manufacturing. There is a lot of changes in welding techniques, amount of welds etc. everything gets simplified and more streamlined. With one piece casts as the final goal.
I'm still not seeing a reason why mis-aligned body panels ever left the factory. New process or not... some person bolted it on incorrectly, then allowed it to go out to the customer.
Are we to believe Tesla has zero QC? How do things like this occur? These are all solved problems companies like VW figured out decades and decades ago... Tesla is just insisting on figuring them out on their own all over again.
I've listened to multiple interviews that state body gap consistency is one of the hardest bits of mass vehicle manufacturing to get right.
I highly doubt QC was sending cars out they didn't know about - it simply was too time consuming to manually fix, so they only fixed the absolute worst ones and hoped most customers wouldn't care enough to force them to fix later.
Tesla is some mix between car company and software company. Someone did a calculation where it was cheaper to ship now and take a hit on the % of customers they upset. That someone obviously was completely vindicated in their decision - the vast majority of their current customers apparently do not care enough body gaps to stop buying.
The Toyota production system is less about the physical manufacturing techniques and more about the framework for their industrial and corporate process. I imagine it still takes time to fix each error that accumulates into a panel gap ultimately.
It still takes time, but he's not following it, otherwise the line would be stopped when a worker spots a quality issue, e.g. paint not dried, or Panel gaps misaligned.
Also in the TPS you only automate processes that you know exactly how to do manually. Elon tried to start with automation from the start, ignoring that automation of processes you only know partially ends up multiplying your quality issues.
SpaceX and Tesla reinvented many things and 90% of the time it worked out. Turns out reinventing manufacturing wasn't as easy.
But it also has to be said that since Tesla has come up with a lot of new solutions that nobody else is using. Meta Casting being a nice manufacturing example.
Its easy to shit on somebody for doing something new, but that very sprit made it possible for Tesla and SpaceX to shake up their industries in the first place.
If Tesla had done everything like other car companies, they wouldn't be close to were they are today.
Every model of every car company has lots of unique problems in very mundane areas where development has stagnated decades ago and most models of manufacturers never experience any problems. This is mind boggling - the problem has been solved by the industry, yet it was chosen to be introduced to that model.
The same exists with buildings. Door and window placement is messed up all the time, despite being a few millenia old art.
It seems fields never really mature, they reach maybe some 90% level and can stay there at best. No problem is ever really solved. If you look away, it might actually get worse.
Not really. I worked in the production line of an automobile company as a mech engineer.
When we release new cars, there are huge production line issues and inefficiencies. There are a huge number of little things that add up, and most of this wisdom is held by people who have been these companies for a life time.
I am surprised that Tesla hasn't acqui-hired a smaller automobile company just for knowledge transfer.
100%. The version-1 of a new car refresh always has some issue. Especially if it is an entirely new engine, transmission, that sort of thing.
Now-a-days, they pretty much take parts from higher-end / niche cars, and put them in production vehicles. In such cases, a car that's a Frankenstein's monster of generally reliable parts will usually be reliable, even in a version 1.
But if it is brand new, brand new...you might want to be cautious. Especially if it is a convertible or a car in a new segment that they didn't cater to before.
Lastly, some sub-brands are too important to tarnish even in a version 1. Civic, Corolla, Rav4, Wrangler and similar bread-and-butter models go through significantly higher scrutiny and are generally safe to buy in any version.
Yes. I've heard from a few sources connected with the Tesla that Musk felt that engineers (both design and process) from existing US auto companies were "yesterdays news" who were not up to Tesla's standards.
Turned out that there are huge number of issues when manufacturing an automobile. And that the knowledge to prevent or resolve a lot of those issues exist only in the heads of people who have gone through it before.
The build quality of early Tesla's was... not great. And while my understanding is that it has improved quite a bit in recent years. That said, most people in the industry seem to feel that Tesla still has a ways to go before they are "world class" in build quality.
Well you would think they were solved by the way people react to Tesla however just reviewing NHTSA records and enthusiast forums you will see manufacturers have all sorts of issues which includes fires and more.
This does not excuse Tesla, I do own a model 3 from September 2018 and still find it a great car, but the idea that other manufacturers don't have problems is ludicrous. Ford had to issue a STOP SALE on Mach E because of issues.
Tesla has introduced so many innovations from OTA which other manufacturers will have to adapt to as well remote vehicle services which for the most part you cannot get elsewhere. VW suffered a lot of issues on this, their software stack is apparently really a mess.
I know a couple guys that went over to Rivian I hope they do well, but I’m just not at all excited about the company or it’s products. They may show up to the ball too late.
Take advice from Toyota, and stop your production lines when something's wrong. If the same thing is wrong again and again, fix it instead of just churning out terrible looking vehicles and hoping your customers don't care.
Yes, because the immediate value and pending sales numbers are the only metrics that matter. Reputation, repeat business, and the company health beyond the existing sales pipeline appear to mean nothing anymore.
I'm not interested in the immediate value, though I see how my comment could be interpreted that way. The market value of a company is a measurement of its future value; most investors aren't short term, so this is inherent to the market. When you see price changes after an earnings call, institutional investors are reacting to new data on a trend line, not simply the point itself.
One of the things I'm really perplexed about is the general criticism of Elon Musk over really candid statements. It's really refreshing to see someone just say something like this with honesty.
He gets flak for when he posts things like this on twitter because "omg, the stonks!?" but I find the criticism more indicative of systemic problems with the fiduciary duties of publicly traded companies than something Elon is doing wrong.
Musk comes in for criticism because he spends a lot time on condescending shit-talk about older competitors, and then part of the time talking about how hard it is to do things that those older competitors spent decades laboriously working out.
Like, yeah, who knew mass-producing quality cars was way harder than it looks at first? How about the millions of people who’ve been doing it for a century?
Amazing how Musk getting something wrong, he is never hearing the end of it.
With many things, Musk was right. Both in automotive and in space, people 'insiders' have many believes and many of them turned out to be wrong.
SpaceX and Tesla got where they are by breaking conventional wisdom and if they had not done so, they wouldn't exist any more.
It so happens reinventing mass manufacturing was not as easy as other things. Tesla is still working on it, and they are making improvements that other car companies have not thought about. With each factory and each now Model of car they are interdicting improvements.
The very guy who does the interview with Elon that this information is built on was the former lead engineer at Ford and he believes Tesla is improving faster then anybody. He is incredibly impressed with the engineering and manufacturing at Tesla and how fast it is improving.
SpaceX and Tesla are both doing amazing things, no doubt. But there is a difference in how they got off the ground.
SpaceX did everything it could to collect and leverage what was known about making rockets. They climbed as high as they could onto the shoulders of previous efforts before they started inventing. Remember, Musk started out trying to buy rockets. It was only after he had done all that research that he started to realize that he could make them instead.
With Tesla, Musk did less of that. He allowed himself to think that since automakers couldn’t see the obvious opportunity in electric cars, they were hopelessly outdated in everything. Turns out that was wrong; carmakers do actually know how to make cars. This is evident in Tesla mistakes like buying a production line and not proving it before trying to use it in production.
Musk is extremely smart and Tesla is full of smart people. They are making huge strides and maybe their manufacturing ops will pass existing automakers someday. But they haven’t yet (despite the hype), and I think they would be in even better shape today if they had been a bit more humble and done a more thorough job of tapping what was already known about automaking.
- Mega Castings, casting have been used before, but never at the size Tesla does. Tesla has costume co-designed machines and they developed their own alloy to make it work.
You can see a full breakdown of a last year Model Y here (same guy that did this interview with Elon, was very critical during Model 3 and impressed now): https://www.youtube.com/c/MunroLive/videos
But they built their moat and got lazy behind it. It should be even easier for the legacy manufacturers to innovate because they figured out the hard stuff in scaling already.
This is the sort of condescending stuff Musk likes to say.
What, specifically, is the moat that they are behind? Auto manufacturing is one of the leanest and most competitive industries in the world.
If they “got lazy” how come many manufacturers are still better than Tesla at basic fit and finish and hardware reliability? Do we suppose that Tesla is even lazier? (I don’t think that Tesla is lazy at all; I’m pointing out the flaw in using “laziness” as a metric.)
A car is a collection of many things. Musk properly understands the impact of Tesla’s electric drivetrain. He underestimated the sustained difficulty of manufacturing the rest of the physical car at scale, just like you are.
It’s tempting to look around the world at things as they are, and think that they must be easy since they’re already happening. People have been building cars for 100 years! How hard can it be? The truth is, a lot of what we take for granted in life is delivered through continuous effort against sustained difficulties.
Tesla is certainly not the only carmaker who struggles with automation and quality. Musk does seem like the only carmaker CEO who is regularly surprised that those things are hard.
One part of the moat has to be the dealership laws, where the incumbent manufacturers created a false barrier to entry. There is nothing lean or optimal about legislating that competitors have an arbitrary number of brick and mortar locations. There are probably others in such an established and complex market.
The moat is a few things, but most relevant to this conversation is manufacturing consistent quality vehicles at scale. Tesla has spent a ton of time trying to solve that, but people look past it because Tesla builds cars people want that aren’t being built by the legacy automotive industry. Weird, people want an electric car that doesn’t look like a dork-mobile who could have guessed. These companies are being dragged kicking and screaming into the future, and the best retort is inconsistent panel gaps.
The "laziness" clearly is not referring to manufacture quality. Obviously they are great at that. It's referring to the fact that a brand new ICE vehicle from 2021 looks exactly like a brand new ICE vehicle from 1990, with the addition of a backup camera, volume control on the steering wheel, and Carplay/Android Auto (which the car people didn't even invent).
Obviously I'm being slightly facetious, but surely nobody can be impressed with the innovation of car companies over the past 30 years.
He said on an earnings call just a couple years ago that when he did the Toyota factory tour things were moving like granny on a walker slow and you would need a strobe light to see how fast the Tesla machines were moving and they were needing to account for air friction. He deserves more than the criticism he gets but he is surrounded by people enabling him and journalists have been uncritically reporting the things he says.
The majority of articles about the Nevada factory still use the fake render of that factory rather than any actual images as just one example of the enablement of the lies and fantasy around the company.
This is despite Tesla selling 21 times less cars per year, and only making not making all that much more (definitely more, but potentially not what you would expect for a company much smaller) per car sold? Consider also that Toyota's best selling car is cheaper than the cheapest Tesla, and their range extends significantly cheaper than that.
Tesla never claimed their manufacturing would be that fast in just a few years, that was a long term goal. Its totally disingenuous to claim this is what they believed they could do for the Model 3. Its still the long term vision.
The argument that everybody around Elon is a Yes men is also just nonsense, Tesla tries to do difficult things and sometimes they manage it and sometimes they hit delays. Tesla did actually hit their manufacturing goals eventually. Maybe a half a year later then Elon hoped but it did happen. And if you look at Model 3 in Shanghai, its much better. Model Y in Fremont was better and Model Y in Shanghai is better again. These program hit their goals pretty consistently. Tesla is clearly improving in their ability to execute mass manufacturing.
Nevada equally worked out perfectly. Its literally being cooped by everybody. Your criticism has literally nothing to do with Tesla, but rather with the media. The factory targeted 35GWh capacity in 2019, and it managed that in 2020. Its beyond that now. The building is only supposed to be complete, once its producing 150GWh.
Nevada hit both cell production targets and meet all state contracts in terms of employment numbers.
I must admit his current tweets about Dogecoin seem weird. He's literally shitposting, and some people will take it seriously and buy Dogecoins with real money instead of mining them.
To offer a counterpoint, I agree I like the honestly, but I will ask (I genuinely don't know): what does Tesla do about it?
So say I buy a Tesla, and I have some sort of manufacturing issue. Can I go to a Tesla service station to have it fixed? (Once again, I genuinely don't know, and I am curious actually).
If they are taking steps to fix it, I would applaud them as well, but I would not be happy to spend money on a Tesla, have an issue, and have these sorts of issues awknowledged, but then be stuck with said issue.
Generally, it depends on the level of the issue and how long you've owned the car. The car comes with warranties that last between 4 and 10 years, depending on the part. They should cover this sort of thing. Issues that can compromise passenger safety are subject to recalls, and do not have a time limit.
Tesla runs service centers and dealerships across their sales area.
In my experience there were two manufacturing issues with my car and they came to my location and fixed them for free. Obviously, it would better to not have them in the first place and I can't speak to the full set of issues people have had.
All of the flaws Munro talks about in his videos and with Musk here are visible really from moment you pickup the car at mile zero. I believe Tesla do have some kind of no questions asked return of the car at pickup time (my Model 3 did in CA anyway).
More shocking to me is that some people will accept (new!!) from Tesla cars with paint and panel fit this bad. Some of the Model Y examples in my neighborhood are truly shocking - several of them the rear hatch door just does not sit flush at all when closed, yet the buyer still drove it home?
If a dealer sells you a brand new car with paint and panel fit issues, it's probably a good idea to refuse and request one free of defects. Sadly there are now some online checklists for buying Teslas that walk you through the most common cosmetic defects so you can spot them at pickup time (sad because this should not be necessary).
I wonder how many people even realize that’s an option. After all, there is no other major car company where you would have these kind of issues. It’s not normal to have to give back your car at mile zero because of massive quality issues.
I agree. He is pretty honest which is a good thing.
I think the problem is that the general trend is to put people either into the "good" or "bad" category in total. This doesn't allow to recognize that people are flawed and do some good and some bad things. Instead people want to perceive them as always good or always bad.
You see the same in politics. A politician does 10 things of which you make like some and not like others. But a lot of partisans bend their minds to like everything a certain politician does or hate everything he does.
I feel like the folks who have a reputation along the lines for "just tells it like it is" are just as likely to make some horrible / wrong statements as well.
It seems like the impulse to just speak some blunt truth is as likely to be off the target as on.
He gets flak for his occasional cavalier statements and mocking tone, which is just a realistic reaction to expect from humans. Sure, there are those who dislike him in the typical shallow context where people take on team-sports attitudes about business and society, and we may argue about which source of criticism is more prevalent, but it's too easy to say that it's because he's "candid", "honest", etc. Those are common fallacious defenses for antagonistic behavior (and fits into the team-sports portion of attitudes).
I agree, we need to encourage people in power to be honest! Too many aren't, especially public company CEO's. I know lots of these guys and what they say on the golf course is totally different than what they say publicly.
I feel Elon's style of thinking is really at odds with matured mass manufacturing space. Iterative software development is hard to translate to mass physical products with consumers. Elon uses iterative process with SpaceX with great success, but it's not translating well to Tesla.
Its amazing for me that people say that Elon thinking doesn't work when his company has increased automotive volume around 30-50% for almost 10 years now.
And the iterative design works perfectly. Compare the Model 3 ramp in Fremont to the Model 3 ramp in Shanghai. Compare that to the ramp of Model Y and now to the Model Y in Shanghai. They managed the Model Y ramp with much better margin, much less issues. Their financials are improving year over year while growth continued.
Saying there were issues with the first real mass production car, and then concluding that iteration doesn't work, seems like a nonsensical argument.
If you look at their second and third generation manufacturing lines you see massive improvement and many more improvements are coming.
Tesla has 23% of the global market and leading margin in the automotive space. Just a few years ago making money with electric vehicles was supposed to be 'impossible'.
They have made amazing technology innovations, they are the most vertically integrated manufacturer in the world, they manufacture lots of things that other OEMs don't.
They have for years worked on turning into a battery company, reinventing the whole process of how batteries are produced, including active materials production. They designed their own battery cells being the first to bring to market a number of amazing innovations. They will likely be one of the biggest battery makers in the world within a few years.
That's market value calculated by multiplication of the shares available and share price. Gamestop was 10X more valuable 3 days ago than today. It doesn't mean anything unless you trade shares.
Isn't it a more convincing argument than someone just commenting "it's not translating well". I see Teslas on the street every day. I've driven a Tesla. The next car I buy is going to be a Tesla.
I don't know if the market evaluation is right or wrong but Musk is clearly making cars that many people like. Hard for me to see how that is a bad translation.
I interpret "high-quality cars" as "cars that people want to buy" whereas you seem to be interpreting it as a claim about door panels or general fit and finish. If people would rather own car X compared to car Y in what sense is Y of higher quality than X even if minor details on Y are flawless and X has some problems?
I was commenting on iterative approach of mass production of quality cars isn't translating well. I don't think anyone can say Tesla has better build quality than Toyota/Honda/Lexus. And EV is also considerably simpler than ICE vehicle in terms of moving parts.
I don't think Tesla is bad, in fact, I think Tesla is the future. That doesn't mean I want to be the consumer with paint problem or leaking body while Tesla ramps up.
Here is a distillation of various Tesla commentary I have seen, heard, and read.
Tesla made some mistakes, some due to hubris, some due to speed, some due to the newness of EVs.
Their emphasis is on speed since their mission is accelerating sustainable energy. That results in rapid iteration to reduce cost and simplify production. All those changes result in deviance but also improvements. The speed helps them quickly fix novel problems.
So you get panel gaps in some cars as they change and fix processes but you also get improved range due to the lighter rear casting. You get paint defects in some cars as they speed up the production line and don’t initially notice that it decreased drying time. You also get cheaper cars since they can produce more cars in the same time. You get a rattling heat pump that they subsequently insulate but you also get better range especially in cold weather.
This is why he said that if you want perfection, you either get an early car (since they will be inspected thoroughly) or you get a car at the end after all processes have stabilized. What should theoretically be happening all along the way though is a car that is overall better than competition since it is being much more rapidly improved (and with Tesla learning along the way). It’s up to each consumer to decide.
Their emphasis is on speed because shareholders care about vehicle deliveries and guidance[0], and their net income depends on the sale of regulatory credits that are granted when Tesla sells a car in a ZEV state[1].
Tesla achieves a 23.7% automotive margin, excluding regulator credits [#1 p. 31].
Regulatory credits for Q4 were $401M [p4] while they increased their quarter over quarter R&D spending by $156M [p. 28] and paid stock based compensation charge of $633M, up from roughly $347M in Q2 as the stock boomed [p.30]. Call that an additional $286M of stock based compensation and adding $156M in R&D we have an additional $442M in Q4 expenses.
So the Q4 regulator credits are slightly less than the combined 42% Q/Q R&D increase (a great thing) and increased SBC charges (also a good thing as caused by rising share price).
Keeping net income flat by investing in R&D, and 'suffering' from increased SBC charges as the stock soars, is a great thing for a high growth company to do! Why pay taxes on net-income when it's FAR more profitable longterm to invest more in R&D.
Said differently, their $3B net cash from operations in Q4, and then $1B in cash invested in investment, are the real news of the quarter.
Gross margin is not a reasonable metric of a company's profitability when it has large fixed costs, as does Tesla. I get the impression that you already know that.
They run factories on three continents and will be constructing more for the foreseeable future.
his story is repeated so often and is never given any context. Their net income does not depend on credits, if anything it is GAAP profitability, but that is just misleading.
The story with Tesla is funny to me, the anti-Tesla crowed is just running down the field with goal post as fast as they possibly can. The TSLAQ crowd basically has two last bunkers they are defending, profit from regulatory credits and Tesla cars are literal trash when the come out of the factory. Both are vastly blown out of proportion.
When Model 3 started to come out people said Tesla could never bring a mass market car to market. Prediction over prediction how it would kill the company. When that was accomplished people said, well but you can never make a mass market EV and be profitable, and the rules and regulation around regulatory credits have not changed since then.
Now Tesla is making a profit for 6 quarters, now even in a pandemic year its not enough profit, because some revenue might go away in 2-3 years.
What they ignore is the progression of both growth and margin, even excluding credits. Tesla grew automotive deliveries by 36% in a pandemic year and improved overall operational margin from basically less then 0% to among the best of any car company. During 2020 they have innovated technologically in many ways, most uniquely literally turning into a battery company that makes not only its own cell but also its own cell manufacturing equipment. Guidance for next year, and Tesla has been conservative with guidance since 2017 disaster, is another year of growth of around 50% and with operational margin that are as good or better then 2020.
During 2020 they have massively expanded, more the doubled, Shanghai factory, they have begun billing truly huge factories in both Europe (Berlin) and the US (Austin). This required huge amounts of capital and will only real start to really make them money in 2022, but its massive operational leverage that is being generated here.
Even when taking this into account, what many still ignore is that Tesla has to make massive investments in things they don't get a return for yes. Massive expansion of the supercharger network, service centres and stores. Basically every existing car company is making a huge amount of money from service (essentially parts), this is because they are not growing and the have millions and millions of cars that are out of warranty on the road. Tesla because of its growth has way more cars under warranty in relation to those out of warranty and that, plus building up new locations, makes their service a huge drain on the company.
In the long run, both the super chargers and service will be making lots of cash for Tesla but you never hear this mentioned, specially in the sites that cater to the TSLAQ. There is just a large market out there for negative prediction on Tesla. The Fool is one of those pages who has been writing negative Tesla articles, for many years now. They have completely gotten the story wrong so many times and the often had known short seller write articles for them.
The 'Tesla can not make money without credits' storyline will hold up maybe a 1-2 more quarters.
He normally lives in an area where winter temps are at a low of 40 F (~5 C). He came to visit, an I live in an area where temperatures routinely go above and below the freezing point of water. I also live in a very humid environmant (close to a large body of water).
My brother plugged in his Tesla overnight to charge, and the morning he was suppoed to leave, the charger would not come out. After after 15 minutes of searching online for a fix, it turns out that it is surprisngly common that the charger was frozen into the charger! Thankfully, we had a hair dryer and were able to unfreeze it.
I share this story because I an frankly surprised that for buying a new tesla, something like that was not tested and/or accounted for, and frankly makes me worry about buying one, because I wonder what else they do not test/account for.