As someone who works in manufacturing, I can't count the number of times I've been told to "just make it work". And, in reality, sometimes that truly is the best option in the immediate term to get a system working so you can make enhancements later. But I think that's the operative phrase: so you can enhance later.
The challenge is that once the immediate fire is out, it's easy to simply leave things in a half-baked state. That accumulates as technical debt.
Thankfully, most of the instances where I have had to deal with this has been purely software and not affected the lives and comfort of operators on the floor like with Tesla. But I can see how this happens. Even if the 'tent' becomes a permanent installation, I hope they spend the time and money to improve it to the necessary working standards that employees deserve.
>And, in reality, sometimes that truly is the best option in the immediate term to get a system working so you can make enhancements later.
well that depends on the industry. Toy manufacturer probably, aeorospace engineer, not so much. I would think of cars without drivers of belonging into the second category.
What I find interesting is how vigorously Tesla denies everything, always, even when they're clearly wrong. They lose a lot of credibility that way; I wonder if Musk[1] realises that if he admitted the things Tesla is obviously doing wrong, he might have a hope of convincing people about the ones they're not obviously doing wrong?
And it's especially odd because so much of the article is just a bunch of nothing, but Tesla makes it newsworthy by denying everything. And 50 cents says Musk has a team analysing the photos right now to try and track down the employees who took them. ...to ensure they're fired and/or sued, of course; obviously Tesla would never see people who had identified problems as a potentially valuable resource.
There's a lot more interesting details if you dig into it, but wikipedia has a pretty good summary of the Toyota Production System (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Production_System). An interesting contrast, perhaps.
[1]: I mean, we all know who's behind this PR strategy, right?
Have you considered that they vigorously deny things because they are not true? If even a fraction of the negative things about Tesla in the press were true then their cars would be falling apart on the streets and the company would be failing from low demand. In reality buyers love the cars and they just broke their delivery record again last quarter.
There's no point in ignoring Tesla's problems. It's better to be objective about it. If you want to buy a Tesla you should go in clear-eyed about the reliability issues.
From that link: Model 3 sedan has “Average” predicted reliability based on owner feedback.
That’s not great, but also not poor reliability. Their high end models do seem to be having issues, but the reliability standards for cars are extremely high these days.
Even if reliability is statistically poor there must be something about the particulars that keeps them afloat. Perhaps the non-essentials are unreliable or perhaps Tesla is able to succeed by cutting corners on things that have been traditionally important but aren't actually important to consumers.
Or perhaps they’re still so supply-constrained that they haven’t run out of fanboys. Or perhaps the car is so expensive and eco-friendly than it is more valuable as a combination Veblen good and virtue signal than as a reliable source of transportation.
> Or perhaps they’re still so supply-constrained that they haven’t run out of fanboys
Tesla is approaching half a million cars sold in a year now. If your contention is that they have a problem because hundreds of thousands of drivers are deluded fanboys willing to overlook all their faults... I don't think it says what you think it does about the company.
Now you've stacked up two hypotheticals to counter the point, though. That's might be true. It also might be true that the cars are of, on balance, very tolerable quality and that maintenance issues just aren't a driving factor in driver satisfaction. They're cars. Everyone loves their cars.
You can’t always judge quality right away. Tesla is barely approaching 1/10 of what Toyota sells in the US, except Toyota has been doing it for long enough that people can—and do—drive 20 year old Toyotas. And that reputation for quality is what keeps new Toyotas selling today. Tesla is approximately 20 years away from even being able to tell whether they can match that.
And there are absolutely brands that people shy away from due to the maintenance issues. Most people care more about reliability than about virtue signaling, flaunting their wealth, or being early adopters. Tesla can dominate those three markets and maybe give, like, BMW a run for their money. They’re almost selling as much as BMW now, actually. Good for them.
The screen is essential in Teslas. The screens have a high failure rate because they're not built to be automotive grade. Tesla went with industrial grade screens and they're not robust enough.
Being objective about it would be the press paying the same amount of attention to it as equivalent mistakes of other car companies, which is none. Minor Tesla quality issues seem to get press on par with the VW diesel scandal.
And that’s not even talking about how many cars they have bricked with over the air updates (probably thousands) leaving their owners stranded in the morning.
Source? I've had this happen to me once, but it was due to a battery fault (in the 12V battery amusingly, not the main battery that powers the car) stemming from some arse in a Jeep that hit me the week prior. Tesla sent a "ranger" out who fixed it in my garage in a few hours.
You are not getting the level of service in the United States that Tesla owners get, which is far more than roadside assistance. Not even remotely comparable.
Use Google there are too many first hand accounts on Reddit and Twitter to source here.
Talk to people who own Teslas and they will bitch about their experience. Tesla annoys their customers constantly with things like: inaccurate battery charge indicators, no support for CarPlay or Android Auto, updates breaking functionality in their cars, promises for self driving which never materialize, and much more. I am sure I will hear more at lunch.
I'm waiting for him to pivot to Tesla soon going bankrupt. This is a sad script I've seen play out over and over again. Just about every single time, it is just FUD.
Tesla has plenty of problems, but bricking thousands of cars on OTA update isn't one of them. I've had my Model 3 since Dec 2018 and have done plenty of updates. One of them did brick my car, but it turned out to be a fault in the 12V battery. They had it fixed in no time directly in my garage. I was blown away by their service although it did take them several weeks to get the seatbelt tensioners when someone hit me head on. They've supposedly fixed that since, but I dunno.
These are not unlike growing pains in a service that is in hyper growth mode. You'll find problems like this, address them, and continue on.
That totally explains why Tesla has great customer loyalty numbers. Perhaps collecting anecdotes on Reddit and Twitter isn't a very accurate gauge of consumer sentiment?
I don’t see how you get “vigorous denial” from the mild words Tesla said in its response. It’s like we didn’t read the same article. And you amp it up with “always”... is that really necessary? Your comment is adding heat and noise, not much else.
Bingo, it seems people often don't consider that these reports could be false. There's a LOT of money in shorting stocks, especially Tesla stock. Because of this it's hard to go to any tech related news site and not see an article about them being slandered. There's constantly huge campaigns going on to FUD Tesla for profit. I'm not saying that everything negative about Tesla is false, but I am in no way going to believe that it's all true.
When your/Tesla/supporters response is basically "... the shorts!" as the main and salient point of the rebuttal rather than "wrong, and here's why...", it's equally hard to assume your objectivity, too.
"The most fundamental difference is thinking about the factory really as a product, as a quite vertically integrated product," said Musk. "It's treating it as more of an engineering and a technical problem as well," added Chief Technical Officer J.B. Straubel.
"Which is the Toyota Production System," replied Johnson.
Don't need to, they already blew the doors off all the naysayers since they were founded. Waiting 30 more years is unnecessary, they've more than proven themselves. These people who insist on further and further benchmarks have already been made out to be fools.
The quote is a representative sample of the article, an article which is illustrative of Musk's apparent disinterest in (or ignorance of) the Toyota Production System. I've never seen a Musk quote that clearly demonstrates he has any idea how TPS works or what he is really competing against.
I read the original Forbes article and his opinions sounded very sane to me, like someone who understands the ground reality, is ambitious but also self-aware. Specifically:-
"The car industry thinks they're really good at manufacturing and actually they are quite good at manufacturing. But they just don't realize just how much potential there is for improvement. It's way more than they think,"
Or
"Musk acknowledged that Tesla had been "a little overconfident, a little complacent" in its ability to crank up production volume for battery packs - its specialty - at its massive battery gigafactory near Reno, Nevada. "
But yes, I could have make Musk sound like an idiot too. I chose not to needlessly take someones words out of context for click-bait. You're free to have your own opinion, and Tesla will keep selling more cars I guess. I'd like to buy one but I cannot afford one at the moment..
> But they just don't realize just how much potential there is for improvement. It's way more than they think
Most people would follow a statement like that by contrasting his ideas with the ideas of his competitor to demonstrate why his ideas are likely to be more effective. You know, make an actual argument. He doesn't do that. He just makes statements about his own superiority, and occasionally when reality intrudes too greatly he engages in a little self-deprecation.
(If someone has a link to where he makes a comparison like that in detail, I'd love to see it. Or any statement that would demonstrate he even knows what Toyota Production System is actually about.)
Nope. Most people wouldn't do that actually. The quotes were a tiny part of a conference call with wall street suits regarding Teslas 2017 fourth-quarter earnings. The topic was finance, not a lecture on lean manufacturing. Your demands do not make much sense to be honest. A CEOs job is to run the company and take advise and input from other subject matter experts. It seems like you genuinely are curious about this, so I'd advise you to speak with experts on this topic to learn more.
> Your demands do not make much sense to be honest.
Who's making demands? I think Musk's demonstrated understanding of auto manufacturing is quite superficial and I'm fishing for evidence to the contrary. I'm not bothered by the fact that the evidence does not exist, I think it actually says something.
> A CEOs job is to run the company and take advise and input from other subject matter experts.
Hopefully it's obvious to you, based on how this thread started and more generally Musk's history of statements about manufacturing, that if Musk's attitude were simply "I'm just running the company and taking advice from the experts" we would not be having this conversation.
He has stated what he believes his company can achieve given the information he has. He is not professing to be a subject matter expert on anything. You seem to be off on a ridiculous tangent here and this conversation is not really productive. Goodbye!
> He is not professing to be a subject matter expert on anything.
I don't think much of your posts in this thread but I'll give you credit, that's probably the first time that particular sentence has ever been written about Elon Musk.
I was disagreeing with how a commentor summarized an article, especially so because other quotes from the same article completely discount their assessment. At the very least, can we simply agree to disagree?
I'm not defending Musk at all, but if those pictures were leaked from a Tesla employee, they're in breach of their NDA, a legally binding contract. Why wouldn't they go after someone breaching their NDA? I get that there are whistleblower protections and whatnot, but that is for lawyers and judges to decide. I'd be surprised if there wasn't a team analysing those photos.
Agreed. I do wonder why people are downvoting me for pointing out the truth though. Breach of a legally binding contract is grounds for a civil lawsuit. This is how the country works!
I wonder why you can't understand that actions have consequences; and that if a company sues employees who resort to an external escalation path to address problems, that some customers will dislike and distrust that company in the future.
I never said any of that, and am assuming you signed up for this throw away assuming I'd downvote you, or you're afraid of using your real account for some stupid reason?
I said simply that if someone signs a legal contract and one side breaks it, the other party is well within their bounds to investigate it and potentially to litigate it as well. This is how contracts work unless they're deemed to break a law. Then a judge will invalidate it.
Do I think suing employees is good for business, or for a public image? No, I think it is terrible. You're the one who tried to put words into my mouth I never once stated.
You asked, and I quote: "Why wouldn't they go after someone breaching their NDA?"
If this was a rhetorical assertion that there is no reason for Tesla not to sue, then you should admit that you took the position that I described, you should stop pretending that I put words in your mouth, and you should apologize to me for your feigned outrage.
If you were actually asking why Tesla wouldn't use every legal tool available to them, then you should thank me for providing you with a thoughtful answer, and then apologize for attacking me and my character.
Just so you know, I don't find your use of [1] useful or meaningful in your comment. I would have rather simply wrote the comment "I mean..." after the sentence about Musk.
The Wikipedia "Tesla, Inc." and "History of Tesla, Inc." pages both say explicitly that the company was founded in July 2003 by two other people and that Musk joined in February 2004. Is that wrong? If not, what retconning do you see on Wikipedia?
From the wikipedia page: "Eberhard and Tarpenning were the original founders and incorporated Tesla, while Musk, Straubel and Wright joined in a Series A round later on. A lawsuit settlement agreed to by Eberhard and Tesla in September 2009 allows all five to call themselves founders."
Yeah, I’m not seeing that in the history of the page either. I didn’t do an exhaustive study, but all the versions I see say that Musk joined after Tesla’s inception.
Well why is Musk listed as a Founder in the side bar then?
Here's a quote from the article: "Eberhard and Tarpenning were the original founders and incorporated Tesla, while Musk, Straubel and Wright joined in a Series A round later on. A lawsuit settlement agreed to by Eberhard and Tesla in September 2009 allows all five to call themselves founders."
Founder is a label assigned by a company, it doesn't have the absolute meaning you appear to think it has. Two of the three Silicon Valley startups I've founded have founders who were not full-time on day zero.
Like the "World's greatest dad" cups? Actually "founder" has a pretty clear definition: a person who establishes an institution or settlement. If Tesla wants to use it internally with a different meaning that's their prerogative of course. But outside of the company that meaning of "founder" will not follow. Like a non-routable IP if you wish.
Otherwise it's not too dissimilar to this guy [0] who copyrighted a software called "EMAIL" so now goes around claiming he invented email (years after the real thing was used). Although this guy at least has a copyright.
I'm not sure why you mention "full-time". A founder is someone involved from day zero or at least before and up to incorporation. Whether they spend time or money doesn't matter. What matters is when
If you're talking about people who have plans to join the startup at day zero but will only manage it a month or so after founding due to logistics, then it's more interesting. It gets more debatable.
However, Musk isn't a founder since he was not involved until the series A as far as I'm aware. Despite what Tesla and Eberhard agreed to, I don't think he's a founder.
I mentioned "full time" because in one of the two cases, the person labeled "Founder" was there on day zero, but only in a minor capacity. There's no concise way to express that concept, and I suppose I chose poorly :-)
This kind of reasoning is how conspiracy theorists are born.
I've only looked for Toyota, but 7 out of 10 headlines at CNBC were equally critical of Toyota ("Toyota recalls", "Toyota struggles", ...).
Here's an alternative theory: Perhaps you didn't pay much attention at how media works before, but now have a topic of interest with which you associate positive emotions (Tesla), and therefore suddenly the criticism becomes obvious to you - but only for this very topic. Your subconsciousness therefore has to alter it's previous mental model of the inner working of the media. But instead of throwing out the whole notion of the media being unbiased or neutral, your subconsciousness now just appends the new fact to the existing model: All media is fair and neutral, but not regarding Tesla. Kind of like a modified Gel-Mann amnesia effect.
But actual conscious investigation would produce more evidence that the media is always more critical. After all, no news site ever had headlines like "Today, again, thousends of airplanes took of and landed without a single casuality."
Just to be sure: This is not meant to sound condescending. It's just human. But the web makes it all too easy to find support for practically every idea ever, whether right or wrong. Which puts even more burden on us individually to observe our own internal heuristics.
It seems very Musk-y to paint Tesla as a victim like this. It's entirely possible that CNBC critiques all [tech] companies equally, or that Tesla actually deserves this scrutiny. Personally I feel like I see a lot more negative than positive mentions across all media. Given the way Musk handles bad press, deflects blame and plays fast and loose with safety, I tend to think it's deserved. Nice battery technology isn't enough to excuse their countless missteps.
Can we get away from the logical fallacies here? If you have a problem with the facts in the article list them instead of attacking the author/publisher.
I think people overestimate the fallaciousness of examining the motivations of the speaker. It only applies to the factual and logical matters; the fact that CNBC may or may not hate Tesla or Elon Musk does not affect whether or not tape was used to correct cracks in parts or whether or not people were asked to work in low-quality conditions on pain of firing, or any strictly logical conclusions you may draw from those facts. Those purported facts may be true or false, but whether someone at CNBC has it out for Elon is not a relevant consideration in whether those facts are true or false.
However, it is entirely relevant in determining whether or not the slant of the piece is necessarily factual or whether it has bias, and in determining the probability that the speaker may have left out information unfavorable to the cause they are advancing.
It is a logical fallacy, but it is only a logical fallacy. It is completely relevant in arenas other than pure, strict logic, such as meta-logical analyses about potential biases.
(There's a few other "fallacies" for which this is true too; many of them like affirming the consequent are just straight-up errors, but "appeal to authority", for instance, is a fallacy in Aristotelian binary true/false logic, but in a more realistic probabilistic logic, it can be valid to use it to update your probabilistic beliefs about the world. You just are not logically justified in taking an authority and setting your belief in their statements to a true, mathematical 100.0000...% (which is what the fallacy would be in Aristotelian logic), and you are obligated to make judgments about the quality of the authority as you make the updates.)
Anonymous anecdotes aside, the scandalous news they report is that Consumer Reports puts Tesla's reliability in the bottom half -- yes, shock and consernation, the BOTTOM HALF!!! -- of all automobile manufactures.
Of course, 50% all automobile manufacturers are in the bottom half, and sure, it's not where you want to be. But none of the rest get special attention for being so.
Want proof? Do a search for the the following: CNBC consumer reports reliability rating.
Note, however, that we didn't search for "Tesla". The spotlight given them is CNBC's bias. There's an entire automobile industry out there, and at any given time, half of it is in the lower half of reliability ratings. But only one is ever given headlines for it.
>* Anonymous anecdotes aside, the scandalous news they report is that Consumer Reports puts Tesla's reliability in the bottom half -- yes, shock and consernation, the BOTTOM HALF!!! -- of all automobile manufactures.*
Actually Consumer Reports placed the Model S at the third-worst of 29 positions, so at the bottom 7%. "Tesla Slips" is actually a pretty mild headline, considering they slipped 6 spots and 8 was the technical maximum.
> Actually Consumer Reports placed the Model S at the third-worst of 29 positions
It was Tesla as a whole that placed 27th of 29 on that list of average lineup reliability (tied with Cadillac at 28th). Tesla tied with RAM for the lowest "most reliable" model ranking at 49 pts, while squeaking by RAM and Volvo for lowest reliability of a model.
There's a saying in news media: If it bleeds, it leads.
The news media loves a hero and loves even more to tear the hero down. The former sells to fans, but the latter sells to everyone.
It would be bias if they were somehow going above and beyond, but look around. The most successful companies in the world receive immaculate coverage when they so much as blink too loudly.
Well the other companies aren’t hyped like Tesla, it wouldn’t be newsworthy, let alone be on the front page of HN. It’s the perception of Tesla that is biased. Countering all the marketing wank, that put them into the spotlight, is what I’d expect from a consumer report.
I personally have no opinion about CNBC and their relationship with Tesla. I'm only pointing out that it isn't fallacious to account for possible biases if they do exist. It's not just subjective assessments either; take a look at the short interest on TSLA, and the pricing of the put options around their reporting periods; they have people putting down a lot of money on their anti-TSLA bias, and have from what I've seen, quite frequently taken a bath as a result. (Now, there are reasons to believe that they are overvalued, but that's true of a lot of stocks. TSLA in particular seems to pick up a lot of this sort of behavior way beyond what the performance to date has justified. I can't speak to the future with total confidence, of course, or I'd be getting rich.)
I wouldn't be surprised if they have an anti-Tesla bias, though; while I don't know if CNBC has it, I have observed such a thing definitely exists, at a level above the baseline that any company would be expected to attract. But it seems decently balanced by the above-the-baseline pro-Tesla bias that also exists, so, shrug I guess.
I think it's valuable to know if a source is generally biased in one direction or another, whether there's accuracy in comparison to other major media sources - who knows, we unfortunately don't have a system that makes that easy and obvious, yet.
CNBC, who employs one of the biggest Tesla fans out there as an automoive journalist (Phil Lebeau) is against Tesla? Then you cite a reddit forum and CleanTechnica, whose "authors" disclose their financial interest in Tesla, something against the rules for journalists at a place like CNBC?
And the HN crowd generally pushes a pro-Tesla position so it balances out. What I find more intriguing is how that aligns with the general "all companies are evil" sentiment I keep seeing here. Why are Tesla and SpaceX untouchable?
I work in software, and this happens all the time and it is not the end of the world. It normally means doing even more work later, or shipping without all the features. Its done by not coding in most cases.
But this is a car. What sort of shortcut could you make when assembling parts to a car that has already had every part planed out?
Edit: never-mind, I skipped a entire paragraph somehow. Tape, it is tape guys.
It's disingenious to say it's just tape. Here's a paragraph from the article:
> Five people who work or worked in the tent in 2019 said they would frequently pass cars down the line that they knew were missing a few bolts, nuts or lugs, all in the name of saving time.
There are many more things discussed too under the heading "Other short cuts"
What concerns me is that shortcuts in industrial manufacturing processes are often directly detrimental or even fatal to workers. Heavy industry uses toxic chemicals and large, powerful machinery; cutting corners around those things is actively dangerous.
Using some electrical tape in places where you'd otherwise use shrink tubing is not a big deal. But like you said, trying to cut corners on a finished hardware design sounds orders of magnitude harder than doing so on software, and I worry about what else workers are being forced to do to cover for management's failures.
Can confirm. I was an electronic tech in US government work in the 1980's. We routinely used MEK (methyl ethyl keytones) to clean circuit boards, with zero protections. We got these weird requests to confirm we did this of our own free will in the late 80's. Then, in the 2000's, similarly weird requests to confirm we "knew the risks". If you complied, you were guaranteed VA coverage.
Anectodally, strange rates of lower gastric, bladder, and other carcinomas in in my peer group.
Same thing happened to a lot of workers who worked with Asbestos. My dad, his brother, many of their friends got a few thousand bucks in the 80s if they agreed to never sue. A lot of them died a decade or so later from mesothelioma.
I'm especially disappointed with my case, as organic solvents are almost all historically known aggressive carcinogens. This was not a case of "not knowing", even the 80's. I suspect similar for asbestos, coal dust, etc in that time period.
Asbestos was a known harmful substance since at least 1970, but it took until 1989 to fully ban it. A lot of companies knew the risks, but didn’t care, which is why you see 6 figure lawsuits still happening, finding the companies guilty of negligence.
Their defense is “we didn’t know!”, but luckily judges are seeing through that.
I found this out when my mom had asbestos in her house a couple years ago:
In cities, OUTDOOR asbestos levels can be higher than indoor level simply because asbestos is still legal to use in car brakes. Since so many cars still use them and the parts are actively "wearing" due to friction, this releases enough asbestos to up the levels above indoor.
While perhaps legal I don't think I have seen a set of asbestos brake pads in my years since working on my own car (15+ years). Perhaps they are still made but I think you would really have to go out of your way to get them. Someone correct me if I am wrong.
The two rounds of forms to sign are pretty curious then.
To counter your .gov link:
"The principal health effects most typically associated with organic solvent exposure include nervous system damage (central and peripheral), kidney and liver damage, adverse reproductive effects such as sperm changes and infertility, skin lesions, and cancer."
The key statement on your source is "Individual solvents may cause one or more of these."
There are some solvents that are really dangerous. My comment is just that methyl ethyl ketone isn't one of them. It's very similar to acetone, which your body creates by itself when it breaks down fats.
Now that's not to say you shouldn't try to limit exposure (you'd be stupid not to), but in the grand scheme of solvent toxicity, MEK is one of the safer ones.
> Five people who work or worked in the tent in 2019 said they would frequently pass cars down the line that they knew were missing a few bolts, nuts or lugs, all in the name of saving time.
With other things mentioned under "Other short cuts" too
There's absolutely no such contention in the linked article though. It's about tape.
I mean, yeah, they could be doing all kinds of crazy things. But so could anyone else who needs to ship products on tight schedules. Why single out Tesla here? I mean, would you react this way if it turned out Mazda or Audi was taping down some misassembled parts?
The whole "skipping out on bolts or parts when the assembly line is going too fast" was why everyone stopped buying American cars in favor of Japanese manufacturing with their andon cords and all that (stories of "made in america" quality went even further - my favorite was cars made on friday afternoons shipping with beer cans rattling in the doors). American manufacturers had to adopt the same strict quality manufacturing methods in order to become competitive again. If major manufacturers were caught going back to fast and loose manufacturing standards again, it would definitely be a story I'd want to read!
Yes. This "you're singling Tesla out" persecution complex is getting old. Tesla is an amazing company in many ways, but there's plenty of bad to go along with the good.
You have a link to equivalent worries about Mazda or Audi or someone? I mean... it's not a persecution complex if there's actual persecution. No one writes articles about tape on Fords. Ever.
No, because Tesla is in the spotlight. It's meant more good and bad press than they'd otherwise have, the majority of which being overwhelming praise.
Stop looking a gift horse in the mouth.
Anyway, your question wasn't would the media write about it, it was would you react the same way. An accusation of personal bias, which gets handed out like candy on Tesla threads. It's toxic.
Sadly, for you, the article does not say Tesla used tape in-lieu of heat-shrink tubing or even mention heat-shrink at all. It simply states a fact that "factory tape is high-quality and looks as if it’s shrink-wrapped on a part" to provide contrast to the product Tesla was using.
The usage of the tape, as suggested by the article, wasn't for electrical insulation or wiring protection.
> Weird, I saw people elsewhere in the comments mention heatshrink tubing being substituted with electrical tape.
Right, because like I said above, the prevailing paradigm is to skewer Tesla by extrapolating from any available datapoint. So people take "tape" and invent reasons for the tape that don't appear in the article. Some of this isn't the posters' fault, because the article is sensationalized and is clearly trying to lead you to a conclusion about "tape" that it can't make with the simple facts presented.
Which is a media behavior that is, in the auto industry as of right now, almost exclusive to Tesla. No one runs dirt stories about tape on Fords, not because there isn't any (I mean, who knows, but none of would be shocked to read about it) but because even if there was, no one would care.
It's particularly weird, because the people who're talking about Tesla using tape are the ones saying "it's heat shrink tape, guys, nothing to see here".
Whereas the people reporting the tape are saying it's standard electrical tape, used to hold cracked pieces of plastic together.
> The admission of willful ignorance here is rather astounding.
> then again I'm ignorant to the dress code or actual temperature of a typical automotive factory
That seems a bit ironic considering you said the above right after suggesting that the tent is actually better than the factory for the purpose.
Anyway, the tape not being used for electrical insulation or wiring protection but rather for structural integrity of certain parts that cracked still doesn't bode well.
> That seems a bit ironic considering you said the above right after suggesting that the tent is actually better than the factory for the purpose.
When taken out of context, yes.
The factory comment I was responding to was questioning why factory workers would request to work in the tent. I was suggesting that it might be due to the pleasant climate in which the tent is located. I then acknowledged my ignorance to typical working conditions and how they might factor into that equation.
This thread revolves around a someone admonishing Tesla by comparing one fiction to another fiction at a competitor. Then, when the fiction is pointed out, the commentator again establishes they didn't read the article and then suggest we should still admonish Tesla for unspecified reasons.
Citation needed. I've never seen a story this thin (one photo of tape holding down a nonstructural plastic housing) run about another manufacturer. You have a counterexample?
In the thread above CNBC got accused of a hidden agenda against Tesla, because their reporting is critical. These are the headlines for Toyota (Google with "site:cnbc.com toyota"):
* Toyota plans to recall 1 million hybrid models over wiring issue
* Toyota recalls 70,000 vehicles to replace air bag inflators - CNBC.com
* Toyota operating profit growth to drop this year on revenue slip
* Toyota is making high-performance versions of the Camry and Avalon
* Toyota struggles to save breakthrough Prius hybrid - CNBC.com
* Toyota and SoftBank are teaming up to target self-driving car services
* 2018 Toyota Land Cruiser review - CNBC.com
* Toyota recalls 2.4 million hybrids due to stalling problems - CNBC.com
> Six current and former employees supported their accounts of work in GA4 but asked to remain unidentified.
The shortcuts in question include using electrical tape to fix cracked plastic components, passing cars known to be missing bolts or lug nuts, and reduction of testing. This whole "it's one picture of tape, there's no _real_ evidence, sheeple!" bleating is getting wearing.
It’s clear that tesla stories (especially negative ones) = more clicks
At the bottom of auto/EV articles, I frequently see a sentence or two soliciting stories from tesla employees specifically. Often times the article isn’t even about tesla!
I can see disgruntled employees jumping at the chance to share their story with a journalist incentivized to write about it.
I do not know about cars but using electrical tape on aircraft is absolutely not allowed. Unlike in most electronics vehicles deal with vibration, improper wire routing will cause chafing against any surface it touches over time causing exposed wires and shorts in the best case. Zip ties are obviously not allowed because they would cause chafing themselves, electrical tape will likely come come undone after some years. I have seen cheap electrical tape do so before with age. I can't imagine cars do not deal with a level of vibration that would cause this.
I know the internet really loves muh aerospace standards but there's reasons vehicles that travel in two dimensions don't need to abide by those standards. It would be prohibitively expensive and overkill most of the time. There's tons of stuff that isn't allowed on aircraft and a lot of it traces back to being able to verify/inspect what was done and allowing a chain of custody so problems can be traced to the source. This isn't as necessary for two dimensional vehicles that only last 20yr.
Zip ties are mostly not allowed for QC reasons. Some people will crank them tight and some won't. They won't really cause much chafing if properly installed because the wires shouldn't be moving enough to chafe. There's tons and tons and tons of aftermarket wiring in work trucks out there that's been installed with zip ties and it's not any less reliable than OEM wiring.
All but the worst electrical tape will take 20+yr to come apart even in an automotive environment. It should take longer on an EV that isn't going to have as many sources of oil leaks in old age. I still wouldn't want to use it for anything other than bundling wires though.
As an aside, I've worked on aircraft (GA) and on cars and your average car sees more vibration but obviously if things fall apart in the air it's a bigger deal.
20 years? I've seen what happens to walmart electrical tape in a single summer in a car in the sun. And its been pointed out that the tape doesn't actually hold the "triple-cam" in place, just the wire connectors (implying this is less of problem?).
If it were my car, (and its so unimportant) than I'd vastly prefer nothing over Walmart tape. The tape is not going to do anything and its going to make a sticky mess. Tesla apologetics aside, this is not ok and I'm sticking to that.
> It would be prohibitively expensive and overkill most of the time.
I don't think purchasing a spool of spot tie costs much more than electrical tape and neither does heat shrink.
> Zip ties are mostly not allowed for QC reasons.
Collateral duty inspectors (and QA) ensure quality work so this is not the case. All work done is always inspected by someone who is an expert and did not participate in the maintenance.
> All but the worst electrical tape will take 20+yr to come apart
I have seen electrical tape come apart in just a few years.
> if things fall apart in the air it's a bigger deal.
If an autopilot system receives incorrect input it could kill someone.
As an aside, I've worked on military aircraft (Avionics), and I have seen what happens when a wire is loose and in contact with a vibrating surface.
>I don't think purchasing a spool of spot tie costs much more than electrical tape and neither does heat shrink.
No it doesn't but Tesla doesn't exactly have a mature vehicle manufacturing operation.
>Collateral duty inspectors (and QA) ensure quality work so this is not the case. All work done is always inspected by someone who is an expert and did not participate in the maintenance.
This is usually not the case in general aviation. Its my understanding that this also not the case for a lot of commercial operators, especially the smaller ones with thinner margins, but my knowledge may be out of date.
>I have seen electrical tape come apart in just a few years.
Yeah, 20yr is probably an exaggeration for tape applied by rushed assembly line workers but I've seen a heck of a lot of 20yo tape (usually used to bundle wires) on commercial vehicles. Most older wiring harnesses use "harness tape" (which is basically just electrical tape with some cloth fibers in it) to keep the wire from falling out of split loom and some use electrical tape to bundle wires in some places.
>If an autopilot system receives incorrect input it could kill someone.
You could say that about a lot of things. Technology is mostly at a point where it takes a cascading failure to kill anybody. The autopilot algorithms are far more suspect then even the most lazily assembled hardware.
>military aircraft
In the military they have tons of bodies to throw at things so everything gets triple checked. This is not the case in the commercial world.
I've seen plenty of factory installed electrical tape in engine bays of cars. It's not uncommon.
That being said the circumstances around the usage in the article are very different and just because electrical tape can be safe when used properly doesn't mean its safe in the case reported used at Tesla.
No, the article says "this photo shows tape applied to a segment of a white plastic housing where it holds “triple cam” connections in place". It's a wiring harness, not a camera mount.
That's fantastic. I just love what happens to electrical tape in hot cars. I can't wait to reach up into there to try to fix something a few years from now.
The general contention among all the manufacturing people I've talked to or read is that Tesla went way too crazy with automation and wasted a lot of money. They vastly overestimated the capabilities of current manufacturing automation tech at scale.
Genuine question that is unrelated to this but has always bothered me about Tesla.
Why does his brother, Kimbal, draw a $6million/year total comp for sitting on the board. He has zero relevant experience related to manufacturing and that salary is very high compared to the rest of the industry....this always bothered me about TSLA.
Wow, my Model 3 has been serviced for both the issues mentioned in the article: a loose connection in the 12v subsystem (which completely locked me out of the car and required a tow!) and moisture in one of my tail lights.
> In fact, we have a large number of employees who request to work on GA4 based on what they hear from colleagues and what they have seen first-hand
Wonder if the Tesla spokesman has a desk there. Off the top of my head I can't imagine a reason why the tent would be such a great place to work. Equal maybe but certainly not better than a factory building that was not put up in a hurry to meet demands.
In any manufacturing job the "get it done" mantra is pretty much guaranteed to rear its head from time to time. Issuing such a strong blanket rejection for every single point really undermines the rejection.
> Off the top of my head I can't imagine a reason why the tent would be such a great place to work.
It's in Fremont California where the weather averages 49-69F with extremes being 42F and 79F. It's outside so constantly moving fresh air, and it's covered so no sun beating down. The ends of the tent appear to be open letting natural light in and allowing you to look out at the sky.
Contrast that to a typical factory that's a climate controlled coffin.
I have no experience working in a factory setting but it seems like it's the difference between running outside vs indoor on a treadmill.
I worked in a factory for a couple of weeks putting radiators on Defenders [0].
The work was extremely boring (30 second task repeated 8 hours a day) but temperature / conditions were never an issue. Workers were looked after seemingly well.
I guess my point is that the climate of the region is such that I don't see it being an issue to be "outside" and that it might be more pleasant than an actual factory, then again I'm ignorant to the dress code or actual temperature of a typical automotive factory.
The temperatures you listed are close to freezing (sometimes below freezing). Are you sure working in a tent at those temps is "pleasant"? The chances of the tent providing the same levels of climate control as the factory building are close to none which is why workers had to use the radiators against company policy. And the policy makes sense given the clear danger of a fire.
> The temperatures you listed are close to freezing (sometimes below freezing).
None of the temperatures listed were close to or below freezing. Freezing is 32 degrees Fahrenheit, the lowest temperature I mentioned was 42F which is 10 degrees above freezing.
> Are you sure working in a tent at those temps is "pleasant"?
I listed the min and max temperatures as well as the the average min and max temperatures for a reason. The average min temperature is 7 degrees warmer than the min and both would occur overnight.
Is the tent a 24 hour operation? If not then it's unlikely that workers would have to endure the "freezing" 42F weather at all.
> In Fremont [...] the temperature typically varies from 43°F to 82°F and is rarely below 35°F or above 92°F.
From the link I posted below. Rarely below 35F (~1.5C) is still pretty damn cold. Would you want your workplace to be "just about freezing" once in a while? What I mean is I'm pretty sure Tesla's statements are the regular PR thing any company in their position would put out, they just exaggerated a bit with "they actually insist on it". Maybe they took an existing example and didn't mind implying it's a general thing.
You're just deflecting, those people complaining have a point. Even excluding the "comforting fact" that it's only literally freezing "rarely", having to work full shifts even at an average low of ~6-8C/43-46F, and an average high of ~16C/62F (official weather data for Dec/Jan/Feb) for ~3 months is still damn uncomfortable if not dangerous. Enough to warrant taking dangerous measures in such an environment like using a space heater. Would you like you day job to be a choice between "freezing" and "risking life threatening fire"?
If the tent would be the better choice that people actually ask for, you'd expect more of them popping up in that kind of climate. It's just the cheap and fast choice (for the company) and these are the downsides (for the employees).
I'm not deflecting anything. You quoted some PR that said "we have a large number of employees who request to work on GA4" and said "Off the top of my head I can't imagine a reason why the tent would be such a great place to work."
I pointed out that, by your own admission, for ~9 months of the year the climate is fine AND it's outside as possible reasons for choosing to work in the tent.
The original quote doesn't say employees requested permanent positions or even year round. Two employees requesting to work 1 shift in the tent during ideal conditions would still make the statement true.
Why is that so far beyond your comprehension? You're fixated on the fact that it gets cold at night in the middle of winter as proof that no one would ever request to work in the tent ever.
I think you're just being contrary and difficult which may or may not be because you have a hidden agenda.
The year has 12. If you have to selectively pick the part of the year or of the job that supports your point then you need to widen your view. You can't just ignore whatever contradicts it. I'll rephrase: off the top of my head I can't think of a reason for a "large number of employees" to want to work in that tent without any significant disclaimers attached to the request. "Only in good weather" or lack of awareness (not realizing that work conditions are bad part of the year) would be such disclaimers.
> Why is that so far beyond your comprehension
Because if people hate it 25% of the time it still makes Tesla's statement disingenuous and supports the complaint.
> may or may not be because you have a hidden agenda
Why is this always the go to response whenever someone criticizes Tesla (short sellers!)? If you need to try to discredit me to counter my argument then I'm making a pretty strong argument.
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
The statement you questioned didn't provide any context, you're being presumptuous (e.g. An employee will only request to work outside year round, no less) which is why you couldn't fathom why someone might ask to work outside and thus concluding the statement was false.
Your description suggests the tent is actually better than the factory building in such climates (even ones with occasional below freezing temperatures). I have to ask why Tesla didn't go for a tent from the start. The logical conclusion is that the factory building provides necessary extras that still justify the incredibly high costs.
And the extremes you mention are still averages. So with an average low of 43F (~6C) in December [0] you may see minimums of just over 30F (-1C) so it's perfectly conceivable that it can get pretty uncomfortable to work. Same applies to summers, possibly to a lower extent.
> Your description suggests the tent is actually better than the factory building in such climates (even ones with occasional below freezing temperatures).
No, the op was struggling to think of a reason why a worker might request to work in a tent.
I suggested that it might be due to the climate.
You're arguing that it's inconceivable that anyone in that climate might volunteer to work outside because one time in the last 4 years the temperature got down to 32F in the dead of winter in the middle of the night.
Have you ever been to Fremont? It's gorgeous year round.
I am the OP and I’m still struggling to understand how working in a tent at potentially freezing outside temps (see link above for minimums and average minimums) can be anywhere close to comfortable. You have to keep in mind that work doesn’t stop on those days (or nights). And I’m pretty sure it’s not just a 9-5 shift.
Obviously the people found the need for radiators which can be very dangerous in that environment.
musk slept on the floor of the factory... Safety issues with giant pieces of metal going down the road aside (though it is paramount!), at least the leader struggled with his underlings.
There are people sleeping on the streets blocks away from his factories. Sleeping on the floor of his hundred million dollar factories is not proof of anything.
Hey, lets ignore Toyota Production System (which was invented by a startup, Toyoda Automatic Loom) and then perfected on building cars with small amounts of resources and minimal failure. It's pretty clear they don't use TPS at Tesla, which will be their downfall...
Tesla has shown time and time again that they care for their customers, giving free services and even upgrades. This is just another CNBC attack on TSLA for whatever reason.
I doubt these vehicles made it onto the road with the half fixes, they most likely just used the tape to allow the vehicle to move down the line then when the parts were available replaced them before customer delivery. This is probably not apparent and not explained to the untrustworthly assembly line worker.
That has nothing to do with the parent comment, which was about manufacturing processes and planning. The bailouts were the result of overproduction and high labor costs in an unexpectedly shrinking market.
You mean like how every U.S. Tesla ever sold has been heavily subsidized with tax rebates? And how they actually got a U.S. Government loan? And how they got further tax credits from Nevada for building the Gigafactory there?
>Tesla is able to build the safest and best-performing cars
Am I out of date with the news? Are Tesla the safest cars? I am not a car enthusiast so I recall that Volvo has most safety features, did things change or is Tesla PR so deluded, at least I would use something like "one of the safest cars", provide some modesty,
Tesla's are inherently very safe because they have such a large frontal crumple zone with no engine and the floor is a solid battery which helps with side collisions.
Yes, and to be honest, insanely out of date. I'm not telling you Teslas are the safest car on the planet, just that the "Volvo = safe" is, I don't know, maybe an early 80s mentality?
It ignores decades of changes and infinite nuance into how cars are tested and evaluated for safety. There are all kinds of measures under which a car's safety can be evaluated, and to boil it down to "Volvo has the most safety features" is far sillier than even Tesla touting themselves as the safest cars. (Teslas do fare very well in current crash tests, though).
Yes, I did some research now, I am not a car person and indeed Tesla is one of the safest though I can say if is indeed the safest car(are the other companies probably saying their car is the safest?)
The link does not contain rankings, but I did some searching, on the European system in fact Tesla is one of the safes ts car. the "safest car" thing appears if you Google related with the american system in a lot of EV related articles around 2911, I can't find anything more recent and more impartial on the first google page.
The Tesla fans will tell you that he used the car wrong, and in a way they are correct , the fact that the driver did not survived in those Tesla crashes is not good though.
The challenge is that once the immediate fire is out, it's easy to simply leave things in a half-baked state. That accumulates as technical debt.
Thankfully, most of the instances where I have had to deal with this has been purely software and not affected the lives and comfort of operators on the floor like with Tesla. But I can see how this happens. Even if the 'tent' becomes a permanent installation, I hope they spend the time and money to improve it to the necessary working standards that employees deserve.