Unlike their cars, if they want to be successful they will need to release factory service manuals and sell parts to repair them. It's not going to be acceptable to send it to some far away service center to be repaired, at least for small outfits that heavily use all their equipment. When a critical piece of equipment is down, the mechanic is going to be working through the night hacking it together, possibly waiting on parts that are being overnighted. Diesel mechanics tend to be ridiculously intelligent and very resourceful.
> Because the days of a service manual and a backyard shed are over
They really aren't, as much as the manufacturers like to tell you they are.
Sure, the sheer amount of sensors/vacuum systems/electronics/etc make it look too complex for the layman, but as long as you've got an OBD scanner and a laptop, you can make quick work of most things. The biggest issue is manufacturers currently having an obsession with inverse torx head bolts in unusual and frustrating places (i.e. pull the top end off the engine using only a 10mm, 14mm and 17mm, and then juuuust at the last step, there's a sudden 6.5mm inverse torx bit needed to be fetched from Narnia.). But you can always get parts.
Electric cars will be just the same - in fact, I think they'll be easier for the home electrician to work on. Most of the modular manufacturer-specific parts can be interchanged for other components (inverters, batteries, etc). It won't look as neat and clean, but considering that electric cars are fundamentally less complex than internal combustion engines I don't think people will struggle.
And I don't think anything sold in the US today, not to the Department of Defense, has anything that poses "an immediate and extreme health and safety hazard".
Most modern domestic smoke detectors are now photoelectric, rather than ionization based.
Not only do they not contain toxic Americum 241, photoelectric smoke detectors are also both more sensitive to real fires and less prone to false alarms.
(The later is actually really important, as people will often disable smoke detectors in response to a false alarm - and then forget about them)
We had a kitchen smoke detector in college that was kept swaddled in plastic wrap at all times because it went off every. time. we tried to cook something. Absolutely a safety hazard, yeah.
I'm mostly thinking of high-voltage capacitors. Basically, if sticking a screwdriver in the wrong place could maim or kill you, I'm okay with having security screws there. Otherwise, no.
I don't know, an electric car seems like it would contain a few items you don't want to be poking at if you don't know what you're doing. Security screws could a pretty good job of keeping the casual DIYer from electrocuting himself, essentially a "can't open this? Maybe you shouldn't."
I don't think they're talking about a backyard shed. More like a distribution business with a fleet of 50 trucks, a well-equipped garage and a full-time mechanic.
I have a journeyman in mechanics, tractor/trailers are much easier to work on than most personal vehicles due to the amount of room there is. They are also quite easy to repair, very similar to a computer as in hard drive is bad, replace it, injectors bad, replace it.
Tesla will be selling into a very complicated industry. You think enterprise sales of software are hard, just wait.
Tesla say their system includes all the functions necessary. I haven't seen a list but I doubt it. Even if they do it will literally take enterprise integration projects to hook them up to the largely bespoke systems used by existing trucking company backends.
I don't know if the timing is right, but I think what you have to understand here is that all of this is the beginning of the end for the trucking company as you know it.
So if Tesla has trucks, and is developing self-driving capability, and the trucking industry is a mishmash of legacy systems, what pieces does Musk need to just go into the trucking business direct?
This is a huge question. It depends on so many things. We can make assumptions on viable strategies given Tesla's finances and past behavior. But that still leaves us with a lot of solution space.
First you have to accept that the trucking industry is conservative. The mom and pop distributors, the big guys, everyone. The people who own, lease and operate the trucks. There are all sorts of legislative hurdles to deal with.
I think a winning strategy is to start with city or county distributors. Lease out trucks at _very_ competitive rates. Do this with an agreement that your backend (accounting, maintenance, inventory) systems will replace _everything_ at the distributor. At first you'll probably have to compromise on this and integrate some things.
On top of that you pretty much have to integrate your onboard sensors/telematics with consumable manufacturers. Unless you're going to manufacture your own tires and such too.
I was thinking more along the lines of Musk setting up a trucking company with a fleet consisting of autonomous Tesla trucks. Obviously not something that can be done right now, but given the push towards self-driving vehicles, and things like Amazon's delivery drones, I'm wondering if the current trucking industry is really Tesla's target market in the long term.
> It's not going to be acceptable to send it to some far away service center to be repaired, at least for small outfits that heavily use all their equipment.
Hmmm. Doesn't Tesla usually offer a loaner car while a Tesla is in for repairs? If they did the same thing with semis, would shipping companies accept it?
So sort of a subscription model for trucks? You buy (or more likely rent) "a truck" and Tesla supplies you with "a truck" but it's not necessarily always the same truck?
If the math works there — could now or over time — then once L5 hits imagine the possibilities. L5 trucks towing broken L5 trucks with a third taking the cargo. I missed the video, but I’d bet huge that needed tech is probably prototyped already, at least in the elonoggin. Well done Elon!
Still kinda giddy about the Roadster, too. Guilty — can’t get enough of Elon’s disruption (personal life aside) —- sue me or grab the pitchforks.. i’ll serve you lemonade. :)
This is true only if your product is designed to tinker. Or you generally have to replace plug and play parts.
When desktops came along many people wondered if they could be serviced as easily as TVs. The answer turns out to be simple, they don't have to be. If the repair + component costs turn out to be in the same ball park as replacing the plug and play part, you don't have to service individual PCBs. To give you a example, recently I had a broken Dell Monitor. Got it fixed in 20 mins at a local service store. Apparently the technician simply removed the whole PCB and put a new one in its place. And there were only 3-4 such PCBs.
You only need to be as intelligent as the abstract interface allows you to be.
You might be pleased to learn that much of the sparsely-populated area of the US does its Tesla car repairs -- including minor stuff like replacing the engine -- with teams of 2 workers and a van -- and 4 hours for that engine swap.
Now imagine how that might work out for the truck industry.
Don't have any particularly good story. They are just really good at understanding and fixing anything mechanical using the most basic of tools. I actually think that the type of brain that makes you good at programming is similar to being a good mechanic.
Yep. I've found that my troubleshooting methodology and being able to break down complex systems is equally transferable in between software and mechanics. I think that systems and software people are the "modern" mechanics of the world. It explains a lot as to why my father and grandfather were both mechanics and tradesmen, and I'm now a systems guy.
Absolutely, trouble shooting requires abstract thought and following long logical chains as to why something is failing. Cars are complex systems just like software can be, good knowledge of many different domains inside your main discipline is required to put the pieces together. I have always found good mechanics to be really switched on individuals.
>Diesel mechanics tend to be ridiculously intelligent and very resourceful.
I was just saying about maybe the driver being in the picture isn't something Tesla is going for. A prime argument Tesla has was about eventually eliminating the need for so many drivers. "If not that, then what else?" was what I wanted to say.
EDIT: They seem to have a range of 500 miles. Which is 1/3 the range of normal diesel semi's.
