Tesla Model 3 Teardown Reveals a 'Symphony of Engineering,' 30 Percent Profit Margin (bloomberg.com) 287
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Munro & Associates, a small Detroit-area firm that disassembles new cars and analyzes them down to the nuts and bolts, came out in April with damning findings that the Model 3 was poorly built and -- even worse for Tesla's long-term outlook -- costly to build. On that second point, at least, founder Sandy Munro has reversed course. Upon further analysis, his firm has found that the sedan can be profitable. It may even have the potential to make a 30 percent margin, which would be unmatched by any other other battery-powered vehicle. Munro said the systems that impressed him most were the tight integration of circuit board components, which he calls "a symphony of engineering," and the efficiency of the battery developed by Tesla and Panasonic Corp. Munro also pointed to a comprehensive side-by-side comparison of the parts and materials used by the Model 3, General Motors Co.'s Chevrolet Bolt, and BMW AG's i3, in which the Model 3 comes out favorably. The report echoes a teardown published in June by German magazine WirtschaftsWoche, which found that the Model 3 costs about $28,000 to build -- $18,000 for materials and $10,000 for production.
Bias with Testla. (Score:3)
Tesla were designed and built more like a software development project, then a traditional automobile project, initially, later on they started to bring in _some_ of the traditional methods.
However being that we have an All Electric Car being built using a different project method, scares the Traditional Automotive industry and their biases would probably have them hunting down problems in the design vs good points.
Detroit was the Silicon Valley 2 generations ago, having its thunder taken away from them in terms of economy then in business practice will make them feel nervous.
Tesla is currently making all electric cars that people actually wan't vs. the Tiny road legal golf carts like the Leaf that people would only want it because it is electric and affordable. The Chevy Bolt is a good contender too. But it still lacks some coolness.
Re:Bias with Testla. (Score:5, Interesting)
Tesla were designed and built more like a software development project, then a traditional automobile project, initially, later on they started to bring in _some_ of the traditional methods.
Tesla's first project was its original roadster, which was basically a repowered Lotus. You don't get more traditional than that in the EV space. The Model S and X were built fairly traditionally. Only with the Model 3 did Tesla try to use non-traditional methods, i.e. robots for everything. Then they went back to traditional methods of production (more humans on the line) when that failed. So you have that completely backwards.
However being that we have an All Electric Car being built using a different project method, scares the Traditional Automotive industry and their biases would probably have them hunting down problems in the design vs good points.
If only you had ever heard of the BMW i3 you would know that the traditional automotive industry is capable of the same kind of feat. Look into how the i3 is made, it makes the production process for a Tesla look positively ho-hum.
Tesla is currently making all electric cars that people actually wan't vs. the Tiny road legal golf carts like the Leaf that people would only want it because it is electric and affordable. The Chevy Bolt is a good contender too. But it still lacks some coolness.
Ford (which is struggling for stock price) and FCA (which is circling the bowl for a broad variety of reasons) the entrenched auto industry can afford to take the wait-and-see position while Tesla figures out what customers want. If they ever actually got desperate, they could use Tesla's patents, and license particular pieces of tech from Tesla.
There are two particularly likely outcomes for Tesla. One, they continue to succeed as an automaker, and make a small percentage of the vehicles on the road. By the time their numbers get at all big, mobility/sharing services will have decimated personal vehicle ownership. Or two, they simply become a tier 1 supplier, providing primarily batteries, electronics, and electric motors. Automakers are already getting into more powerplant sharing because customers of low-end vehicles don't care. Sooner or later, nobody will.
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Ford (which is struggling for stock price) and FCA (which is circling the bowl for a broad variety of reasons) the entrenched auto industry can afford to take the wait-and-see position while Tesla figures out what customers want. If they ever actually got desperate, they could use Tesla's patents, and license particular pieces of tech from Tesla.
There are two particularly likely outcomes for Tesla. One, they continue to succeed as an automaker, and make a small percentage of the vehicles on the road. By the time their numbers get at all big, mobility/sharing services will have decimated personal vehicle ownership. Or two, they simply become a tier 1 supplier, providing primarily batteries, electronics, and electric motors. Automakers are already getting into more powerplant sharing because customers of low-end vehicles don't care. Sooner or later, nobody will.
And this is the basic flaw in the bear's arguments. What makes you think that the big auto makers could make an EV profitably? They don't have battery factories. They don't have a supply chain for the EV parts. And they don't have any experience making AVs. GM is probably the closest of the big auto makers to being able to make an EV profitably and its unlikely likely to do so. They lose about $9000 per Bolt today. To make that profitable, they need to scale up to about 10x the sales they currently g
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Also, the Waze AV system costs about $100K per car to install so I doubt AVs will do much to reduce auto ownership in the next decade or so.
We all know that most AVs will initially be owned by fleets, not by private owners — and putting AVs in the hands of private owners does relatively little to decrease vehicle ownership, while having them be owned by fleet managers does a lot. $100k seems like a lot, until you consider that it does the job of multiple drivers. For example, it enables one-way vehicle rentals in-town, which can dramatically increase utilization. Since it never takes a break (except to recharge) it does the job of three t
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I keep hearing this or similar claims over and over again every time autonomous vehicles are discussed. Does anyone actually have any proof that aside from a few Slashdot hipsters that people won't still want to actually own their own cars when autonomous cars become mainstream?
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If only you had ever heard of the BMW i3
Please make sure people hear about BMW i3. Make sure they never look at it. Ugly as hell. I have seen Mattel and FisherPrice with better styling that that godawful thing.
I was eagerly waiting for i3. I was willing to pay 50K for it in 2014. One look at it. And the spec, 2000 lb plastic body... No BMW, go back to the drawing board. There is a i8 or i9 that looks really cool. But priced at 140K.
Re:Bias with Testla. (Score:4, Interesting)
You obviously have never been near a Leaf. They aren't tiny, they are actually quite large. Same cargo space as a model 3, bigger than a typical crossover.
They are solid cars, decent performance compared to similar sized fossil cars.
Tesla have been met in the middle here. We have cars like the Kona, Niro and soon to be released Leaf 60 in the same price bracket as the M3 SR with similar features (100kW charging, auto steering, 150kW+ motor, 250+ mile range). You could argue that it might not have happened without Tesla, but equally Nissan build a good affordable car and charging network and LG got the battery pack cost down too.
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"Tesla were designed and built more like a software development project, then a traditional automobile project,"
And you think that is positive?
Keep in mind that automobile makers, unlike software developers, can be held liable for (some) design defects.
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> Traditional car makers just don't get it:
Um, LEAN is one of the primary reasons we even know who Toyota is. Agile came from LEAN. -1
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Are you people really so daft that you can't spot a troll from a mile away?
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Trolling has been on a sad decline on Slashdot. and with it the "immune system" of readers able to spot a troll easily. I guess we should thank binary boy for upholding the tradition. Almost nothing marked "Troll" these days is actually trolling, but at least we have one example we can point to for educational purposes. Sigh, I miss DocRuby.
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Yes, but it took American Car companies kicking and screaming to get to LEAN.
The American Car Companies were on the brink of collapse to be replaced with Japanese cars (Who actually got LEAN from the US Military After WWII)
Most of the problem that have in being competitive in manufacturing isn't salary, but efficiency of the people working.
PCB Design (Score:4, Interesting)
It's a very ordinary design and would have been considered dense 25 years ago. Today, those components are medium-sized or even large. The PCB layout is designed to basic industry standards and no more. However, needlessly-small components reduce manufacturing yield and reliability. Unusual PCB designs increase costs and shrink your supplier base.
The design is simply competent so I can't imagine what he's used to seeing that makes this one worth gushing over.
I like this Munro guy (Score:3)
Will Tesla be profitable? (Score:5, Informative)
Then why isn't Tesla profitable?
Well, roughly, they have spent the last two years building up manufacturing capability, and only the last month has their manufacturing been putting out a reasonable number of cars, so the upfront costs are spent, but the income stream produced by the investment has only started. The key question is to look at Tesla's balance sheet in six months.
In more nerd terms, the "income" part of "income-outgo = profit" is a time integral, while a large portion of the outgo is fixed, so the profitability rises with time.
Will Tesla be profitable? Stay tuned.
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They average around 25%, that's not a "small gross margin" by any standards in the automotive world. They dipped down when they started Model 3 production but it's been recovering well, already around 19%.
SG&A has been flat despite Model 3 growth. Much of SG&A has to be paid in advance of scaleup, and much is nonlinear. Also, the supercharger network is being transitioned from a loss leader to paying for its own growth.
For your "SG&A will kill them" hypothesis to work out, SG&A needs to gr
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Here you go again with year-over-year, rather than quarter-over-quarter. If you want to know how SG&A responds to growth in Model 3 production rates, you need to look quarter-over-quarter.
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17Q1 925/2696 = .3431 .3254 .3299 .3091
17Q2 908/2790 =
17Q3 985/2985 =
17Q4 1037/3288 =.3153
18Q1 1054/3409 =
So, you're right that there's an improvement. OTOH if you look at non-R&D SG&A the trend is still present but less clear. Least squares fit guesses SG&A is 360M + 0.2 * revenue, which if gross margin is 20% never reaches profitability--- but of course, since SG&A is spent "ahead" this is misleading. It's certainly not a wonderful sign, though.
In Q2 we learn just how perilous the cash
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How is the supercharger network paying for its own growth? Are they charging (erm, financially charging) Model 3 owners, or everyone?
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Yes, they are charging Model 3 owners. There is no way to get free supercharging on a Model 3.
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They plan to - after Model Y. They'll probably target starting deliveries in 3 1/2 years, and hit it in 4.
You do sedan -> CUV/SUV -> truck because the former requires the least amount of batteries for a given amount of range.
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I honestly don't get why you troll like this. Do you think you're funny or something? Because it comes across like a teenager.
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You were more fun when you spent your time here calling everyone "space nutters"
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I know you're trolling, but Sprung buildings are actually rather cool [sprung.com]. And I rather do hope they deploy more. Rapid, low cost deployability of high strength, insulated, standardized durable structures - what's not to like about that?
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Again (feeding the troll): a HVAC permit has already been granted for GA4. We'll have to wait for the next drone footage, but by now it may already be installed.
Sprung structures are very frequently climate controlled. There are Sprung structures in the high arctic.
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There were air conditioned sprung structures on all the larger FOBs and so forth throughout Iraq and Afghanistan. Those suckers are tough.
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Phillips and Sony collaborated to bring the first commercially viable CD player to market in 1982. The Sony CDP-101 cost $730 USD or $1900.00 in today's dollars. I can't prove it, but reports suggest that none of Sony's early entries into this market were profitable. And yet, there is no doubt that CD players and the CD format became widely popular and immensely profitable. This is called the Innovator's Dilemma [wikipedia.org]. Shamelessly stolen from the Wikipedia page:
1. Value to innovation is an S-curve: Improvin
Re:30% Gross Margin on each car??! (Score:5, Funny)
Not to mention Musk's very public nervous breakdown that he's inexplicably broadcasting live to the world.
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Seems to work ok for Trump...
Methinks Musk needs a bit of a vacation.
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But ... But ... But ...
I don't wanna go to the stars. I don't even want to go to Mars. And I sure as hell don't want a $50,000 car that takes half an hour to fuel and I can't refuel from a gas can in an emergency.
I suppose I'm just gonna be left behind.
Is there anything I can do to expedite the departure of the rest of you?
tell the sales guy to take 15-20% off or I walk (Score:2)
tell the sales guy to take 15-20% off or I will walk away.
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He'll let you walk. Somebody else will buy the car.
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That's the inverse of what their quarterly reports show (rising margins, both GAAP and non-GAAP; non-rising SG R&D steadily being dwarfed by revenue; rapid growth in production rates; etc.
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Not year-over-year - quarter-over-quarter. Year-over-year says nothing whatsoever about the impact of Model 3 scaleup on SG&A. Despite the large growth in Model 3 production across Q1, SG&A in Q1 was basically identical to in Q4. Just wait for the Q2 report; I guarantee you it won't even remotely come close to linearly tracking Model 3 volumes (there will be a small hit in Q2 from layoff severance, but that'll turn into a benefit in Q3).
For your hypothesis to work, SG&A needs to roughly scale
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You are wrong. Look at the financials. As a percent of of revenue, SG&A for the last 4 quarters has been 20%, 21%, 22%, and 19%. That's pretty consistent. As a share of gross revenue, for the last 3 quarters it has been 150%, 155%, and 145%. Again, very consistent. This is for the quarterly basis.
Look at the last 4 years. SG&A as percent of revenue is 21%, 20%, 23%, and 19%. Again, incredibly constant for revenues. Where it is even WORSE is when you look at the longer term trend as a percen
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Anything older than Q4 is pretty meaningless (maybe Q3, but that's pretty arguable), given that the point is to see how SG&A responds to Model 3 delivery rates, and they were meaningless before then.
Q4 Model 3 deliveries: 1550
Q1 Model 3 deliveries: 8180
Q4 automotive revenues: $ 2,702,195 k
Q1 automotive revenues: $ 2,735,317 k
Q4 SG&A: $682,290 k
Q1 SG&A: $686,404 k
The
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Tent based production (Score:2, Funny)
The big three could learn from lessons from Musk. Having production problems with your line? Just move workers from other plants to the affected plant, set up some tents and do a big chunk of the automated work by hand.
The big three are living in the past, where you work out production problems before going into production. This tent based production methodology is the future!
Re:Tent based production (Score:4, Interesting)
The Big 3 have spent $billions and hundreds of thousands if not millions of man-hours over the past century refining their processes to maximize efficiency and quality. It's ludicrous to suggest that somehow they missed the virtues of erecting an open tent and near-sweatshop working conditions for their assembly lines.
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"This tent based production methodology is the future!"
Does that mean that Musk is going to go into business making and selling tents?
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The only similarity between Tesla and Amazon is that both are headed by egomaniacal billionaires. The companies have nothing more in common besides that and its quite telling how the Tesla cult has to go that deep to find a positive analogue.
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If you plan to feed a troll, you should at least acknowledge that you realize you're feeding a troll.
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Satire is nearly dead. (Score:3)
Trolling bots all over the web and it is hard to tell anymore which is satire, parody, comedy and what is serious. People have gone off the rails more than Germany in the 1930s... if only we could put a rank on irrationality; not that it would help any as the lemmings will continue running for the cliff regardless (apt metaphor if you think about the irony.)
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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because he said Musk's submarine wouldn't have helped. It was a bizarre baseless attack on a legit hero.
Well... actually, he told Musk to shove it up his arse- which is a little more harsh than just saying "it wouldn't help".
It doesn't justify Musk's response which is libelous, and orders of magnitude worse; but it's only fair to point out that he WAS goading Musk- this wasn't just constructive criticism. Stocks in Musk's companies fell as a result; I think that's a fair punishment for his crime of being a barsteward.
Re: That's what he says NOW... (Score:2)
...because he said Musk's submarine wouldn't have helped
Cognitive failure: We don't know why Musk called him that... but only a moron (well, lots of them) would assume that he didn't have a good reason.
Re: That's what he says NOW... (Score:4, Insightful)
A lot of Vern Unsworth's criticisms of Elon Musk are contradicted by many of Elon Musk's tweets (most of which pre-date the criticisms).
During a video interview [independent.co.uk], Vern Unsworth was asked for his opinion on Musk's submarine, and he responded, "He can stick his submarine where it hurts. It just had absolutely no chance of working. He had no conception of what the cave passage was like. The submarine, I believe, was about 5 foot 5 inches long, rigid, so it wouldn't have gone round corners, or around any obstacles. It wouldn't have made the first 50 metres into the cave from the dive start point. Just a PR stunt." The interviewer then asked, "But he went into the cave, Tuesday?" Vern Unsworth responded, "And was asked to leave very quickly. And so he should have been."
From what I read on Elon Musk's twitter feed: (1) Musk had exchanged emails with at least one of the cave divers (Musk posted a copy of the emails on his twitter feed) showing that the diver(s) wanted Musk to develop the submarine as a back-up rescue option; (2) Musk got confirmation from the diver(s) that the planned submarine was small/slim enough to be navigated around tight bends in the tunnels; (3) Musk not only made the initial submarine, but also made (or at least planned to make) a second submarine that was 30cm shorter (thus making it more nimble), plus an inflatable dummy which could be used on a dry run to test that the real submarines could successfully make the journey without risk of causing a blockage (if the inflatable dummy gets jammed in a tight corner, then just puncture it to remove it); (4) a team of SpaceX engineers worked for about 48 hours almost non-stop to develop the submarine; (5) Musk used a swimming pool near the SpaceX factory to carry out a test of the submarine's manoeuvrability before flying it to Thailand; (6) contrary to what Vern Unsworth claimed about Musk being asked to leave the cave, Musk tweeted, "Only people in sight were the Thai navy/army guys, who were great. Their navy seals escorted us in - total opposite of wanting us to leave".
I also read somewhere (either on Elon Musk's twitter feed or in a newspaper article) that another company had also been asked to see if it would be possible to make a small enough submarine, but the other company was unable to do so.
One newspaper article [thesun.co.uk] stated that Vern Unsworth is a caver with detailed knowledge of the cave system but is not a diver. This might go some way towards explaining the disconnect between Musk's and Unsworth's viewpoints: Musk had been in contact with divers who believed the submarine could work, and that its dimensions made it nimble enough for the tight corners and passages, and encouraged Musk (and a second company) to develop it as a backup rescue option; but perhaps those divers had not discussed this submarine backup plan with Unsworth, so Unsworth had assumed incorrectly that Musk didn't know enough to be able to help with the rescue". If this is true, then it could be argued that Vern Unsworth's comments were gratuitously insulting, untrue, and even defamatory. After all, despite Musk agreeing specifications with the divers, apparently he managed to develop something that was not fit for purpose. To me, that sounds like Unsworth was claiming Musk is an incompetent engineer. It is unsurprising that Elon Musk lost his temper and chose to respond with (presumably) untrue and defamatory insults. Unfortunate, but unsurprising.
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Re:That's what he says NOW... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's not what he said at all. [youtube.com]
My favourite part (although other teardowns had already discovered this) was the battery pack. The more capable you want to make your BMS, the more individual cell connections and wires you need, the more the per-cell circuitry, etc. Every connection, every wire, every circuit, etc adds expense, so there's a strong incentive to have as few connections as possible. Tesla gets around this by having the battery pack be basically two gigantic, two meter long PCBs. The cells are like capacitors on a huge motherboard. They can route power wherever they want, whenever they want, and do whatever they want to it. Cell balancing is essentially always perfect, to within the degree of measurement error.
Summing up all of his videos: Munro had some issues with the build quality of the first car he tore down (one of the first off the line), and tore into Tesla over that (making him popular among shorts... making his statement now about eating crow all the more amusing). He tore down more Model 3s later, and noted that the build quality improved over time. Even early on, though, even before he started getting into the electronics, he said the performance and handling was incredible. He stated in particular that whoever designed the suspension could be a Formula 1 prince.
Re:That's what he says NOW... (Score:5, Insightful)
You've inadvertently illustrated one of the problems with the Model 3. How many different revisions of this thing are there and how much more difficult does that make them to repair? What differentiates Rev A, Rev B, etc? That's going to make long-term maintenance, repair and restoration a nightmare. That's why every other car manufacturer settles on a design and sticks with it for a full model year before releasing a new revision.
Re: That's what he says NOW... (Score:5, Funny)
You don't understand. Tesla uses an agile process and keeps improving. If you got an early one it might be bad but just go buy another. The ones they make in the tent are really good ones
Re: That's what he says NOW... (Score:4, Interesting)
You jest but that's what a lot of people did with the Model X. Demanded a buy-back on the early one, and bought another.
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You've inadvertently illustrated one of the problems with the Model 3. How many different revisions of this thing are there and how much more difficult does that make them to repair? What differentiates Rev A, Rev B, etc? That's going to make long-term maintenance, repair and restoration a nightmare. That's why every other car manufacturer settles on a design and sticks with it for a full model year before releasing a new revision.
Does it matter? Order yours now and you can be sure it will be even better than the one that's already a "symphony of engineering".
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I think that's true of every car from major manufacturers. I assume that's why you sometimes need information like VIN number when ordering replacement parts.
I once owned a Mazda GLC that had every emissions control known to man. The emissions setup didn't match the shop manual, or the emissions sticker under the hood. I assume that it was built when they were in the process of switching from one configuration to another and I ended up with parts for both. Unfortunately, I only discovered all that AFTER
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It isn't too unusual in autos and other motor vehicles to have different parts between cars of the same model year. They've been doing this forever - I have a forty year old motor vehicle where the carb can be
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" so the lion share of the maintenance/repair work will likely be done by Tesla"
Which is another reason not to own a Tesla. Who pays the tow fee for the mostly several-hundred mile trek to a regional service center?
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[Citation Needed]
Never mind, you can't, because you can't cite your descending colon as a source.
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Customer satisfaction has nothing to do with recalls and you know that.
In March Tesla was forced to recall half the cars it had ever produced: https://www.nbcnews.com/busine... [nbcnews.com]
That was just ONE issue. When the tent models start being delivered you can expect far more quality problems.
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Yeah, I know when I've sat in one of the same kind of buildings at small airports, the thing practically fell down while I was just enjoying a bloody mary!
No wait, it was just like being in any other building ever. And this was a small airport at 6500 feet above sea level in the Rockies, where they get a bit of weather the Bay Area never sees.
This isn't a god damn Boy Scout tent we're talking about. And it was a couple hundred feet from where they operate jet aircraft, which tend to make a bit of wind on
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I can't tell if you're trolling or not. A friend had his Model 3 delivered a month ago and its fit and finish is worse than any car I've seen from a major manufacturer since the early 1980's..
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Are you really unable to spot when you're being trolled, or are you just playing along?
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"this applies to every car made. go to get parts from a store, and they ask if it was before this date, or after that date, and i'm not talking about model years, i'm talking withing the same model year?"
Say what? I've never experienced that and would be shocked that any modern production car has that issue. Supercars maybe, but not mass-produced daily drivers like the Model 3 wants to be.
This is probably one of the reasons a Tesla can only be serviced by one of their sparse service centers and not the av
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This is probably one of the reasons a Tesla can only be serviced by one of their sparse service centers and not the average mechanic (another drawback to owning one).
No, that's just the consequence of EV vs ICE. There's not as much overlap in parts that require servicing.
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Say what? I've never experienced that and would be shocked that any modern production car has that issue. Supercars maybe, but not mass-produced daily drivers like the Model 3 wants to be.
He may be overexaggerating with "withing the same model year" but just take a look at the ninth generation Chevy Impala. [wikipedia.org]
You can't go much more mass produced than that. And they were churning out updates and changes every year.
Also, note the variety in engine setups. And the dates of their use. That's probably where the "within the same model year" thing comes from.
You have to have an excuse why you're still selling a decade old design. And you can't rely on cosmetic touch-ups alone.
And all cars usually come
Re: That's what he says NOW... (Score:5, Funny)
overexaggerating
Not trying to be disagreeable but it's possible that he was merely exaggerating...
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"And they were churning out updates and changes every year."
That's exactly what I said. Major manufacturers stick with one design for a model year. It's easy to go to AutoZone and ask for Part X for a 2015 Impala and not have any confusion. The same can't be said for a Model 3. How are the different revisions delineated? As far as I know the VIN's aren't even sequential.
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Go to the same store and ask for something fairly routine for a 1999 Volkswagen Golf or Jetta, such as a coil pack. They will absolutely ask you for when it was manufactured from the label on the driver's door sill - if it's after September 1998, it's a Mark-IV with very different engines and a new body style. The 1999 model manufactured before September was the same Mark-III as 1996 - 1998 with the ODB2 engine (1993 - 1995 used ODB1 variants of the same engines, the rest of the car otherwise being the sa
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It's not in North America either. Both the last year of the Mark III Jetta / Golf and the first year of the Mark IV are called "1999" with the cutoff being some time in September. Only way for a parts dealer to know is if you enter the VIN and they decode the chassis style.
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See: Volkswagen Mark III Jetta / Golf / Cabrio. from 1993 to some time in 1996 they used ODB-I engines and had completely different engine management. In the middle of the 1996 model year they switched to ODB-II engines and everything that goes with it. Then they made a switch mid-1999 to many of the drivetrain components that would be in the Mark IV models from 2000, but had the same Mark-III chassis and body.
And that's just off the top of my head, and VW wasn't the first to do that shit by a long shot.
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Re:That's what he says NOW... (Score:4, Interesting)
If he acknowledges that the build quality has improved between first and current models, I wouldn't call that "eating crow". Except perhaps if you mean on Tesla's part.
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Nope it’s a Kia quality piece of shit [jalopnik.com].
The couple Model 3s I've seen up close on the street didn't have any obvious external flaws but it's clear that Tesla's quality control is very erratic.
That has to change. They are or have become capable of building cars well but the constant deathmarch to ever greater production is a serious detriment to quality.
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Nonsense. Every day there are both positive and negative articles about Tesla and Musk on Jalopnik. The Musk cult is so over the top Jalopnik even had to address the issue a few weeks ago.
It's not okay (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not okay, he's done this repeatedly as CEO of Tesla too. His mouth is a liability.
“Water level was actually very low & still (not flowing) — you could literally have swum to Cave 5 with no gear [1], which is obv how the kids got in [2]. If not true, then I challenge this dude to show final rescue video [3]. Huge credit to pump & generator team. Unsung heroes here[4],”
[1] a Seal diver died from lack of oxygen, he gave the kids too much of his tank when he was in the end cave. Clearly not swimable then. The kids were running out of oxygen so clearly air tight, and they brought them out 4 at a time during the day, with Seals restocking the oxygen tanks along the way at night. His claim is garbage, it belittles the risks involved.
[2]The kids climbed in before the floods and went deep into the cave as the water rose. They did not swim in.
[3] They made a rescue, not a video for PR purposes. His demand for a video shows his priorities not theirs.
[4] Same cave teams did the rescue as laid the pipes and power lines.
“You know what, don’t bother showing the video, We will make one of the mini-sub/pod going all the way to Cave 5 no problemo. Sorry pedo guy, you really did ask for it.”
Fuck off Musk. They didn't use your tube, you got pissy in your disappointment, one of the cavers got angry with you for the PR stunt and pissyness part and you escallated into calling him a pedo because he's in Thailand. Which is a slur on Thailand and libel against him.
If you want to help, help, don't do a PR circus when they're trying to do a rescue.
One more thing, when autopilot kills people, its not their fault they didn't turn off the autopilot to rescue the car from its bad driving. It's your bugs to blame. Don't attack customers just because they're dead and can't answer back. When the Luxembourg safety regulator complaims the brakes are awful, its because they're awful. It's not a conspiracy against your company, they just want you to fix the damn brakes. Grow up.
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[1] The diver died before the caves were pumped out.
[2] The obvious reference to "no gear" is "how the boys got in": with no gear. Again: the caves were pumped out. Water only remained in small places.
[3] If you want to (rightfully) demand that Musk provide evidence to the pedo claim (beyond the profile of "63 year old white western male moved to Thailand"), if someone wants to go on TV and tell Musk to shove his submarine up his arse because it's not workable, then he too should be able to provide at leas
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And that's something Musk is learning the hard way.
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And he acknowledged it was a problem multiple times before this latest outburst, including just about a month ago-- but somehow still has not stopped it.
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More than half the people in the US acknowledge they eat too much, but somehow are not stopping it.
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The Thai leader of the operation said that the submarine would not be useful in this scenario. It wasn't workable.
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If you want to (rightfully) demand that Musk provide evidence to the pedo claim
It wasn't a claim. It was childish, reflexive, over-the-top invective to try to shut down a dialogue that was hurting Elon's wil' feelings.
(beyond the profile of "63 year old white western male moved to Thailand")
Wow. Really, Karen? You can load up your post with all the lip service you want about Musk being wrong, but that racist little gem takes it all back and more.
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They also had a target that looked to be something like foam and plywood (while refusing to disclose their testing methodology, and doing it in front of the press), with no evidence of radar reflectors. The most critical component of an AEB system is how well it distinguishes real targets from fake ones and avoids false positives. In short, if you're going to slam on your brakes in high speed in traffic because you think there's a car stopped ahead of you, there better actually be a car there
Whereas if it is a person, or a moose, obviously you would not want to stop. Because real targets have radar signatures and fake targets don't.......
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There's a difference between things that work, and things that work while being an elegant and well-executed design. And you know it.
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He probably donates big to both parties, because he's rich AF and wants his own shills in Congress to combat his competitors' shills in Congress.
That's how business is done these days.
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Slashdot's ability to spot trolling sure isn't what it used to be.
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If I posted it, you'd see my name up there.
New flash: I'm not the only person who likes Tesla here.