A lot of those parts are from third party suppliers (not that it excuses Tesla completely of course). I watched a video some time ago, where Musk was complaining that the big automotive parts suppliers simply didn't take Tesla seriously, and therefore it led to quality issues, in the video it was the quality of the sun flaps. It's probably due to Tesla shipping much lower volumes, and the big suppliers not being familiar with dealing with a supplier that has low volumes but aims to be a mass market car maker.

> A lot of those parts are from third party suppliers (not that it excuses Tesla completely of course).

What makes you think that other automaker aren't using third party suppliers? Borgwarner, Denso, etc... are all third party suppliers that many company uses.

After the recession of 2008, many third party suppliers went bankrupt. There is a consolidation of third party so now many automaker share similar parts among each other.

Even the new Supra, Toyota tested the BMW engine and ask BMW to change some stuff.

It still up to Tesla to test the reliability.

So Musk is saying their finished cars have problems because they get bad parts and they have to put those bad parts on their cars?

I would have tough you did some quality assurance on all parts you put in the car, and not use the bad ones.

I really don't believe Tesla gets any worse parts than other manufacturers. Those parts come from the same production line. They are the same parts. Almost all of the automotive industry uses the same parts, chosen from a fairly limited variety of models, produced in great numbers.

The design of a car has a great impact on how long those parts last. It's easy to blame a parts supplier for faults that are because of your own design.

Let's take an example. The water that rains down on your windshield is cleared away by windscreen wipers. If the wiper motor or mechanism doesn't work, the car is not roadworthy.

Were does the water go from the windscreen? It flushes down along the edge into the scuttle between windscreen and bonnet (hood), and then usually goes down scuttle drains, to be released underneath the car. What happens if your scuttle drains are designed so that tree leaves that always fall on the windscreen in some places get stuck and block the scuttle drains? The water is not drained. Instead, the water level raises in the scuttle. The water may flush inside your car if the seams are not tight. Or the level just raises above the bearings of your windscreen wipers, you have a little pool in front of the windscreen.

So you have water in your wiper mechanism bearings. This water will freeze in the winter. It will push out and flush away any grease in the bearings. There will be corrosion. Eventually, your windscreen wiper won't move because the bearing is stuck.

Now, do you blame the wiper mechanism and bearing manufacturer (like Musk appears to do) or do you blame the design that floods the standard parts that everyone is using?

The former is of course tempting, but in the end, it's your responsibility to design and manufacture the car so that it keeps running for long enough.

Do auto parts manufacturers bin their products in a way similar to what Intel and AMD do with CPUs? Where the "less perfect" die become lower-end SKUs, or certain batch numbers are known for being better overclockers, etc.

If certain units are manufactured "perfectly" while others come off the line in spec but close to their limits, I could see the suppliers prioritizing their bigger customers.

I have absolutely no idea if this the case, I think your point about the system design is most likely the bigger factor here, but I'm curious nonetheless.

I don't really know, but I would expect that the different quality classes are marketed as such with slightly different product codes, and the buyer needs to be aware what he's procuring. And that you know what category of parts you buy for your manufacture is generally a key competence and an important process in car manufacturing.

Is there somewhere to learn about this type of engineering without going though education?

Just found your example a really interesting read and would like to read more!

Thanks for comment - alas, I can't really point out to any publically available training on-line or such. Probably automotive engineering courses and model-specific trainings for car mechanics bring up more of these.

What I wrote I've learned by fixing cars myself and by listening to the mechanics who've been doing things for me (I've been driving for over 30 years and mostly rather cheap cars, so I've seen a mechanic or two).

Based on the stories we hear about people waiting for replacement parts when their cars need repair, I'd wager that the are probably running too lean on inventory.

This creates a dilemma of either not delivering cars because then they'd have to wait for replacements, or delivering cars that have parts that are not 100% to spec.

And no, it's not about people cancelling orders because of waits IMO. If you're waiting for the part to finish the car, you can't really finish selling it and get the money you have tied up in that incomplete build.