Tesla Now Runs the Most Productive Auto Factory In America (bloomberg.com) 198
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Elon Musk has a very specific vision for the ideal factory: densely packed, vertically integrated and unusually massive. During Tesla's early days of mass production, he was chided for what was perceived as hubris. Now, Tesla's original California factory has achieved a brag-worthy title: the most productive auto plant in North America. Last year Tesla's factory in Fremont, California, produced an average of 8,550 cars a week. That's more than Toyota's juggernaut in Georgetown, Kentucky (8,427 cars a week), BMW AG's Spartanburg hub in South Carolina (8,343) or Ford's iconic truck plant in Dearborn, Michigan (5,564), according to a Bloomberg analysis of production data from more than 70 manufacturing facilities.
In a year when auto production around the world was stifled by supply-chain shortages, Tesla expanded its global production by 83% over 2020 levels. Its other auto factory, in Shanghai, tripled output to nearly 486,000. In the coming weeks, Tesla is expected to announce the start of production at two new factories -- Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg, its first in Europe, and Gigafactory Texas in Austin. Musk said in October that he plans to further increase production in Fremont and Shanghai by 50%. [...] Once Tesla flips the switch on two new factories, what comes next? Musk has a longstanding target to increase vehicle deliveries by roughly 50% a year. To continue such growth, Tesla will need to either open more factories or make the facilities even more productive. Musk said in October that he's working on both. Site selection for the next Gigafactories begins this year.
In a year when auto production around the world was stifled by supply-chain shortages, Tesla expanded its global production by 83% over 2020 levels. Its other auto factory, in Shanghai, tripled output to nearly 486,000. In the coming weeks, Tesla is expected to announce the start of production at two new factories -- Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg, its first in Europe, and Gigafactory Texas in Austin. Musk said in October that he plans to further increase production in Fremont and Shanghai by 50%. [...] Once Tesla flips the switch on two new factories, what comes next? Musk has a longstanding target to increase vehicle deliveries by roughly 50% a year. To continue such growth, Tesla will need to either open more factories or make the facilities even more productive. Musk said in October that he's working on both. Site selection for the next Gigafactories begins this year.
This is going to be interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's see what the Elon Musk haters will have to say about this.
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Let's see what the Elon Musk haters will have to say about this.
Popcorn time!
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Remember when he was a genius because he bought $1.5 billion of BTC with Tesla's shareholder's money and it went to ~$60K/coin? Where are all those people now?
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there seem to be conflicting reports of whether Tesla sold any of their bitcoin or not, but in objective terms (aka, real US dollars in revenue and profit) they've been doing really good.
I remember when people were convinced they were on to something when Tesla's announced numbers showed that it wasn't selling all the cars they were producing. Aha, the critics said, Tesla is failing to sell, and when that next bond payment is due Tesla's going to have to declare bankruptcy. Yeah, except that was just before
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Let's see what the Elon Musk haters will have to say about this.
Bah! Assan Motors Corporation did 15,000 per month in their Hadleyville Pennsylvania plant.
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Quality over Quantity. (Score:3)
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This is what happens when you can exploit workers I suppose.
Re:This is going to be interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
his cars are just as likely to be affordable to the average American as it is that my cat will bring me a coffee.
The average new car sold in America last year was $47k [consumerreports.org].
A Tesla Model-3 costs $44k and has fuel savings of at least $10k over its operational life.
So Tesla's are more affordable than an average new car.
So, does your cat add milk and sugar to your coffee?
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Mine shits on the floor sometimes, I guess it depends on what you're in to.
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The average new car sold in America last yearwas $47k
The average income [thezebra.com] of new car buyers in 2015 was $80,000. On average, 62% of all new cars purchased in the United States are bought by drivers aged 55 to 75. These are not your average Americans.
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So what you're saying is the average car buyer in America is capable of buying a Tesla.
If the average American isn't someone who buys brand new cars, that's not really Tesla's fault nor problem to deal with.
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The average new car...
New cars are already playthings for the wealthy. The large majority of cars sold each year are *used*. The "average american" isn't buying new cars at all. And In 2020 for example, the average selling price of used vehicles came to around 22,000 U.S. dollars. So actual average people are buying used cars for HALF what a new Tesla costs.
Second, the link you cited, to consumer reports... you should have followed the link from CR to its source... here's where it goes:
Strong Luxury Vehicle Sales in December 2 [kbb.com]
Re:This is going to be interesting (Score:5, Funny)
Preach it brother! If Tesla were listening to the average joe they'd be manufacturing used cars instead of new ones!
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So actual average people are buying used cars for HALF what a new Tesla costs.
That is a ridiculous comparison. New cars cost more than used cars. Duh.
A new Ford also costs less than a beat-up old Tesla.
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The original point stands; "average american's" still aren't in the market for a new Tesla.
Being slightly cheaper than the 'average new car' and claiming is like being slightly cheaper than the average organic free range hormone free meat at the butcher shop. Your market is the upper middle up. "Average american's" aren't even shopping there.
So, no, his cat isn't going to be getting him any coffee.
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Not sure if you're anti-EV or anti-Tesla, but high performance EVs are new technology, and Tesla was the first to crack the code (obvious in hindsight) of pricing things high for early adopters, and then moving systematically towards cheaper, higher-volume products.
Still, the fuel savings, and as important, maintenance savings, are quite immense. EVs are commonly achieving 100k miles or more on that original battery pack, and for a fair comparison, you need to count all the scheduled maintenance that is goi
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An average, presented by itself without accompanying statistics, is useless. Especially when Rolls Royce sells a car for over $28 million.
Re:This is going to be interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
Musk is a savvy businessman, but his cars are just as likely to be affordable to the average American as it is that my cat will bring me a coffee. Don't get me wrong, you can still run a very successful business catering only to the upper echelon of society. That's pretty much how freemium gaming works. The difference being that no one is going around claiming freemium gaming will save the planet.
Is your average American working ad McDonalds?
I see many rather poor looking Rednecks driving around in nice new Pickups like the Ford F-150 Limited - a paltry $70,825 in 2021 - that's Base price The idea that Teslas are too expensive for people to buy is kinda a bad meme.
Re:This is going to be interesting (Score:4, Funny)
Define "poor looking." Many "poor looking" farmers aren't getting dolled up to make a Home Depot or Tractor Supply run.
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Musk is a savvy businessman, but his cars are just as likely to be affordable to the average American as it is that my cat will bring me a coffee.
You must have a really great cat. When the Standard Range Model 3 came out, it was calculated to have a lower 5 year total cost of ownership than a Honda Civic, if you included the federal tax credit. That credit has expired now, and they require purchasing autopilot (which is adds $2000) and the "partial premium" interior (another $2000) but depending on a state credit that puts it at roughly the same price as the honda civic (I'm not accounting for pandemic+supply chain changes)
A really great lineup of cr
Re:This is going to be interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
Having done several long-range road trips in both a Model 3 and a Model Y, I would contend that it's just fine for road trips due to the supercharging network. In fact, it can be better than an ICE car due to the fact that there are hotels with on-site free charging if you aren't switching off drivers and sending it through the night - wake up, get your waffle and coffee from the half-assed breakfast in the lobby, unplug with 100% on the battery and go.
Even with stopping to charge as you're driving all day, you are rarely stopped longer than it would take to plug in, have all passengers use a restroom and get beverages / snacks, and get loaded back up. Or, before you hit the charger run through a drive-thru and get some grub and eat while charging and watching Netflix on the dash.
I've gone from Cincinnati to Portland twice, Portland to Cincinnati once, Portland to Seattle and back, Portland to Shasta and back, Cincinnati to DC and back in a Tesla and it's been absolutely fine. In fact, I arrive not dead tired because of more frequent breaks and autopilot taking care of the banality of hundreds of freeway miles.
Honestly, outside of towing, needing to haul a vanload of stuff with you, only having curbside parking available to you, or having a real need for a truck (business-related such as landscaping, not "I need to compensate for disappointing genetics" reasons) the excuses for not driving an EV are pretty much gone.
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> the excuses for not driving an EV are pretty much gone.
You missed a glaring one: being able to buy a good EV (read: Tesla) second-hand at a price comparable to other second-hand ICE vehicles that can do the things you mentioned.
Sure, it might be as cost effective as a new Camry or Civic or whatever. But the simple fact is many people do not buy new cars, ever.
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I agree, electric cars currently need to be compared with new cars, not used cars.
being able to buy a good EV (read: Tesla) second-hand at a price comparable to other
This is only a consequence of the relatively tiny number of used EV's compared to ICE's. Most of the non-tesla's are terrible because of battery range or quality. (I talked with someone once about Leaf's sucky battery, he was nodding his head in total agreement, I thought wow this guy is really informed about tech stuff to talk on a high level as me knowing a lot but being a non EV owner, and a minute later I found out he was
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Three, some 'misguided' tesla owners I've seen who ask basically the new tesla price for their used tesla with like 75k miles or something
This would be the equivalent of people buying the latest game console at launch and immediately relisting it at several times the price.
Tesla vehicles have always been in a demand crunch(demand exceeds supply at the price given), so somebody might be willing to pay said premium in order to get a car this month rather than maybe six months down the road.
Whether they'll get the money or not, I don't know.
Then you have the negotiation tactic where they expect to be argued down 10-20%, so priced accordingly, bu
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The used market takes care of itself with time. Some measure of people buying / leasing EVs now will trade them in for newer ones in a few years, because that's what they do with cars for some reason. Every year there will be more and more EVs showing up in the used market, as a function of new car sales.
But you are correct - I should have qualified my statement for "new car buyers".
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And there's no way that they would ever release a car that costs less.
I'm pretty sure people said the same thing when the Model S and X were the only cars Tesla made. And now Tesla outsells literally every other "luxury" car brand. Why wouldn't they leverage the scale they are building to create a smaller 2-door hatchback at around $30k? Oh wait, that's exactly what they are rumored to be doing - which puts them cheaper than a Hyundai Veloster or a VW Golf GTI, with WAY more performance and better handli
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create a smaller 2-door hatchback at around $30k?
I'd love to get a totaled one and transplant the motors into something small, like a miata. I wonder what effect totaled teslas will have on the price of used electric motors? The only thing stopping me is how expensive it is.
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No need to do that. Just get a motor from Ford.
https://performanceparts.ford.... [ford.com]
Re:This is going to be interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
For your anecdote to have any meaning at all, we also have to say that no other manufacturer have ever had a worker collapse and die at work.
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I'm not sure I'd say that I hate our wealthy manchild overlord, but he did work a person to death to achieve this:
https://www.teslarati.com/tesl... [teslarati.com]
There's no evidence in that article that he was "worked to death", only that he died at work. In any organization of thousands of people some will die from time to time, and given that they spend about a quarter of their life at work, some of them will die at work. I know a guy who died from a heart attack at his desk when I worked at IBM, and I doubt he ever worked 40 hours in a single week during the years I knew him. I've known a few people who died in their sleep -- people who were relatively young and
Re:This is going to be interesting (Score:5, Informative)
he did work a person to death
What a vile accusation to make. You should be ashamed.
Tesla's work safety record is better than average [tesla.com] for the car industry.
If you want to claim that Elon Musk worked a person to death, you need to provide evidence that this person was overworked in an unreasonable fashion that directly led to his/her death. You didn't do that.
If Tesla really was working one or more people to death, OSHA would shut them down. This hasn't happened.
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Tesla's work safety record is better than average [tesla.com] for the car industry.
Because they don’t report accidents to Osha.
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Because they don’t report accidents to Osha.
You have proof of that or are you just engaging in slander?
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What a vile accusation to make. You should be ashamed.
I can't believe you just said that. That has to be the most WASPy thing anyone has ever written on /.
Tesla's work safety record is better than average [tesla.com] for the car industry.
Did you just cite Tesla to promote Tesla's safety record? Sounds like those Intel stories they cook up to boast about their performance advantages.
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I mean, we should definitely give the notoriously dangerous company the benefit of the doubt here, isn't that what all this monocle-popping outrage is about? Was probably totally not work-related, just like when people get injured in Amazon warehouses!
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Re:This is going to be interesting (Score:5, Informative)
"The most productive" means Tesla shits out more cars than any other factory, that's all. It's not hard when there's zero quality control.
They also have a large backlog of orders and among the highest gross margins in the industry, if not the highest (I looked up a handful and Tesla was way above all of the ones I looked at). And very high consumer satisfaction. So it's pretty hard to argue that they're doing it wrong.
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They also have a large backlog of orders
Yeah and McDonald’s serves more burgers than a Michelin Star restaurant.
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"The most productive" means Tesla shits out more cars than any other factory, that's all. It's not hard when there's zero quality control.
They also have a large backlog of orders and among the highest gross margins in the industry, if not the highest (I looked up a handful and Tesla was way above all of the ones I looked at). And very high consumer satisfaction. So it's pretty hard to argue that they're doing it wrong.
And yet their profit was less than BMW's. It will be interesting to see what happens to Tesla as the major manufacturers ramp up EVs.
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My mate loves his Tesla, wouldn't buy anything else and raves about it. But he will be the first to admit the quality is awful and will happily point out the obvious flaws like inconsistent panel gaps that are easily visible, still he finds that an acceptable tradeoff for a fantastic car in all other respects.
Yep. I think the build quality of my Model S is decent, but it doesn't match up to what you'd expect from a $70,000 ICEV, nor does the interior quality. But I wouldn't trade it for any ICEV in existence -- unless the ICEV was worth substantially more, then I'd make the trade, sell the car and buy another Model S. Or I might look into a different EV, though anything other than a Tesla would struggle with road trips. It's different in Europe, but in the US only the Supercharger network is remotely adequate.
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ICEs? It doesn't even match EVs from other manufacturers, in the same price range!
What's another that's better?
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Here you go. [bmwusa.com]$55k
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Those are all just performance numbers. This thread has been discussing build quality. The i4 is not a direct competitor to the model S (it is closer in price and specs to a Model 3), but it does illustrate how luxury car companies who have been making cars in large quantities for more than a decade do a significantly better job with build quality than Tesla.
I would still buy a Tesla if they made a convertible, but it wouldn't be because of build quality. It would be because of the performance figures you m
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Electric cars are simpler in terms of manufacturing than ICE cars.
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Guess you haven't seen what Stellantis is selling lately.
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I have had a Tesla S for over 4 years. I have had exactly one problem after owning the car about 3 years: the power socket stopped opening when I pushed it. The repair ( out of warranty ) cost ~$150.
The moral of the story is that quality has been great. Arguably better than previous vehicles I owned.
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Come on now, that's not fair. We all know they employ tentacle monsters on the assembly line. They have multiple arms and most of them are ambidextrous.
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To be fair, they're not comparing efficiency (labor efficiency is what you would expect when the headline says productivity) but rather the rate of output from a single plant, with no regard to inputs.
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The ones coming out of the China factory don't have those problems.
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Re: This is going to be interesting (Score:2)
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Easier to build them (Score:5, Informative)
The Tesla cars probably have an order of magnitude fewer individual parts than ICE vehicles, and apparently there was an intensive and ongoing focus on automated manufacturing. Far less problem with chip shortages because Tesla doesn't have to rely on elderly legacy components that are specific to the automotive industry. From what I am hearing, battery supplies are the main limiting factor.
Unfortunately, quality control seems to have fallen by the wayside. Consumer Reports ranks Tesla reliability at 27th out of 28 manufacturers. The only one worse is Lincoln.
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not entirely sure about the chip shortage, they are subject to all the same AECQ qualified components that any other car maker has ... not like musk went out and formed his own resistor, capacitor, transistor and microcontroller fabs ... which is what is mainly our pain in the ass at the moment in the automotive industry, not o2 sensors which are a bit of specialty wire in a case.
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The automotive chip shortage does not involve resistors and capacitors, there are plenty of those and they are easy to make. As I understand it, the ICE carmakers have been relying on old-school semiconductors that carry over year after model year and have been made by relatively few specialty factories. Tesla presumably hasn't had to depend on those kinds of components.
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Smart move, and the other car companies could have done the same thing. They didn't and it is costing them billions.
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cept they did which is why I have spent the last year and a half in re-validation hell
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That's interesting, you are actually involved in qualifying new electronic parts for a car company? Feel free to elaborate.
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Very poor quality control for sure, but nonetheless Tesla is now worth more than the other top 6 car companies combined. And they are making a killing this past year while the others are suffering badly.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/... [thedrive.com]
Re: Easier to build them (Score:2)
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Consumer Reports ranks Tesla reliability at 27th out of 28 manufacturers.
This can't be over-emphasized. Efficiency means nothing when quality is still piss-poor.
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You would think that, but customer satisfaction ratings for them are very high and they do sell all the cars they can make.
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Unfortunately, quality control seems to have fallen by the wayside. Consumer Reports ranks Tesla reliability at 27th out of 28 manufacturers. The only one worse is Lincoln
Rich Rebuilds has done a great job showing Tesla's endemic quality issues, and the service issues that have caught up with them as well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Some of the nastier recurring issues:
The lower lip of the back bumper flashing that hooks to the undercarriage faced outside the undercarriage instead of being tucked into the undercarriage, so if you drive through a deep puddle, the exposed seam acts like a scoop and pulls water into the bumper, eventually tearing it off the back of the car
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Was going to say this. EVs don't need most of the ICE drivetrain. No exhaust/emission control system, no fuel injector, no variable gearbox, no complex ECU. A lot of legacy hardware is removed, meaning less reliance on unavailable chips. Beyond that the cars are quicker to assemble because there are fewer parts.
One metric missing from this comparison is how much remedial work needs to be done, and what the quality control is like. Tesla has been slowly improving, but if you go and read some forum posts from
re: quality control (Score:3)
As a Tesla owner myself? I can tell you that poor quality control is a relative thing. If it was really so bad the vehicles were just falling apart on people left and right, they wouldn't be selling nearly as well as they do.
In reality, the complaints tend to be mostly "fit and finish" related. Lots of complaints of poor quality paint that gets swirl marks and scratches really easily, and body panels that have too large of gaps. The paint issue is debatable. I mean, my car is black and it's absolutely cove
Sure (Score:3, Insightful)
But Toyota and Ford make a lot more cars in North America than Tesla does. They've got a lot of experience, so they probably have good reasons for making their factories a certain size and having more of them.
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But Toyota and Ford make a lot more cars in North America than Tesla does. They've got a lot of experience, so they probably have good reasons for making their factories a certain size and having more of them.
Profit margin apparently isn't one of those reasons, given that theirs are much lower than Tesla's.
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Profit margin is an easily abused metric. Also it's kind of interesting how one tech company is praised for its high profit margins, yet another is derided for it...
Basically remember that profit is a sign of market imbalance. It's good if you're the one making the profit, bad if you're the one who is paying more than cost. That profit has to come from somewhere.
Re:Sure (Score:5, Interesting)
profit has to come from somewhere.
It's very possible for profit to come because you are doing something better than anyone else.
When Tesla first announced that it was making cars that would use laptop battery cells instead of gasoline, a lot of people thought this was hilariously stupid, and the big car companies paid no attention.
Then when Tesla released the Model S, and started eating the lunch of companies like BMW and Mercedes, the big car companies... still paid no attention. Brilliant.
Tesla has been at this for a decade and a half now, and all along has been investing in its future. Now all those investments are paying off, while the big car companies (who are finally paying attention) are scrambling to make BEVs of their own. But the big car companies have lots of problems, the biggest of which is: where will they get enough batteries, and can they build a car at a profit?
Watch a Sandy Munro video where he or someone from his staff talks about how the engineering in a Tesla is different. Tesla cars have fewer parts, fewer fasteners, shorter hoses, and as a result are more efficient. Tesla is able to make cars with a useful amount of driving range using the heavier LFP battery cells; everyone else is less efficient and is cramming a lot of high capacity cells in to get useful range.
In short, Tesla has spent a lot of time and money and effort to get to where it is, and it really is doing a better job than anyone else. And it's possible to make BEVs much less expensively than combustion cars, thus giving more profit for an equivalent car.
it's kind of interesting how one tech company is praised for its high profit margins, yet another is derided for it
I can't speak for others, but I'm happy that Tesla is sending shockwaves through the car industry. BEVs really are a better solution than combustion vehicles, and the sooner everyone switches over to BEVs the better I'll like it.
Elon Musk has promised that Tesla will soon release a car that will start at $25K. I'm looking forward to it.
Re: Sure (Score:2)
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Elon Musk has promised that Tesla will soon release a car that will start at $25K. I'm looking forward to it.
The Model 3 was supposed to be $35k before incentives, but never really was. He doesn't have a great track record on predictions when it comes to cars.
https://youtu.be/o7oZ-AQszEI [youtu.be]
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The model 3 really was $35k before incentives. Plain standard range, black, no autopilot was available for order starting Feb 28, 2019. They didn't sell many, because they also started selling "partial premium interior" upgrade for $2000 more, and a few months later made it required, then made autopilot required (with the package of the two varying in price, but around $3000 combined), but they did sell model 3 for $35k for long enough to be able to check that box on the to-do list.
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The Model 3 was $35k for a few months, but you could only get that model if you called them up so they could talk you into the more expensive model.
It wasn't a real $35k Tesla either, it was the more expensive version with some features disabled in software. The planned low cost interior and removal of some hardware never happened. It's basically a compliance car - to comply with Musk's promise.
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To be fair, he has a really bad track record on predictions for everything else too.
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If you have a chance to visit a physical Tesla store, have a look at the deconstructed vehicle they have in there.
There is so much less crap in their driveline compared to a regular petrol vehicle with gears and radiators, manage emissions and junk to pump fuel around etc, let alone the insanity that is in a hybrid car to make dual drivetrains work which is about the worst of all worlds.
I would be amazed if they can't make giant margins if they don't go broke figuring out how to manufacture them.
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Also the driver's instrument panel is much less complex in Tesla cars.
If there's one thing that I absolutely don't like about Tesla cars is that they're communist (everybody in the car shares the same instrument panel).
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I think moving functions into electronic automation rather than logic with vacuum lines and pumps is a step in the right direction, even if it is a bit proprietary to start with.
I don't have a Tesla, but my company car is a General Motors product ( last of the Australian V8 Holden Commodore's ) that I have had from new. It went through three BCM's ( Body Control Modules ) before the thing because when it was pretty new it started doing mysterious things like the doors not unlocking / locking and not startin
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Also it's kind of interesting how one tech company is praised for its high profit margins, yet another is derided for it...
I'm a thoroughgoing capitalist. I don't deride anyone for high profit margins, unless they're doing something anti-competitive to obtain them (generally by exploiting government regulation in a way that harms the public). As long as customers are happily forking over the cash and feel like they're getting good value for their money -- something that is obviously true for Tesla's vehicles -- it's good.
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"generally by exploiting government regulation in a way that harms the public" - you mean promoting government regulation that harms the public...
"As long as customers are happily forking over the cash and feel like they're getting good value for their money"
As long as there are plenty of customers happily forking over the cash for alternatives, it's all well and good.
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I don't deride anyone profit margins, but I do deride people saying "oh I can make high profit margins and it's OK."
There are also two kinds of profit - there is accounting profit, and there is "real" profit. Accounting profit is simple - it's "I brought in more money than my costs, so I have more money at the end of the time period."
"Real" profit is, "I built this thing, and now society can do X with less resources or work than it previously required." This is much harder to measure directly.
In the examp
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But would society be better off still if Tesla cut their profit margin in half, allowing buyers to spend even less money (resources, time) on the cars
The answer to this question is a clear and unambiguous "no".
Tesla's high profit margins also serve the purpose of pushing other automakers into the EV space, spreading the first kind of benefit that you mentioned. As that happens, competition will push margins down. This is how capitalism works, and why it's by far the best solution to the problem of resource allocation that we've yet found. The profit motive incentivizes efficiency innovations and competition spreads the ones that work well across the r
Another case of quantity over quality (Score:2)
Another textbook case of quantity over quality.
Quality (Score:5, Insightful)
The Tesla factory is so productive, they don't just make one car one time. They get to make the car, ship it to customer, and in a few weeks get the car back to fix it so they can rebuild it again because it was so much fun the first time around they just want to do it all over again.
Union (Score:2)
Elon Musk has a very specific vision for the ideal factory: densely packed, vertically integrated and unusually massive
And lots of union organizers.
What's that ... no? But I thought that was the key to success?
Number of employees? (Score:2)
Does anyone know how many workers each of those plants have? Would be interesting to know the employees per car produced stats.
I'm astounded (Score:2)
That one man can run both SpaceX and Tesla, and blow away the competition with each.
I hate my Model Y (Score:2)
It's a turd.
Is it a factory? (Score:2)
Is it really a factory? Said in February they were building in tents. I don't think a bunch of makeshift tents qualify as a factory.